The Decay of the World Order As We Know It | A World on the Brink

Social media has created a structural incentive toward extremism: because information space is saturated, the only way to be heard is to be extreme and outrageous, which has shifted politics to reward the most extreme voices rather than consensus builders.

“The way ideas spread, especially through social media, but even through traditional media now, there is a premium on being the most extreme voice. And that's simply because of saturation. There's so much out there, that how do you get heard? You get heard by being the most extreme, sometimes being the most outrageous. And this has been the story of the entertainment industry for the last 10 years. It's now become the story of politics.”

Russia and China, after the Cold War, viewed the unipolar moment and US dominance negatively, perceived US military and economic interference in their spheres of influence as illegitimate, and strategically responded by using the tools of the global international order against the US to push back against American hegemony.

“At the end of the Cold War, certainly Russia and China were upset with the unipolar moment, where the United States was the predominant global actor and had the greatest amount of power, had the greatest amount of military access, had the greatest number of partners and alliances throughout the world. They care about events in their quote, 'political sphere,' which is the countries that surround them or are near to them, countries that they might have historical connections to. And they didn't like that the United States, both militarily, politically, economically, were what they were perceived as interfering in their own sphere of influence. So I think the Chinese and the Russians in particular wanted to push back against the United States at that moment. They used the tools of the global international order to do so, just as the US uses the tools of the global international order to achieve its own effect.”

Technological progress in the hyperconnected digital world is eroding fundamental principles of the Westphalian and liberal international orders as it breaks down borders, creating a fundamental misfit between the orders and contemporary conditions.

“as our hyperconnected digital world breaks down more and more borders, we're seeing that technological progress has set in motion forces that are eroding these two fundamental principles”

Western populations feel their power has diminished or is less than it should be, but this experience is not universal—millions of Turks, Indians, and Chinese may feel more powerful and are finally beginning to assume their rightful place on the global stage, showing how power perception varies by national position.

“It seemed to many of us that our power has been diminished, that we have less than we did, or at least less than we feel we should. Populations in every society are now so much bigger and so much more diverse than they were just two or three generations ago. It's all too easy to feel that something is now slipping through our fingers, and some people have argued that it's easier for politicians of any party to exploit our suspicions that this is the case. But it's important not to assume that the experiences of the middle classes in the West are universal. Millions of Turks or Indians or Chinese may feel more powerful and that they are finally beginning to assume their rightful place on the global stage.”

The fundamental challenge for international institutions and domestic governments is balancing a country's integration into the global market with the satisfaction of its own domestic political needs, and democracies require public support for globalization over the long term; without such support, countries will change the rules about flows of goods, services, people, and financial instruments across borders.

“The challenge for all international institutions, and even more so for domestic governments, is to balance the integration of their country into the global market in a way that satisfies their own domestic political needs. And in the United States and other democracies, that means there has to be public support for globalization over the long haul. Otherwise, those countries are going to have to change the rules about how goods and services and people and financial instruments flow back and forth across borders.”

The Westphalian system, established in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia after the 30 Years' War, created the nation-state model based on the principle that each sovereign state has inviolable territory and the right to determine its own internal religious and political affairs without interference from other states, and this system brought relative peace and stability to Europe for 350 years.

“To understand where we are, we first need to know where we came from. And to do that, we need to go back over 350 years to 1648 and the end of the 30 Years' War with the birth of the Westphalian order, a system few have heard about, yet one that still dominates so much of who we are and what we do today.”

Complex societies are experiencing accelerating change that is outpacing human capacity to understand and adapt, creating widespread uncertainty, anger, and desperation as people feel their voices count for nothing in systems they cannot control.

“Everything is changing everywhere, and it's changing faster and faster. It's hard to keep up, and it's hard to see where it's going. We've built the most complex society in history. But increasingly, important parts of it are failing. And many people now feel that their voices count for nothing. They become angry or even desperate.”

