Personalist Dictatorship, America’s Self-Inflicted Isolationism, and the Ever-Widening Road to Global War

It is increasingly clear that chaos and anarchy spilling out to the world are the result of President Donald Trump's "personalist dictatorship", Ret. Col. Dencio Acop writes.

 COL Dencio S. Acop (Ret), PhD, CPP | Published: February 1, 2026

PERTH, Australia — “We live in interesting times!”

It is a well-known Chinese saying and it can be interpreted either positively or negatively. Aware of it or not, the world is quickly unraveling. While institutions have taken centuries to evolve, these same institutions are crumbling under the weight of forces that weren’t possible before.

Prior to the internet, communication was slow, but it also allowed needed time for messages to be edited so that truth was its end-product which individuals, organizations, and nations acted on. This communication became the bedrock of everything else which multiplied as populations grew. It was especially foundational towards the growth of basic institutions alongside the mass production that followed the industrial revolution (E.g., mass bureaucracy, mass standing army, mass corporation, mass media, mass public education, etc.).

While democracies developed, a managerial regime likewise evolved along with them creating a class of managers who were the technocratic experts in scientific management. In “Managerialism Means the End of Democracy”, NS Lyons argues that the business of the managerial class is not production or service creation but “surveillance and control – of people, information, money, and ideas” – for capitalists at the expense of the ordinary people through a top-down “management” of practically everything.

In essence, this ever-expanding managerial class is an extension of the domestic elite comprising the modern oligarchy. In contrast, genuine democracy entails a bottom-up structure where people must first recover their soul and with it their courage and humanity. By today’s standards, automation and artificial intelligence are effectively rendering the modern oligarchy the new totalitarian threat due to its dehumanizing effect upon ordinary people. As the present-day goes, “widely observable is the expression of an emaciated spirit, […] when man handed over his divine soul, he handed over his own power, and his humanity along with it.”

In essence, what ails democracies is not populism, but a type of regime inimical to democracy itself. Once fathomed, the rise of Donald Trump can be better understood. The phenomenon described has given America and the world, Donald Trump, whose personalist dictatorship is resulting in America’s self-inflicted Isolationism and leading the world towards another global war.

A first crucial factor that could be leading the world to another war today is the personalist dictatorship of the individuals who run the three most powerful countries: China, Russia, and the United States. Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump are autocrats. Each one is ambitious and has fixed goals to achieve during his reign in power. Xi wants to be known as the Chinese leader who reunifies mainland China and its renegade province Taiwan and challenged the United States for global supremacy. Russia’s invading Ukraine and challenging NATO are clear assertions of Putin’s goal to resurrect the greatness of the Soviet Union in modern-day Russia. Trump rose to power to “make America great again.” (PODCAST: Episode 6: Biggest security issues in 2026)

Ignoring the international rule of law, each world leader advocates the realist approach to international relations which includes the use of hostile actions against other states as regular foreign policy. In the case of Trump, he has also ignored domestic laws in carrying out his unprecedented actions. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, and the war is still ongoing despite attempted peace talks. The US under Trump attacked Iran and Venezuela in succession in 2025. Trump in 2026 has also announced that the US is poised to take Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark, a fellow NATO ally. (Also read: America in the image of China, Russia)

While criticizing the US for its aggression, China under Xi has violated the territory and exclusive economic zone of the Philippines since 2012 building military bases on artificial islands for their potential role in a planned invasion of Taiwan. To date, the three powerful nations under these three leaders have limited their military actions to regional spheres of influence. However, it seems unlikely if such demarcation will last long considering that the interests of these three powerful nations and their trade and defense alliances are closely linked.

Venezuela, for instance, is a close ally of China. A flashpoint currently watched is Taiwan which will test the personalist leadership of Xi and Trump in the region. For instance, Yun Sun in “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?” argues that “China may never again have a moment when Washington is so reluctant to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf.”

Xi’s decision will weigh US capacity to fight wars on several fronts simultaneously if it takes on Greenland while also engaged in Latin America and the Middle East. At any rate, the capacity for action has already been demonstrated by Trump, for better or worse. While costs and benefits seem predictable, the actual action to be taken by each leader is not. Xi is more secretive and cunning. Trump is loud but unpredictable.

To date, Xi has proved capable of successfully leading China using calculated audacity and astuteness. But his ruthless purge of powerful competitors and seasoned generals not within his trust and confidence may exact retribution once Xi stumbles from a false move or unsuccessful venture. By contrast, Trump’s randomness and chaotic impulses have run roughshod on objectives personally declared inimical to US interests just in the first year of his second term in office.

In “The Unconstrained Presidency and the End of American Primacy”, Drezner and Saunders argue that “Trump makes critical decisions with little to no process at seemingly random times – unprompted by emergencies”. His “mercurial impulses, on which he can act more quickly and easily than any leader […] represent a new level of chaos.”

This analyst echoes the authors’ claim that Trump is using a Hobbesian-inspired foreign and domestic policy tool of chaos as his blueprint of governance. “In this Hobbesian order, driven by a leader who rejects any constraints on his ability to act and who is emboldened by technology to move at a whirlwind pace, anything goes.” (Also read: Donald Trump’s military parade and “Palace in the Sky”)

Hathaway and Shapiro in Foreign Affairs added that Trump is creating a world in which “not only would the rules be unpredictable, they would depend entirely on the impulses of whoever happens to command the most coercive power at a given moment.”      

