9月，面对因唐纳德·特朗普而动摇的国际秩序，联合国大会无能为力。莫德·凯萨尔的著作《无原则的权力》（La Puissance sans principe，未译中文名）清晰地阐释了这一转变，她在书中对美国第47任总统领导下经历“帝国变革”的美国所主导的世界进行了评估。她的评估既凄凉又令人警醒。
In September, the United Nations General Assembly was powerless in the face of an international order shaken by Donald Trump. That shift is made clear in La Puissance sans principe ("Power Without Principle," untranslated), a brilliant work in which Maud Quessard offers an assessment of a world subjected to the "imperial transformation" experienced by the United States under its 47th president. Her assessment is both bleak and alarming.
法国军事学院战略研究院欧美大西洋区部门负责人凯萨尔写道，美国放弃了做“由愿景证明正当性的强国”——即维护世界秩序——的理念，变成了一个不再顾及保障机制、以蛮力之名抛弃一切原则的强国。
Abandoning the idea of being "a power justified by a vision" – that is, guaranteeing a world order – the US has become a power that no longer bothers with safeguards and has forsaken all principles in the name of brute force, writes the head of the Euro-Atlantic Area department at the Strategic Research Institute of the French Military Academy.
这一计划伴随着美国体制的屈服。在五角大楼，这表现为一场“反向政变”：“文职领导层对体制的政治化，旨在将其绑定到一方阵营，使其成为国内议程的顺从工具。”她敏锐地指出，在这一变革中，总统职位的表演性质不是“点缀”，而是特朗普式权力的“行使模式”，以至于“帝国的演出与共和国的承诺发生冲突”。这条断层线贯穿全书。
This project comes with the subjugation of American institutions. At the Pentagon, it takes the form of a reverse coup: "a politicization of the institution by the civilian leadership, which seeks to bind it to one camp and make it a compliant instrument of a domestic agenda." In this transformation, she rightly observes, the spectacle of the presidency is not "an ornament," but "the mode of exercise" of Trumpian power, to the point that "the staging of empire comes into conflict with the promise of the republic." This fault line runs through the entire book.