The Westphalian principle of absolute national sovereignty and non-interference was fundamentally undermined by the Holocaust at Auschwitz, which became a symbol of the horrors that could be inflicted by sovereign states on their own citizens, prompting Western post-WWII leaders to create a new system.

“Auschwitz became a symbol of the horrors that can be visited by sovereign Westphalian states on their own citizens. So, the Western victors of the Second World War, led by the US, resolved to create a new system to prevent such conflicts and horrors from ever happening again.”

Growing inequality and loss of relative status have generated mass grievance: wealthy elites accumulated wealth that generates hatred from the poor, and many people (rich and poor) perceive themselves as belonging to demographics that had more power in the past and less power now, fueling populist anger.

“there is a growing awareness of terrible social inequality or financial inequality, that the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. And the rich are very defensive about the wealth they've received, which has earned them so much hatred from others, and the others are angry about that same wealth that the elites have received...people are overwhelmed by the narrative of globalism and by the sense that their narrowly defined identities have to open up and expand and become more capacious and more inclusive. And a lot of people, whether they are rich or poor, perceive themselves as belonging to a demographic that had more power in some previous era and has less power now.”

Nations can now 'reach out and touch us' in ways never expected before, and the vacuum in leadership created by the US step back has been filled by conflict and the emergence of ungoverned spaces where terrorism and disease spread, destabilizing entire regions.

“One of the challenges associated with trying to take a step back is the vacuum in leadership that that creates. And what we have learned from the process of that is that nations can now reach out and touch us in ways that we never expected before.”

The post-WWII liberal international order was built on specific lessons from the 1920s-1930s: protectionist trade policies, immigration quotas, and tariffs contributed to the Great Depression and World War II, so the new order was designed to promote international cooperation, free trade, and multilateral institutions as superior to nationalist beggar-thy-neighbor policies.

“There were a specific set of lessons learned in the aftermath of the protectionist legislation the 1920s, quotas on immigration, and tariffs on traded goods, the Great Depression, and World War II. And that lesson was, we're better off as a planet cooperating solving problems than we are trying beggar-thy-neighbor sorts of policies. And so I think what we saw in the wake of the war was probably the most successful institution building effort on a global scale in history.”

The UN Security Council structure—with five permanent veto powers (US, UK, France, Russia, China) established in 1945—was not designed as a rational or liberal order but rather reflects the power distribution of 1945, with four Western powers and Russia, and is now frozen in time and unrepresentative of current global power dynamics.

“the structures were put into place in 1945, but they didn't really take hold particularly. UN Security Council, for example, has five veto powers-- Britain, France, China, Russia, and the United States. China, at that time, was represented by the Republic of China. That is to say, the Security Council had four Western powers in essence, and Russia on the other side. That's no one's idea of a rational order or even a liberal one. It's largely a coincidental order.”

The 9/11 attacks marked the beginning of the end of the liberal international order's period of dominance; subsequent costly US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq generated doubt about the liberal order's effectiveness and undermined faith in Western institutions.

“The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union were the beginning of this era. The 9/11 attacks were the beginning of its end.”

The 2008 financial crisis shattered American confidence in the competence of economic management and market mechanisms, breaking the faith that the US had solved business cycle volatility and could prevent deep recessions, thereby undermining belief in the liberal order's foundational claims.

“The 2008 financial crisis, the very deep recession that followed, I think, really shook the faith that a lot of Americans had that they had kind of figured out business cycles, they'd mastered management of the economy in a way that would prevent a crisis of that depth.”

Rapid globalization and increased cultural diversity have become confusing and disconcerting for many people, both immigrants themselves and native-born citizens who find themselves living among strangers, generating xenophobia and retreats into tribal identity.

“Whether I were in the United States or the United Kingdom, the East has come West. We now live in a world that's very much more exotic than almost anyone had predicted 30 or 40 years ago. And as a result, although it's very exciting for a lot of us, it's also very disconcerting and very confusing for a great many other people. And I think it's confusing both for the people who find themselves living amongst people who would have been strangers only a few decades ago. It's also very confusing for the strangers themselves.”

