The Old World Order is Dead

Unipolarity was given, not taken

There were two big puzzles confronting structural theories of international relations at the beginning of the 1990s. The first was straightforward: why had everyone been surprised by the dissolution of the Soviet Union? The USSR had been the second pole of a bipolar world order, and theories of world politics should probably be able to account for the advent, and the exit, of the superpowers that shape the world those theories purport to explain.

The second was more vexing—and more interesting, because it looked forward: why had the bipolar world been succeeded by a unipolar world? Why hadn’t Japan, Germany, or other countries seized the moment to balance against the United States and become superpowers themselves? After all, if countries are motivated by the prospect of maximizing their relative power and security, surely it’s better to be the leader of your own camp rather than a follower in another’s. How long could unipolarity last? And would what came afterward be as sanguinary as the multipolar world that had collapsed into the First World War?

And yet the world remained stubbornly unipolar for decades. The United States worried about rising powers and rogue states, but the major powers in the system—Russia eventually a notable exception—were largely content to let Washington take the lead. For some, this vindicated theories in which institutional legacies were most important; for others, it pointed to the importance of the full-spectrum power—soft, hard, smart, and dumb—that the United States could maintain.

A quieter camp pointed out that the United States was generally doing a lot—not all it could, but a lot—to make its leadership attractive to the other major powers: providing security, yes, but also shouldering a good share of global burdens in many fields while also linking its economy and society to the rest of the world. This approach, a few observers noted, managed to satisfy the range of potential powers who could actually undermine the United States and its order. One prominent theory noted that since the Second World War, the United States had engaged in practices of self-binding—generally asking for less than it could have taken and giving more than it needed to in order to make its leadership more attractive to others than the alternatives open to its rivals. For this group, there was an ongoing process of ratifying the U.S.-led order that relied on Washington realizing that its power conferred influence but its right to rule relied on the acquiescence of (most) other leading powers.

Well, all that is done now. Self-binding is over and Donald Trump killed it.

Trump does not believe in giving, only taking. The shadow of the future—the political science theory-speak for the simple idea that you cooperate now because you might benefit from others cooperating with you in the future—is very short for him. It always has been; like the scorpion who stings the frog, Trump has never dissembled about his personality, instincts, or drives. Whereas in the first years of his first term he was hemmed in by advisers who restrained his crassest drives, it has long since been the case that his closest followers seek to enable him and exploit his zigs and zags for their own ends—checked more by rivalries with each other and their own degree of skill than by an attentive chief or guardrails.

In a private organization, or in one’s personal life, this combination of power and reckless egoism is a recipe for a private disaster. In the leadership of a great power, it is the stuff that makes for legendary and needless ruination. Well, here we are, and the disassembly will be rapid, unscheduled, and explosive.

There was no particular reason why the United States might not have managed a gradual relative decline while still reaping the benefits of its privileged position over the course of the next decade. The great irony of “America First” is that the international order—every international institution—was designed to ensure that the United States would always be, if not first, at least never last, and almost always on the podium. It was a great gig, and the relic of a time when the United States was genuinely first—the aftermath of the Second World War, when the United States accounted for half of global output and was the last power standing with global reach. Any institutions that will be built from scratch today will either be less extensive in scope or less favorable to the United States, just as a function of global power realities.

The streets of Doha lined with Canadian flags in honor of PM Carney’s visit last weekend.

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, possibly the world leader with the greatest insight and problem-solving resume, has put the point well in a speech just now. As he observes, the degradation of international institutions means that other powers will have to work around the wreckage, collaborating in a way that reduces their reliance on the United States while ensuring that the minnows can join against the sharks. What he doesn’t say is that this world will be poorer than it would have been if they didn’t have to do that—defense is an expense, not a benefit—but he is right that it is necessary.

And it is necessary, despite the costs. Trump is chucking away the residual goodwill and confidence in the system that other powers had been willing to extend to it. They had done so for too long, out of some combination of hope and uncertainty, and like all self-interested players they have abandoned their previous course not out of altruism but self-regard.

The unipolar world, what was left of it, has died—of suicide, not murder. As I wrote several years ago, “the most successful blow to American primacy came not from external balancing, as realists long predicted, but from the free choice of American voters.” Twice, now, in fact.

What Trump has targeted, with a surgical precision belying his brutal efforts, is the confidence that the United States will not use its power to predate on the countries whose fealty makes an order. Some are aghast that the United States is seemingly contemplating military action against its allies. But Donald Trump does not believe in allies. For Trump, there are no allies, only enemies and marks—and of those, only enemies can deserve respect.

This is a rather poor theory of international relations but it is one Donald Trump has subscribed to for literal decades. (And, yes, I have got a chapter you can cite on this.) He will not change his spots; he will not be dissuaded. And he is the president of the United States.

The anomaly of the Nineties—why unipolarity could last so long—has been laid to rest. Unipolarity’s over, hegemony is ended, and what’s coming next will look entirely new. The world will be poorer, and probably bloodier, for it.