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The liberal international order, developed under US leadership right after the Second World War, is struggling to survive in the twenty-first century, under the blows of more and more authoritarian states and the distrust of the United States itself. Initiating a movement of withdrawal, President Trump and the most conservative Republicans have become champions of the defense of American “sovereignty”, crusading against a number of international institutions and agreements, against free trade and immigration perceived as contrary to the interests of Americans. By placing recent developments in a historical framework in order to better understand their continuities or ruptures, this article proposes to analyze the uses of the concept of “sovereignty” in the field of U.S. international relations in the first quarter of this century.