The United States led the creation of a post-Second World War international system.  It initiated the creation of the United Nations (UN), the Bretton Woods international economic system, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the strategy of “containment” of aggressive Communism.  Along the way, the United States joined with its chief allies in an effort to create a “rules-based international order.”  This has been a remarkable achievement. 

            Now these achievements face new threats.[1] 

The UN is much disliked because it is much misunderstood.  It could never be a “world government,” merely a dignified place in which the great powers met to work out deals.  Other offices of the UN have sought to deal with improving living standards and health, and with assisting an ever-growing wave of refugees from political upheaval in the non-Western world.  Even this limited, useful role seems beyond its scope in recent decades. 

“Free trade” headed the agenda of economic policy makers for many decades after the Second World War.  Some of the greatest triumphs of that agenda, raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty while promoting continual renovation of the advanced economies, finally raised a storm of reaction.[2]  The huge waves of unwanted immigrants swamping the borders of the United States and the European Union has become a divisive force in the democracies.  The immigrants are propelled by especially poverty in their home countries. 

Great powers—Russia and China—and middling powers—Iran and, North Korea—have embarked on campaigns against the American-led order.  Military power and the willingness to use it characterize this effort.  The Russian attack on Ukraine, the Chinese threats against Taiwan, and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs all pose grave dangers.  It has proved difficult to discover effective responses to these threats.[3] 

Authoritarian governments are acting effectively on their agendas in some parts of the world.  Elsewhere the collapse of government is increasingly obvious.  Drug cartels seem to have the upper hand over nation-states in parts of Latin America.  In much of North Africa radical Islamist groups are hard to distinguish from criminal gangs in places where government has collapsed.  Libya offers a good example, but similar things are happening across the Sahel.[4] 

We face a host of troubles that resembles the Thirties.  Can we muster the resources and the resolve to sustain that better world the West once created? 

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[1] Walter Russell Mead, “World Disorder Is Spreading Fast,” WSJ, 26 September 2023. 

[2] First the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), then the admission of China to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on favorable terms were seen as massively disruptive forces in the domestic economies of the advanced economies.  Progress had halted and even gone into reverse. 

[3] Neither the European countries nor the United States wants a shooting war with anyone.  There is always the danger of a nuclear war following on a conventional war.  Economic sanctions and as much military aid as possible has been provided to Ukraine, which serves as a Western proxy.  China is a military and economic threat, but it is also a major trading partner for many countries.  Reorienting trade is contentious, while rebuilding the military power to back-down any Chinese threat will take time and money that may not be available.  The Obama administration’s deal to pause Iran’s nuclear development both made sense and had a certain Mr. Micawber aspect to it.  Plastering North Korea with economic sanctions achieved nothing, but a pre-emptive attack on its nuclear program would just open a huge can of worms. 

[4] The logical conclusion will come when the first criminal enterprise became the actual ruler of a sovereign state.  People used to joke that Monaco was a “sunny place for shady people.”  What if it happens in Mexico?