How the Exercise of American Power Is Changing Abroad — As Shared Rules Give Way to Gray Zone Unilateralism

Much of the debate over Donald Trump’s foreign policy has focused on outcomes; far less attention has been paid to how the exercise of power itself is changing. Viewed through a military lens, many of the actions now being treated as routine fit squarely within what the U.S. defense community would recognize as irregular warfare (IW)—coercive measures employed below the threshold of declared war, operating in the gray zone between peace and open conflict. That distinction matters. Outcomes are contingent and contested. Methods, once normalized, tend to persist.

The central problem is the cumulative normalization of unilateralism. By that, I mean the repeated use of IW coercive tools—sanctions, legal assertions, diplomatic isolation, maritime interdictions, and implied or limited force—outside shared rules or multilateral constraint, justified primarily by unilateral determinations of national interest. Over time, repetition matters more than any one act. What begins as exceptional becomes familiar. What feels familiar soon becomes acceptable.

Venezuela provides the clearest and most advanced illustration of this emerging pattern. The United States under Trump declared the Venezuelan government illegitimate, imposed sweeping sanctions, pursued criminal indictments against its sitting president, and ultimately escalated further: U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro and transported him to the United States to face federal prosecution.

The United States has removed other foreign heads of state before. The capture of Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989 stands as a clear precedent. But that episode was treated as an extraordinary rupture, not as a reusable instrument of policy. It did not inaugurate a standing claim that such actions were an ordinary option, available whenever national interest so dictated.

What distinguishes Venezuela is not the final act alone, but the path that led to it. The episode unfolded through a sequence of escalating measures—coercive rhetoric, sanctions, legal assertions, maritime interdictions, and limited kinetic actions—each framed as incremental and justified on its own terms. U.S. forces sank vessels described as drug-smuggling boats even when those vessels were not bound for the United States, and even where the factual basis for their status was contested. Over time, the boundary between pressure and force narrowed.

By the time Maduro was seized, the action could be presented not as a rupture, but as the culmination of a process already made familiar. That is how normalization works in the gray zone: escalation by accretion rather than declaration.

Nor is Venezuela the only context in which this logic has surfaced. In recent remarks, Trump has openly floated coercive options involving Mexico, Colombia and Cuba, tying the possibility of action to narcotics trafficking and governance failures. He has also revived claims over Greenland, framing U.S. entitlement there in terms of national security need rather than consent or alliance process. These statements do not announce operations. But they do something more consequential: they treat unilateral pressure—backed by force if necessary—as an ordinary instrument of statecraft rather than an extraordinary one.

At this point, the argument can no longer be confined to hemispheric exceptionalism. Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia, and Cuba might still be placed—controversially—within a modernized Monroe Doctrine framework. Greenland cannot. The justification there is not proximity, but perceived necessity. Geography recedes; discretion takes its place.

That shift is reinforced by Trump’s statements that the United States could take action if the Iranian government continues to kill peaceful protesters. The importance of that remark is not operational. It is normative. Once legitimacy becomes conditional on behavior as judged unilaterally by Washington, the governing logic is no longer regional. It is portable.

Unilateralism, at this stage, is not only practiced; it is increasingly articulated. Senior administration officials have emphasized presidential “optionality” abroad, framing American action in terms of what national interest requires rather than what shared rules permit. This is not a formally declared doctrine. But it is a governing posture—and postures, once normalized, tend to outlast the officials who adopt them.

The danger here is often misunderstood. This is not primarily about imminent war. It is about precedent. Norms erode not through dramatic rupture, but through accumulation. Each instance in which coercive action is treated as routine lowers the threshold for the next. Each assertion that rules are optional weakens the ability to argue, later, that they matter.

This matters most in the space between peace and open war. The tools now being normalized—sanctions, seizures, legal assertions, diplomatic isolation, maritime force, and limited strikes—are the core instruments of contemporary irregular warfare between states. Other powers, particularly China, have invested heavily in mastering precisely this mode of competition. When the United States treats such tools as discretionary and unbounded, it becomes harder to insist that their use elsewhere is illegitimate.

China’s decisions regarding Taiwan will not be determined by American rhetoric alone. They will turn on military balance, alliance commitments, and strategic risk. But norms shape the environment in which those decisions are made. When sovereignty is treated as conditional and coercion as routine, restraint becomes harder to defend—by anyone.

Defenders of this approach will argue that the rules-based order was already fraying, and that restraint without reciprocity is naïve. There is truth in that. But abandoning constraint altogether is not realism. It is impatience masquerading as strength.

Power exercised without rules does not remain unilateral for long. Others watch. Others learn. Others adapt the same logic to their own interests. Over time, shared constraints give way to spheres of discretion, and actions “short of war” become the most dangerous category of all—because they feel manageable, repeatable, and safe.

That world does not arrive with a single dramatic decision.

It arrives by normalization.

And once normalized, it is exceedingly difficult to reverse.