Closing the Cycle: What Trump's Second Term Taught Us About the New International Order

 By: Ronald Marquez, Dharma Gonzales and Julian Palomino.

As we close this blog and this semester-long project, we want to use this final post not to analyze a new event, but to look back at everything we have written and ask ourselves: what have we actually learned about international relations by following Donald Trump's second term?

When we started this blog, we did so with a simple goal: to understand, as students, how the decisions of a single government could reshape global politics. After several months of posts covering Europe, South America, China, and the institutional architecture of world order, we believe the answer has become much clearer than when we began.

A confirmation of Realist logic

Almost every case we examined led us back to the same theoretical framework: Realism. Whether we were discussing sanctions on Venezuela, tariffs against European partners, or the escalating rivalry with China, the pattern was consistent. Washington's decisions, time and again, were not primarily about values, alliances, or multilateral cooperation, but about preserving relative power and reasserting the United States' position as the dominant actor in the international system. This was not a hidden agenda; it was openly stated through the "America First" doctrine itself.

The world does not stand still

What surprised us most, however, was not Washington's behavior, but how the rest of the world responded to it. The European Union, historically dependent on the U.S. security umbrella, was pushed toward a faster pursuit of strategic autonomy. South American nations had to recalibrate trade relationships under more transactional and less predictable terms. And the rivalry with China stopped looking like an isolated dispute and started resembling the early outline of a new, more multipolar global order. In other words, unilateral decisions from one capital produced multilateral consequences across the entire system — which is, in itself, one of the central lessons of international relations: no actor, however powerful, operates in a vacuum.

What this project meant to us

Beyond the theory, this blog has been a personal exercise in following real-time history as it unfolds. We did not write about closed chapters from a textbook; we wrote about decisions, reactions, and consequences as they were happening, which forced us to constantly revise our own interpretations. That, we believe, is the closest experience to what international relations professionals actually do.

Conclussion

If there is one idea we want to leave with our readers, it is this: international politics is not a series of isolated headlines, but an interconnected system where every action by a major power generates reactions, adaptations, and realignments elsewhere. Donald Trump's second term has been an unusually clear case study of this dynamic, and following it has only reinforced our conviction that studying international relations is, ultimately, about understanding how power, interests, and cooperation constantly negotiate the shape of our shared world.

Thank you for following our blog throughout this project !!