A second factor that must be assessed is America’s new Isolationism resulting from Trump’s Hobbesian order. As events unfold in the second Trump administration, it has become increasingly clear that chaos and anarchy are, after all, not just the by-products of a whimsical and impulsive leader but a centerpiece of American leadership under Trump. This is unfortunate because isolationism gets the isolated country nowhere, especially in today’s world. China already learned this vital lesson decades ago. Paradoxically, China would have remained impoverished following years of isolationism had it not been for the United States which resuscitated its failed economy from lack of trade and monopolist production in the early 1970s.

Another irony is that while China has risen over the years enough to challenge America’s global dominance, growing isolation undermines American power even more. Trump’s America is moving towards where China has left, surrendering its strengths while adding to its weaknesses. In his frantic efforts to effectively address a rampaging China, Trump is instead falling into the trap already set for it.

It must be recalled that the grand strategy of China operationalized over the past half century, has been to exploit American weaknesses while developing its own hidden strengths. Trump’s think-tanks appear to believe that a strategy of “peace through strength” and a foreign policy of “flexible realism” are “realistic about what is possible and desirable to seek in its dealings with other nations”, according to Drezner and Saunders. Once again, the theory behind it, as Hobbes’, is lifted off another political scientist, Alexander Wendt, who argued that “anarchy is what states make of it.”

But just what exactly is America’s strength today? By its very actions in just a year, the Trump administration has managed to brutally divide its people, violate the sovereignty of nations, weaponize tariffs, ignore international law, behave more like traditional adversaries Russia and China, and embrace war as a policy option.

Nations bullied by America, NATO allies, and UN partners which once relied on American power are now distancing themselves and turning to other more reliable allies leading to America’s isolation. Some are pivoting to China.

Again, this analyst echoes Drezner and Saunders: “The foundations of American power are rooted in the rule of law at home and credible commitment abroad, the very things that Trump has attempted to dismantle. Trump’s gutting of foreign aid and the infrastructure of US scientific and technological dominance, his dangerous confrontation with stalwart European allies, and most damaging of all, his use of the military and federal security forces to consolidate his domestic authority will, in the long run, undermine American power. Estranged allies are already reaching out to China and one another to hedge against an erratic United States. Whether these actions succeed or not, they weaken the United States and make China relatively more attractive for smaller powers seeking security. In Trump’s zero-sum global order, it is the United States that will eventually pay the price.”       

Finally, Trump’s personalist dictatorship is resulting in not just America’s self-inflicted Isolationism but leading the world towards another global war. In a world run by chaos and anarchy, war is just a normal part of international relations. Historically, countries confident of their strength have imposed their will on other countries to advance their interest.

If the Korean War occurred under a Realist Order, Trump would not have fired MacArthur but encouraged him to invade China by crossing the Yalu River in pursuit of the North Korean Army. The move would certainly have expanded the war into China, but the United States was the more powerful country so Trump’s Hobbesian administration would have been all for it. The world would probably not be the same one we live in today. But we’d never know, really. And this would be the calculated response of the Trump government today if a war erupted.

This analyst has been saying it all along for some time now. The character of Trump as well as the circumstances present in the world today have all the trimmings reminiscent of Lord Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and the European people prior to Nazi Germany’s invasion of Europe. As many world leaders have already expressed, the old order is no more.

Once Russia invaded Ukraine (2022), and the United States attacked Iran and Venezuela (2025) without due process, these moves signaled to the rest of the world that it is free for all and that the rule of law no longer mattered as it has been replaced by “might is right.”

It is also a clear message to China that it would be alright to invade Taiwan. Thereafter, who would be next? How did the Liberal Order unravel so quickly? Already, Europe is getting ready for war. Its generals are mobilizing their peoples to prepare for war with Russia by 2030. One of these generals is Fabien Mandon, France’s head of armed forces. Another is Norway’s former chief of defense, General Sverre Diesen, who said: “We cannot consider America our ally. The US is a hostile actor that, in the event of a conflict in Europe, is more likely to align with Russia than with us and other European countries.”

The Second World War was won by the alliances of Liberal Order led by the US, UK, and Canada over the totalitarian Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The Just War Theory favored the Allies which were defending against the aggression and human rights brutality of the Axis invaders. Eighty-one years since that war, the post-war NATO alliance and UN organization meant to avoid another global war came into fruition.

Although paradoxically today, the US under Trump is playing the undoubted role of a realist hegemonic aggressor along with Russia and China in their regional spheres of influence. But, like all great rivalries, these regional powers are expected to slug it out once their dominance in their turf is consolidated, fearing that the world is too small to share for each one. And the United States is no longer a Liberal power. When would the next war be? It depends on the impulses of whoever happens to command the most coercive power at any given time.

Trump has been dominating this scene perhaps perceiving himself as Hobbes’ Leviathan. Unfortunately, the Leviathan, monster-like as it is, represents a foe defeated by divine forces.