The rule-based world order is ending

After World War II, a new world order emerged with the United States as the central superpower, willing to enforce a system based on democracy, freedom, sovereignty, and free trade. Looking back, the U.S. was clearly not always right in how it acted, Vietnam or Iran are obvious examples, but despite these failures, the system it upheld created two very important things: a largely open global economy and a broad feeling of security.

That feeling of security is key here. The post-WW2 order was never about the U.S. being able to physically defend every country that might be invaded. It was about the perception that the U.S. was everywhere and that its interests were global. This made military aggression extremely costly. The combination of overseas bases, air and naval dominance, and later on dominance in the digital space meant that even without direct intervention, the U.S. shaped global behavior.

Today, this is clearly changing. U.S. global military presence is now at its lowest level since the early Cold War period (Allen et al., 2021). At the same time, other major powers are openly pushing territorial expansion, undermining democratic systems, and openly violating the principle of sovereignty. This matters because it signals something very simple: there is no longer a supreme power that stands behind the sovereign existence of every state.

This perception is further amplified by the increasingly isolationist direction of recent U.S. administrations and the reduction of American national interests to a more limited geographic scope. As the sense of U.S. omnipresence fades, so does the deterrence that held the rule-based system together.

Because of that, I don’t think we are just seeing a temporary crisis or a transformation of the rule-based order. The core condition that sustained it is disappearing. When rules are no longer backed by power, they stop functioning as rules. That is why the rule-based world order is not merely weakening, but ending.