The Death of the International Order?

Janine Davidson

Commentary

It’s been 10 years since I delivered the keynote address at the US Naval War College’s 67th Annual Current Strategy Forum.[1] 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 reiterated these fears two years ago in the pages of Orbis, adding complacency to these two threats. “The younger generations even in the West are so far removed from the horrors of World War II (even their grandparents were of the postwar generation) that they take the order they grew up in for granted—a world characterized by the lack of great power war, and the benefits of a globalized supply chain. And so, they feel that they can focus on “disrupting” things.”[2]

These sentiments are matched by a lack of appreciation for America’s role in designing the international system, actively managing it, and underwriting it with American economic, military, and soft power.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

These examples, like the most recent attacks on Iran, reflect a concerning trend. While reasonable people can agree on threats, challenges, and problems, such as the horrendous state of affairs in Venezuela, the potential resource grab by China in Greenland, the threat of Russian aggression in the Arctic, or the regional and global threats from Iran and North Korea, leaders can disagree significantly on the proper approach to these problems.

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.

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.

That grace has dissipated. A subtext running through the 2025 Halifax International Security Forum and the 2026 Munich Security Conference is that allies are asking if they can ever trust the United States again, and what steps they might need to take to protect themselves from growing American unpredictability, or even hostility.

If the United States signals it is governed by the logic of “America First” in all of its international interactions, then other states, including close allies, will adjust as needed. They will seek to cut their own deals and make separate arrangements—and this will not be with us. The lesson many heads of state are taking from the 2026 Munich Conference is that there is danger in being vulnerable through overreliance on an unpredictable partner in the United States.

The Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney’s speech at Davos marked this era of “strategic hedging.” Middle powers (including not only India, Brazil, or Turkey, but also countries like Canada and Australia) are actively building coalitions and considering how to operate in a “post-American” world, where security guarantees, like the nuclear umbrella Australia has presumed for decades, may not be relied upon going forward. These states are “multi-aligning” to hedge on their ties with the United States through separate deals with each other, as well as with China or Russia, to lessen their risks.

Economically, as the world becomes purely transactional, other nations will naturally look for the “best deal,” which increasingly may not involve the US dollar. Countries around the world are already settling trades in local currencies to avoid being vulnerable to US financial sanctions or shifting policy whims. De-dollarization holds risks for the United States because a major source of its influence—its ability to wield convening power—came from the reliance on the US dollar and the American financial system to lubricate a global system of trade. In addition, reliance on the dollar as the world’s de facto reserve currency has created an incentive for the world to purchase US debt and maintain the value of the currency, allowing the United States for decades to run “deficits without tears.”

The “death of the international order” suggests a shift from a world of rules and shared leadership to one of raw power and transactional deals. In this 2026 landscape, we are seeing the transition from a “Global Table” where the United States held the permanent chairmanship to a series of “closed rooms” where influence is bought, bartered, or enforced.

This approach assumes that a country can wall itself off from global problems and get its way through coercion rather than cooperation. However, game-changing disruptions—pandemics, loose nukes, and climate-driven migration—ignore borders and demand cooperative global approaches.

Instead of disrupting and destroying the existing order, we should make it work better for today and the future. We should be focused on the very real threats to our nation in the South China Sea, the Red Sea, the Middle East, and Ukraine. We should be planning for the increasing number of challenges to our space and cyber national security infrastructure. We should be racing to reinstate deterrence in an age of hypersonic weapons, AI, and nuclear proliferation. The United States may find that in this new era, compulsion can create compliance in the short run, but genuine consultation creates institutions and arrangements with longevity and the power to solve transnational challenges.

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.