Outside the Beltway

Whither the World Order

A requiem for something lost.

James Joyner · Monday, April 27, 2026 · 3 comments

Janine Davidson, a former senior Defense Department official who has served as president of Metropolitan State University of Denver since 2017, has an excellent essay at Orbis titled “The Death of the International Order?“

It’s been 10 years since I delivered the keynote address at the US Naval War College’s 67th Annual Current Strategy Forum. As Under Secretary of the Navy, I knew the audience of senior naval officers, civilian students, and faculty was eager to hear my views on operational art, maritime strategy, weapons systems, and funding priorities.

Instead, I started with grand strategy. I said that a good grand strategy needs an “end state” or a “vision” for the world we want to create for ourselves and our grandchildren. I suggested that at that moment, in 2016, we should ground that end state not in what we wanted to change, but in what we were trying to preserve—the global world order.

This system, although not perfect, was foundational to whatever peace and prosperity America and the world enjoyed in the 70 years following World War II. I was deeply worried that this system was at risk in two ways.

First, the system was being threatened “from below and within” by “transnational challenges such as climate change, refugees and migration, piracy, economic shocks, global pandemics, and violent extremism.” Second, it was “under active attack” by nation states such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, all of whom saw the system as unfairly benefiting the West and not them. Even more concerning, these states seemed to “understand the system’s weaknesses—and the degree to which it depends on the United States—maybe a little bit better than we do.”

Indeed, I have long believed too many in America and the West take this system for granted. As each generation, increasingly distanced from the horrors of World War I and World War II, has come to see this global order as a “natural set point for global affairs,” when in fact the system is a remarkable anomaly in the extremely violent history of the world.

I believe this is exactly right. And it has actually long been a point of emphasis at our institution, which teaches students a decade or so earlier in their careers than those attending our war colleges.

Developments over the last several years have done nothing to reverse these trends. Today, as we watch the Trump administration berate our NATO allies, threaten the sovereignty of Greenland, whiplash the global economy with on-again and off-again tariffs, and conduct unilateral military operations in South America and the Middle East, I am chagrined to have not seen the possibility of the greatest threat of all—ourselves. That is, the leadership of our own country.

Elsewhere in this current issue Dov Zakheim addresses the salience of the China-Russia challenge. But, just as concerning, many Americans seem to have little concern that disruption, or even the outright death of the postwar system, is a problem. There is little recognition of the fragility of the webs and sinews upon which modern life depends, despite the warnings of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

What is even more worrisome is that the current stress on the international system comes from deliberate American action, driven by the perception that the United States has somehow been exploited in the creation and maintenance of the global order; and that disruption will lead to changes that will be more beneficial for American interests. In particular, the willingness to take action against close allies and partners, whether the imposition of tariffs or even the threat to use force if US demands aren’t met, is widening the erosion of trust upon which US alliances are built. Unfortunately, the wise warning that “we cannot surge trust” is already beginning to ring true.

We have heard many leaders of longstanding American allies, most famously Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, express these sentiments. Indeed, some are rightly starting to hedge their bets, no longer assured that the United States will be there for them in a crisis.

While I’m sympathetic to the notion that our wealthier allies have been free riding on the American security umbrella for decades—indeed, even French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledges that they have—the expenditures that have allowed us to think of ourselves as the Leader of the Free World have hardly come without benefit. Our NATO allies came to our defense after the 9/11 attacks. And we have been able to count on the Brits, Aussies, Canadians, and so many others in many conflicts in the decades since World War II.

America and Israel’s actions against Iran and its proxies lays bare the limits of this transactional approach and a lack understanding for what underlies the very power President Donald Trump is attempting to wield. America’s global reach and military might is enabled and, in many ways, amplified by our deep network of alliances. Over 70 years, our military has built bases abroad, trained with counterparts, and, critically, integrated the resources and support these alliances have pledged to provide into strategies and operational plans. It has been well understood by generations of American diplomats and presidents that nurturing these alliances requires active leadership as well as political and economic investment to build the trust that sets the stage for these military-to-military relationships.

This has, incidentally, been a bipartisan consensus. Indeed, his own rhetoric notwithstanding, the Trump 45 administration operated under it. The 2017 National Security Strategy declared, “We recognize the invaluable advantages that our strong relationships with allies and partners deliver,” and his senior diplomatic and military leaders acted accordingly.

