The Real Problem With Ending the Current 'World Order"

Politically, it meant creating international institutions like the UN for "collective security." The UN has since never acted collectively to protect or secure any nation, but it sounded good at the time. 

That system's effectiveness is measured by the fact that we're all still here, breathing and alive instead of our dead bodies lying in some irradiated crater. All of those institutions had little to do with preventing major wars. It was the 10,000 nuclear weapons created by the U.S. and USSR that maintained a relative peace between nations.

In 1991, with Russia gone, the order shifted from a "bipolar" world (U.S. vs. USSR) to a "unipolar" world led by the United States. President George H.W. Bush famously used the phrase "New World Order" in a 1991 speech to describe a global era where the rule of law and the UN would govern international conduct more effectively.  

Then, the rest of the world sat back while the U.S. shouldered the entire burden of security and economic dynamism, while Western Europe got rich and fat.  

There was a cold logic to this. The U.S. was the most powerful, richest, and strongest nation-state in human history. Only America could lead. 

The problem is that no one asked the American people if that's what they wanted. While our sheer size and wealth require us to undertake certain leadership actions, no one ordained the U.S. as the world policeman or consecrated the U.S. as a global charity. 

Along comes Donald Trump, who sets about the grim task of undoing 80 years of global governance. Is this really such a bad thing?

In truth, America did very well running this system. But over the years, the dynamics of leadership changed, and eventually the alliances we created and the economic system we dominated began to cost us in blood and treasure.

Trump realized this and took a wrecking ball to the world order. His big problem is that he has nothing to replace it with. And that's a huge, dangerous problem.

New York Times:

After mocking European leaders for days, Mr. Trump flew thousands of miles to this snowy mountainside to launch into a verbal assault against the Western alliance, the values of its leaders and societies, and the framework of world trade.

By the end of the day Mr. Trump had rescinded some of his worst threats, saying that he had reached a tentative framework with NATO over the future of Greenland, which he wants to buy from Denmark, and withdrawn threats to impose new tariffs on allies that opposed U.S. ownership of Greenland.

While some European leaders expressed a glimmer of hope over the moves, they did little to salve the deep fear among Davos’s browbeaten guests that the United States could no longer be relied on as an ally. Earlier in the day the group had weathered insult after insult from Mr. Trump about their approach to trade, the environment and immigration.

"The United States could no longer be relied on as an ally"? In other words, Europe and the rest of the world are uncertain that the U.S. will pull its chestnuts out of the fire if it gets into trouble.

Who else are they going to rely on? Russia? China? Russia and China are already faltering in their expanded leadership roles. China is close to an implosion due to overextended credit and a housing market on the verge of collapse. Neither has the economic muscle that would give Europeans any hope that they could be relied on instead of the U.S.

The next "New World Order" will still have America as the dominant force. There may be a decade or so of chaos, but then, the post-World War II era was no bed of roses until the mid-1950s.

I would have preferred that, before Trump took a sledgehammer to the world order, he had some ideas about alternatives. Inevitably, some of the good from the post-World War II regime is going to be lost with the bad. This is regrettable, but revolution is always messy and not very orderly.