Russia has evolved from the Cold War adversary with defined rules of engagement to a more sophisticated strategic competitor using hybrid warfare, asymmetric tactics, and indirect influence that Western defense and intelligence establishments struggle to counter, while also benefiting from Western integration into global financial systems that provide leverage points.

“Think about what happened when the wall came down in '89. People thought, this is it. And now we have-- we're talking once again about the Russian foreign policy, aggression, their hybrid warfare. I mean, what I think is so interesting is that now I think a lot of people more senior in the defense establishment and the intelligence community almost long for the Cold War. They long for when you're dealing with a Russian adversary with defined rules of the road. I mean, I think what's so interesting about Vladimir Putin is that he's essentially been far savvier in finding new ways to project power and influence, and we're playing catch up with him.”

The relationship between Russia and the West deteriorated from a moment of potential reconciliation (1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act) to the current state of mutual suspicion and containment, driven by failed attempts to integrate Russia and Putin's strategic choice to centralize state power, leading to a return of NATO's primary mission being Russian deterrence.

“In 1997, as it happens, the NATO Russia Founding Act was signed. And there was a sense that Russia and NATO were overcoming their historical differences and perhaps even forging a new kind of relationship. But today, we're back to NATO's primary mission being defined as deterring Russia, Russia having invaded one of its sovereign neighbor. I mean, the story of how we got here from there is a complicated one. A lot of it has to do with a failed attempt to make that relationship work on both sides and of course, the leadership of Vladimir Putin who took the country in a direction that we in 1997 probably couldn't have foreseen.”

The US has a fatigue-based reason to retreat from global leadership: Americans expected a peace dividend from the Cold War's end, expected their soldiers to come home, but instead have been asked to deploy continuously to prop up failing states and institutions in regions they believe don't threaten US security.

“There's fatigue, a fatigue associated with the unipolar moment that the United States had, and with that, an expectation that there is going to be some sort of return on that rather than re-engagement. And so, I think there was a series of promises made to the American people, where they expected to see some sort of peace dividend with the demise of the Soviet Union. They expected to see their sons and daughters come home rather than to deploy overseas and risk their lives for nation states that were crumbling, institutions that were failing.”

China is building competitive institutions and alternative frameworks to the Western liberal order (like its own version of the World Bank), demonstrating that the West has been slow to adapt and reform institutions, and that rising powers are creating parallel structures rather than joining existing ones.

“The Chinese, you have seen, are building their own version of the World Bank. So they're starting to create competitive institutions and frameworks, not necessarily a bad thing, but it shows how we've not been very fast on our feet in terms of redesigning and rethinking institutions, because it's very, very hard to do that.”

Western institutions (Congress, the EU, national governments, presidency) are failing to keep pace with the needs of their societies and the interests of their populations, resulting in over-bureaucratization, reduced individual freedoms, regulation without accountability, and business interference in Europe, plus congressional paralysis and presidential power struggles in the US.

“The institutions have really not kept up with the interest of the people. In Europe, we've seen an over-bureaucratized EU. We've seen a lessening of individual states' freedoms. We see regulation without accountability. We see businesses being interfered with. In the United States, I think we have seen also a failure of our institutions. Congress has failed to do much at all in the last 20 years. We've seen presidents struggle to maintain their authority, to maintain their effectiveness. We've seen increasing numbers of scandals and a polarized society that is only listening to other people who agree with themselves.”

China never really entered the liberal international order as a full member; it uses the tools and structure of the order to advance its own interests but did not adopt the ideological commitments (democracy, human rights, rule of law) that define liberal membership.

“If you look at the globe, if you look at it in terms of overall global population or even productive capacity now, not most but a lot of the main players, China most spectacularly, never really entered into the liberal international order in the first place.”

The West wrote the defining narratives of the last half of the 20th century starting in the 17th century with the Westphalian order and culminating in the liberal international order and globalization, a compelling vision of a democratic world living and working together based on economic and social principles believed to work.