Instead, many Americans have focused on what they have lamented are the up-front costs for US global leadership, even as 70 years of these investments has given the United States not only military basing rights, but also “convening power.” This means the United States has been able to set the agenda for critical global issues. Whether dealing with nuclear security, securing supply chains, or combatting pandemics, the United States has held the chairmanship at every table. On the flip side, when the United States withdraws from international organizations (like the recent exits from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and various UN agencies), it isn’t just saving money; it is surrendering the right to write the rules. If the United States isn’t at the table for bodies like the International Civil Aviation Organization or the International Telecommunications Union, it is China or Europe that will define the manufacturing and safety standards for the 21st century. As the United States stops “policing” these standards in favor of poorly defined domestic interests, the overall quality of global goods falls, eventually harming American consumers who rely on those global supply chains.

This is doubtless true. Of course, if we’re constantly flouting said rules, there is little value in having them.

Many Americans believe that these problems can be overcome by what we might term the “walled-off” fallacy, in which the United States creates a sphere or zone of privileged interests. Indeed, the 2026 National Security Strategy has effectively revived a modernized Monroe Doctrine, viewing the Western Hemisphere and the Arctic as exclusive American domains. Shockingly, the United States also began a new push to acquire Greenland, and has threatened to take forcible action if Denmark—a NATO ally—was unwilling to sell or cede the territory.

While concerns over Chinese mining in Greenland may be valid, the US shift toward aggressive pressure—including threats of tariffs on Denmark and talk of “acquiring” the island—has turned a cooperative security issue into a territorial dispute. The willingness of the United States to turn to forcible economic or military action, like the 2026 raid into Venezuela to seize Nicolas Maduro, or tariff threats against NATO allies, may seem to work in the short term to compel behavior, but it forces allies to look for “workarounds.”

Indeed. Moreover, it makes it much more difficult to condemn outrages like the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the Chinese “salami slicing” in the East and South China Seas.

There have been tensions in US relations with allies and partners before, such as the temporary withdrawal of France from NATO and over the US strategies for Iraq and Afghanistan in the “war on terror.” But Iraq, while it might have acted as an irritant, did not fundamentally rupture relations or fracture the global order. It is possible to recover from mistakes; it is much more difficult to regain trust after it has been broken.

That our heretofore stalwart European allies have resisted US requests for use of their territories and US bases in their countries to support US and Israeli operations in the Middle East demonstrates the limits of a transactional approach to global affairs. Previous US-led operations have seen American leaders go to great lengths in advance to build international coalitions and the legal justifications under international law. These consultations were not only critical for the operations themselves, but for when things did not go as planned.

Indeed. While I can understand not signaling the initial strike, which was seemingly timed to take advantage of an opportunity to decapitate Iran’s leadership in a single blow, there has been no real attempt to explain the operation—much less secure buy-in from our allies—since. And, more frustratingly still, the President has berated allies for not providing support that it hadn’t even asked for.

Historically, the United States benefited from an “excess of trust.” Even after major blunders like the Iraq War, the order remained intact because the United States led through consultation with allies and partners. In turn, our partners gave the United States the benefit of the doubt because they felt like partners in a shared values-based system. There was a shared understanding of the problems we were trying to address and the approach to be applied and were thus bought into the successes as well as failures.

Once again, this was a bipartisan consensus for decades. But this administration views “shared values” as a sucker’s game. The President, especially, seems rather clearly to believe that might makes right.

The vacuum left by the United States is being filled by a fragmented landscape where power is the only currency. This “transactional” world might be profitable in the short run but will fall short when the next global crisis hits. The post-World War II order withstood many shocks and proved remarkably resilient. But this time will be different. We will not simply “go home again.” Once an international order is dismantled, like Humpty Dumpty, it cannot be rebuilt, even with “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

I fear this is correct. Partly because he was constrained by cabinet members who believed in the system that America led for generations, and partly because his presidency was seen as a one-off, we more or less bounced back from the Trump 45 rhetoric. That he was re-elected and is now acting without guardrails changes those dynamics significantly. I’m not sure we can snap back come 2029.