United States

The damage has been done, and uncertainty about the credibility of the US commitment is now an undercurrent of transatlantic relations. Trump is too mercurial and the resistance from inside the US too inconsistent.”

Tamer Badawi, an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London specializing in Iraq, said that al-Sudani may well have anticipated the pushback against al-Maliki’s nomination and stepped aside as a political maneuver. That allows al-Maliki to “temporarily steal the spotlight,” while the rival candidate’s “path to office narrows under the weight of his domestic opponents and even sharper hostility from the Trump camp,” he said. “Iraq cannot afford the economic consequences of Donald Trump delivering upon his threats,” he said. Those could include imposing sanctions and restricting Iraq’s access to its own supply of U.S. dollars - Iraq’s foreign currency reserves have been housed at the United States’ Federal Reserve. But that “does not automatically mean the race is now decided in Sudani’s favor,” Badawi said. “A third candidate emerging as a compromise pick remains one of the plausible outcomes.”

A functioning rules-based order remains our best security guarantee—but only if we stop exempting ourselves from it. Predictable rules reduce conflict. Impartial enforcement builds legitimacy. Consistency prevents the erosion of deterrence. But selective application is no order at all—it is brute power dressed in law’s language."