“We love to tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world, and some of these stories become the defining narratives of their age. We in the West wrote the defining narratives of the last half of the 20th century. It's one that started in the 17th century with the Westphalian order and culminated in the liberal international order and globalization. This was a compelling vision of a democratic world, a world living, working, and trading together based on economic and social principles that we believed would work.”

The liberal international order was presented publicly as being created to spread democracy, markets, and well-being globally, but in practice it was also driven by US geopolitical interests in containing communism, meaning that where democracy promotion conflicted with anti-communist interests, democracy promotion was consistently subordinated.

“Americans like to tell ourselves that the global international order was formed with a series of agreements after World War II in San Francisco with the creation of United Nations and that the point of that was to spread democracy, markets, and well-being throughout the world. Of course, those were always competing interests. At the time, the United States was reducing the perception of communist threats in lots of governments. And so, where that contrasted with democracy promotion, democracy promotion took a backseat.”

After the Soviet Union collapsed, democratic powers adopted the belief that they could interfere anywhere in the world because they had both the power to do so and moral authority to promote democracy, but this concept was limited by the practical constraints of power—they only interfered where it seemed easy and riskless, as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.

“When the Soviet Union collapsed, then the democracy said, well, we can now interfere anywhere in the world, because we have the power to interfere in the world and we have a moral authority to do it. And that concept evolved in a way that is, of course, limited by the power of interference. So, where it is easy and it seems riskless to interfere, then democratic nations, so-called democratic nations, powerful nations, did interfere. They did in Iraq. They did in Afghanistan. They did in Libya.”

Each revolution in communication technology has been followed by chaos: the printing press led to religious wars in Europe, broadcast media enabled Hitler and Stalin's dictatorships, and the internet and social media have created social decay because societies do not yet know how to interpret or control the enormous information flow.

“Each time there's been a revolution in technologies of communication, a certain amount of chaos has followed. After the invention of the printing press came the great religious wars in Europe. After the invention of broadcast media became the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. And after the development of the internet has come some degree of social decay, because I think we don't yet know how to interpret or how to control the enormous amount of information we're now receiving.”

World order and the infrastructure set up by states to cooperate is the handmaiden of globalization; countries have enabled this cooperation because they benefit from it, with ruling regimes deciding that on balance, global integration is beneficial, creating a dependent relationship between state cooperation infrastructure and economic integration.

“The emergence of geopolitics really reflects the fact that countries not only have very conflicting interests at certain times, but they actually have different visions about the way the world should be organized. So I guess in the final analysis, you have to think of world order and the infrastructure set up by states to cooperate with each other as the handmaiden of globalization. Countries have made it possible because they benefit from it. Ruling regimes have said to themselves, on balance, this is a good thing.”

U.S. mistakes in imposing democratic order were not due to rejection of democracy but to absence of rule-of-law institutions; attempts to push elections without existing institutional foundations (rule of law, property rights, etc.) end up steering systems toward strongmen and autocrats rather than producing democracy.

“I think where the US makes a mistake in trying to impose this democratic order is often-- it's less about any native parts of the system or rejections of democracy or democratic ideals. I think it's about not having institutions in place that would allow a democratic system to flourish and that would allow democratic institutions to take hold. One really good example is the rule of law in places like certainly Iraq and Syria, even in Turkey-- in many countries where the institutions aren't entirely there for a real system of rule of law to exist. And then you get into attempts at trying to push elections through, and often you gear the system toward strongmen and autocratic leaders emerging.”

The liberal international order attempted to expand its scope to justify intervention in sovereign states to prevent human rights violations and genocide—a doctrine called 'responsibility to protect'—which reversed the core principle of Westphalian sovereignty but was applied inconsistently and selectively by powerful states.

“The end of the Cold War ushered in an age of economic, political, and social integration, where nations had the right to intervene in order to stop human rights violations in other countries. This was named in international law as the responsibility to protect.”