The World Order Is Becoming More Cutthroat

A superpower is zapping drug boats, on shaky legal premises, and snatching foreign leaders in the dead of night. From Greenland to Ukraine to the Himalayas, strong countries are redrawing — or threatening to redraw — the borders of weaker neighbors. International law and arms control agreements are unraveling as strategic rivalry intensifies. The incidence of armed conflict is surging as curbs on aggression erode. Freedom of navigation has been challenged in crucial waterways, from the Red Sea to the Western Pacific. The rules-based trading system is, increasingly, a thing of the past.

The symptoms are many, but the affliction is the same. The world is experiencing a gradual, but accelerating, transition away from the liberal international order of the post-1945 era. Crucial norms and principles are coming undone.