Since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office, no state has been too small to find itself in his crosshairs. In his inaugural address in January 2025, Trump pledged to take back the Panama Canal and acquire sparsely populated Greenland. This menacing of small and medium-sized states accelerated in 2026, with a spectacular raid to remove the president of Venezuela and an oil blockade of Cuba. Chafing at papal criticism of his foreign policies, Trump even lashed out at Pope Leo XIV, the sovereign of tiny Vatican City.

The president’s might-makes-right approach is the latest manifestation of an alarming trend: the erosion of restraints on great-power behavior. As Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine and China’s expansionism in the South China Sea make clear, the United States is not alone in throwing its weight around. Now, with great powers shredding the fabric of international law and institutions, there are vanishingly few checks on intervention and conquest.

The world’s smaller states are the biggest victims of the chaos of an unwinding global order. As the weaker partners in asymmetrical international relationships, countries as disparate as Kenya, Paraguay, and Singapore cannot unilaterally set the rules and often struggle to shape them. Smaller states confront increased economic barriers, diplomatic marginalization, and intensified shocks such as volatile markets and extreme weather. An integrated world economy, in which they could find niches to develop, is fragmenting. International organizations, which gave smaller states seats at the table and allowed them to reach global audiences, are hobbled by shrinking resources and waning legitimacy. And the gutting of foreign aid and global public goods has deprived smaller states of buffers against disasters.

The dilemmas facing smaller states also matter mightily for great powers. Big powers may bully their way to success, as the United States has done in Panama, where pressure from Washington drove a review of Chinese-linked port operators near the canal, and in Venezuela, whose newly U.S.-backed leadership has opened the country’s oil industry to U.S. companies. But sustaining coercion is expensive and risks miring the strong in the affairs of the weak. As in Cuba today, great-power coercion can prompt social and economic catastrophe without a clear political endgame. The failure to achieve initial goals often puts great powers on a slippery slope toward increasingly costly interventions.

Ameliorating the risks to smaller states will require countries of all sizes to invest in the international system, rather than simply seeking to extract from it. The United States should use its resources and influence to reform, not rupture, international institutions. Smaller states must also work collectively to not let these international organizations atrophy, as these bodies provide a vital shield against great-power predation. Meanwhile, smaller states will need to invest in their diplomatic capacities and exploiti opportunities to advance their overlapping interests.

The global public goods the United States provided, such as support for international organizations and relief from natural disasters and economic crises, were never charity; they were a winning wager that a relatively stable and open system would underpin U.S. alliances, partnerships, and prosperity. Smaller states are woven into global value chains, serve as financial hubs, act as strategic chokepoints, and offer basing opportunities. This is particularly true today, when the United States is engaged in a geopolitical competition with China, which assiduously courts the broader UN membership. Ultimately, a superpower that roils the waters around smaller states will find the waves reach its own shores.

The international order created at the end of World War II was a boon to smaller states, offering them security norms, opportunities to be heard, economic openness, relative predictability, and even a modicum of global insurance. New countries emerged from the collapse of colonial empires, joining a United Nations that endorsed their sovereign equality........

© Foreign Affairs