In September, the United Nations General Assembly appeared powerless against an international order shaken by Donald Trump, a shift that Maud Quessard deciphers in her new book, Power Without Principle. Published by Seuil, the 328-page work describes how the United States is undergoing an imperial transformation under its 47th president, resulting in a world submitted to this new dynamic.
Quessard, head of the Euro-Atlantic space department at the Military School's Institute for Strategic Research, argues that the US has renounced being a power justified by a project or one that guarantees global order. Instead, the nation is becoming a power that no longer concerns itself with safeguards, abandoning all principles in favor of brute force.
This transformation involves bringing American institutions under control. At the Pentagon, Quessard identifies a reverse coup d'état, defined as the politicization of the institution by civil power seeking to bind it to a specific camp and turn it into a docile instrument for an internal project. She notes that in this shift, the spectacle of the presidency is not merely an ornament but the actual mode of exercising Trumpian power.
The author concludes that the scenography of empire now conflicts with the promise of the republic, a fracture line that runs through her entire analysis of the current geopolitical landscape.
Sources: Le Monde International.