For most of the post-war era, power, legitimacy, and cooperation reinforced one another. American leadership underwrote security, open markets, and freedom of navigation. Democratic partnerships generated political trust. Universal institutions such as the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and the nuclear nonproliferation regime provided common rules and legal legitimacy. Though imperfect, these three pillars generally worked in concert.
That alignment has broken down. Security, economic governance, political legitimacy, and practical cooperation are no longer occurring in the same institutions or even among the same groups of states. I call this structural transformation the “unbundling of order.” The result is disalignment, a condition in which power, legitimacy, and cooperation no longer reinforce one another.
Analysts today often ask whether the liberal international order is collapsing or which great power will replace the United States. The real question is whether the essential functions of the international order can be reconnected under increasingly fragmented geopolitical conditions.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exposed the inability of existing institutions like the United Nations to prevent or halt great power aggression. The ongoing conflict between the United States and Iran demonstrated that military superiority alone cannot ensure regional stability or the credibility of the global nonproliferation regime. Competition – especially, but not exclusively between China and the United States – over semiconductors, artificial intelligence, critical minerals, and maritime supply chains blurs the traditional boundary between economics and security.
