“The Biden administration has been vocal in defending what it calls the ‘rules-based international order,'” began a recent Wall Street Journal opinion, “but there is no such thing.”
Over the past three decades, these regional orders – in Europe, the Middle East and Asia – have been relatively stable and local competition moderate. The resulting impression was of a world order. Liberals saw this global stability as the product of international rules, a growing number of democracies, and increased international trade—a “rules-based order” bolstered by democracies and trade peace. Realists saw a world order guaranteed by a rough balance between the great powers – the United States, Russia and China – with nuclear weapons as an effective peacemaking equalizer.
That is, a rough balance of geopolitical power simply constitutes a contingent order, an interregnum between periods of regional conflicts that have always plagued the planet.
Jakub Grygiel’s focus on nation-state conflict misses other, less-obvious threats than missiles to the stability of a world based on rules. We struggle in this country to enforce them within our own borders. Our collective failure to apply the rule of law to a national and transnational elite who see themselves as above it means, in the end, those that have the gold make the rules. They get the elevator and the rest of us…. The rich are as bulletproof as someone falling-down drunk. Impunity emboldens them to ignore the nominal rules as much as it does Vladimir Putin to violate the supposed rules-based international order. Democracy depends on a balance of power, and ours is seriously out of balance. There exist laws but enforcement is selective.
Anne Applebaum again warns that if we expect to live in a rules-based world, we had damned well better enforce them (The Atlantic):
There is no natural liberal world order, and there are no rules without someone to enforce them. Unless democracies defend themselves together, the forces of autocracy will destroy them. I am using the word forces, in the plural, deliberately. Many American politicians would understandably prefer to focus on the long-term competition with China. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. So are Belarus, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, Hungary, and potentially many others. We might not want to compete with them, or even care very much about them. But they care about us. They understand that the language of democracy, anti-corruption, and justice is dangerous to their form of autocratic power—and they know that that language originates in the democratic world, our world.
This fight is not theoretical. It requires armies, strategies, weapons, and long-term plans. It requires much closer allied cooperation, not only in Europe but in the Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. NATO can no longer operate as if it might someday be required to defend itself; it needs to start operating as it did during the Cold War, on the assumption that an invasion could happen at any time. Germany’s decision to raise defense spending by 100 billion euros is a good start; so is Denmark’s declaration that it too will boost defense spending. But deeper military and intelligence coordination might require new institutions—perhaps a voluntary European Legion, connected to the European Union, or a Baltic alliance that includes Sweden and Finland—and different thinking about where and how we invest in European and Pacific defense.
Applebaum is in her element: foreign affairs. But what has accompanied globalism and the easy flow of (or flight of) capital is the decay of our ability to pass laws that result in order and stability. It is an open secret too rarely addressed openly. Hypocrisy and shame have lost their ability to rein in misbehavior in such a culture.
As we watch Russia attempt to appropriate Ukraine, what are we going to do to enforce a rules-based order at home? The U.S. should perhaps reclaim its leadership role in that.
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