David Harvey: The rules-based international order is dying. What comes next?
For decades, Western leaders invoked the “rules-based international order” as a talisman – the post-1945 system of institutions and norms that would constrain power, prevent conquest and bind even the mighty to agreed standards. That faith is crumbling.
The concept emerged after World War II. It promised a world governed by multilateral rules rather than imperial diktat. Western democracies championed it as universal, but that was always contested. From Moscow to Beijing, Jakarta to Johannesburg, a different narrative took hold: the rules-based order was polite fiction masking Western hegemony, and was waived when inconvenient.
Three crises have torn away the facade. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western nations rallied with sanctions and military aid, treating the war as proof that core principles still mattered. Yet significant swathes of the world stayed neutral or hedged. The message was clear: enforcement depends on geography and interests, not principle.
Then came Gaza. As civilian casualties mounted and humanitarian law appeared to bend or break, people pointed to double standards. States championing rules in Ukraine seemed willing to tolerate violations in Palestine. Governments increasingly abandoned the language of “rules-based order” for “international law” – a telling retreat.
The third blow was most brazen. The US abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in an operation conducted without UN Security Council authorisation. It was an overt norm violation and faced no meaningful consequences.
China and Russia have seized on these contradictions with relish. Both powers are building parallel structures that dilute any single system’s coherence, such as BRICS (emerging economies including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), alternative financial architecture and global south diplomacy.
The result is not sudden collapse but accelerated erosion – a shift from one contested order to multiple overlapping, often conflicting, frameworks. Core institutions such as the World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund will endure, but with growing selective participation and regional fragmentation. Great powers will treat rules as negotiable constraints subject to power and reciprocity.
Scholars point to several collapse pathways: direct war over Taiwan, systematic withdrawal from international treaties, economic decoupling creating rival trading blocs, or resurgent nationalism hollowing out multilateral commitments from within.
Collapse would mean a world where co-operation is mostly transactional and regional, where force becomes routine, where institutions command no real authority ‒ a patchwork of competing orders with no framework constraining the strong.
The uncomfortable truth: the rules-based order was only as robust as great powers’ willingness to abide by it. China and Russia rejected its legitimacy outright. The US invoked it when convenient. What’s changed is this hypocrisy has become undeniable and its strategic utility appears exhausted.
The broader trajectory points towards realpolitik’s revival: balance of power, spheres of influence, hard calculations of material capability – these are returning to centre stage.
History suggests realpolitik works best when objectives are limited and clear, when it aligns with national interest, when leaders can anticipate competitors’ reactions. The problem? Many of today’s leaders lack that foresight.
The rules-based order is dying—perhaps already dead. The world that comes after remains dangerously uncertain.
David Harvey is a retired district court judge.
