In some perverse sense, Donald Trump may deserve credit for jettisoning post-World War II decorum which demands American leaders justify foreign military interventions by way of lip service to the preservation and promotion of liberal democracy.

No one likes being lied to, and there’s something especially odious about a transparent lie told to justify a course of action everyone’s powerless to stop. (The George W. Bush administration wasn’t “asking” when it cooked up a list of excuses for toppling Saddam Hussein.)

The truth often hurts, but no one can say Trump obfuscated when, while explaining his decision to depose a foreign leader earlier this month, he expounded a rationale indistinguishable from colonial realpolitik.

Trump’s apathetic to the post-War international order and at times evidences open hostility towards it. Just last week, he proudly withdrew the US from dozens of multilateral arrangements including, conspicuously, the International Law Commission, whose long-term work program includes the study of state officials’ immunity from foreign criminal jurisdiction.

Suffice to say Trump’s America doesn’t recognize any obligation, formal or otherwise, to engage in the sort of farcical charade exemplified by the Bush administration’s attempt to square its invasion of Iraq with the American-led system of written and unwritten international laws which defined global affairs since the fall of the Third Reich.

In a way, that’s refreshing. Again: No one likes being lied to, particularly when the lie’s a justification for actions likely to result in the death of tens (or hundreds) of thousands of people. Trump told the truth about his actions in Venezuela (I’m reminded of Dave Chappelle’s “honest liar” characterization) and so far anyway, the death toll’s just ~100, around half of them Cuban soldiers.

At the same time, there’s something to be said for the charade — there’s utility in decorum, even if everyone knows America’s lip service to spreading and promoting democracy is just that. Simply put, if America no longer feels the need to feign respect for bedrock concepts like the inviolability of state sovereignty (by spinning narratives, however absurd, to excuse otherwise flagrant violations), well then why should anyone else pretend to play by the rules either?

You could argue — and indeed I would argue — that the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites and the capture of Nicolas Maduro look like evidence in favor of the notion that Barack Obama and Joe Biden harbored too much self-doubt about America’s capacity to get what it wants by force, while George W. Bush’s sin vis-à-vis American military might wasn’t hubris, as such, but rather stupidity (Who, if not a moron, launches a full-scale invasion as a first option when it’s not the only option?).

But there are two potential problems. First, and most obviously, Trump’s luck could run out. His Venezuela gambit, for example, could backfire, resulting in an internal military coup that forces The White House to invade and occupy — or turn tail and cut losses. Something similar could happen in Iran if Trump decides to accelerate the regime’s ouster by bombing IRGC targets to embolden the protesters, only to leave a power vacuum that quickly devolves into chaos.

Second, and more worryingly, Trump could inadvertently stumble the world into another global conflict. Such an event, if we lived through it to reflect, would be seen in hindsight as entirely predictable: Trump’s actions, when taken together, look like a complete American disavowal of the principles and frameworks which, while failing miserably in virtually all other respects over eight decades, have at least succeeded in preventing a third world war.

That success — preventing World War III — is not nothin’, as they say, even as it’s small comfort to the millions of people killed across thousands of “lesser” conflicts tacitly countenanced and, from a sin of omission perspective, facilitated by, the multilateral institutions of the post-Reich international order.