The New International Disorder

The liberal international order is dying, and it is not Trump's fault.

The key historical fact to understand about international organisations is that they generally slide into irrelevance rather than dissolve. All forms of multilateral diplomatic forums eventually break down for the simple reason that their make ups are a reflection of a snapshot in time, and history, politics, and economics are messy and dynamic. The UN system was designed after the second world war when the power dynamics of the different countries were very different from how they are today, and as such the UN has gradually become a less and less effective forum for solving international crises over time. When was the last time you heard about the UN security council on the news? In the last decade we have had a pandemic, wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Gaza, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and now the kidnapping of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro. All these big issues for the world’s most important diplomatic forum to deliberate on and yet it has adopted no important resolutions.

This is what the death of an international institution looks like. This rudderless drift could continue for decades more, but the days of the UN system are unfortunately numbered. Sooner or later states are going to wonder what the point of paying UN dues are when it never gets anything done, and eventually the last programme will close in sadness and recrimination.

The reason this tailspin cannot be reversed is inherent in the UN’s design. To get world powers like the US, Soviet Union, and British Empire to sign up to the UN they were given special privileges as befit their station as the preeminent states of their time. But now, those same privileges are woefully outdated, while at the same time diminished powers would hate nothing more than conceding them in order to reform the system to fit the current age. This effectively stalls all efforts at updating international institutions and makes sure that they are left behind.

But these issues are not limited to the UN, they are also a problem for NATO, the IMF, the WTO, and will one day become issues for the Shanghai cooperation organisation and the BRICS. The ugly truth of international organisations is that they have a best before date, and worse still it has passed for most if not all of the structures which make up the vaunted liberal international order. As much flak as Donald Trump catches for supposedly undermining that order, its breakdown is inevitable.

The best thing would be to start fresh, but as long as there are international organisations around it will be hard to convince all the relevant parties to set up new systems which would account for the world as it is now rather than for how it was in 1945. As such, there are no international organisations to stop Trump from kidnapping foreign leaders, just as there are no organisation to stop Putin from invading neighbouring countries, or Netanyahu from bombing embassies. The liberal international order is dead, and until it is buried and a successor is installed, we are left with a new international disorder.

If you liked this post you can read a previous post about my predictions for the year ahead here or the rest of my writings here. I also have a section for longer reads I call essays here, I particularly recommend my series called The Bird & The Technoking exploring Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, and its political and cultural implications. It'd mean a lot to me if you recommended the blog to a friend or coworker. Come back next Monday for a new post!

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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.

Written by Karl Johansson

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Cover photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson