Don't Cry For The Dated “Rules-Based” Order

President of the United States (US) Donald Trump addressed the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos on 21 January 2026. For those who listened attentively, Trump’s message, despite his usual muddling discourse, was crystal clear: the international order prevailing until recently is spent. The consensus, moreover, is that the order is over even if the presidency and Congress slip out of MAGA’s control in the foreseeable future.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, despite being one of Trump’s biggest adversaries, agrees. He declared at Davos that the order is experiencing an irrevocable “rupture”. So, let’s not try to put it together again. We must accept its demise and strive towards creating a new one. According to Carney, the “middle powers”, such as Canada itself, the European states, and many others in that category, must work together on this. They must practise a (new) form of multilateralism to maintain themselves against the great powers and at the same time keep them in check.

The question at issue here is why the order has collapsed and whether the fear following its loss is truly justified.

Anxiety

Working towards a new order comes amid anxiety about the loss of the now-decayed order. The anxiety is entirely understandable, because the collective commitment to international peace and security that the rules-based order supposedly guaranteed seems to have been taken away from us.

The Rules-Based Order Under the UN Since 1945

Although there were signals of this before the Second World War, the order that is now done only took full shape in 1945 in the guise of the United Nations (UN). It is embodied in the Charter of the UN in the first place. The great South African statesman, Jan Smuts, by the way, played a significant part in the founding of the organisation and in writing the stirring Preamble to the Charter.

This order arose against the backdrop of the unprecedented horror of the Second World War. It was staunchly desired that similar devastation must be avoided at all costs. That is precisely why parties to the Charter state in the Preamble their firm commitment to “(s)ave succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind”.

According to Article 1, the first two purposes of the UN are:

1. To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;
2. To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace.

Building on this, article 2(4) provides:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Under Article 51, it is only in the case of self-defence that a victim state may use armed force, and then only temporarily, namely until the UN intervenes in accordance with measures adopted by the Security Council.

Chapter VII of the Charter then outlines what the Security Council must do in the event of breaches of the peace or acts of aggression.

Fundamental Nature

These provisions of the UN Charter define the main characteristics of the rules-based order. This entails that the order is:

• Firstly, rules- or law-based, namely based on the law defined in the UN Charter;
• Secondly, that the rules primarily aim to maintain international peace and security and, in the event of breaches of peace, prescribe how such breach should be restored;
• Thirdly, that it is multilateral and collective, since the rules are the product of consensus in the international community, and do not allow unilateral acts of violence by any state; and
• Fourthly, the order was ultimately aimed at containing the great powers, despite the preponderance of their power. The system was designed to prevent unilateral action by great powers, which had the potential to cause the greatest upheaval.

Deeply Flawed

The decline of the rules-based order should not cause us particular anxiety and dismay, because the system has essentially malfunctioned. It is difficult to think of cases where any great power has been restrained by the rules-based order and the associated mechanisms of the UN.

When great powers deem it necessary, they readily act outside the rules – contrary to the UN Charter, outside the mechanisms of the Security Council, and therefore in disregard of the law.

Consider the following examples:

• Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 because of its fear that Ukraine was moving ever closer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO);
• the US prevented the deployment of Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962 by threatening Russia with nuclear war despite the fact that Cuba, under its Charter-recognised right to national sovereignty and territorial integrity, had the right to do as it saw fit on its own territory;
• the US was involved in the Vietnam War for more than a decade during the 1960s and early 1970s without Security Council authorisation;
• the US invaded Iraq in 2003 in response to the attacks of 9/11 without the required express approval of the Security Council;
• And the US, as Willem Gravett and Yolandi Meyer have recently shown, has intervened militarily in states in the Western Hemisphere many times because it was convinced that its interests were being threatened. The rules-based dispensation could not prevent unilateral action by the US.

Moreover, the UN is usually powerless to resolve international conflicts. One of the most persistent sets of international conflicts, namely the Israeli-Arab/Israeli-Iranian/Israeli-Palestinian conflicts is the classic example.

From these and numerous other examples that could be cited, it is clear that the vaunted rules-based order falls far short of optimal functioning. The loss is therefore not of an effective system, but of a deeply flawed one.

Conflicts Resolved by the Great Powers

This does not mean that since the UN’s inception there had been a complete lack of order or that disputes were not resolved. Resolution hardly ever resulted from the rules-based international order, the UN Charter and UN bodies such as the Security Council and the Secretary-General, but from the US, more specifically the previous and current Trump administrations.

Trump has boasted many times that he has ended a whole tally of wars. Typically Trump, these claims are exaggerated. However, success was undoubtedly achieved thanks to the influence, good offices, and arm-twisting of this powerful head of state, and not by the UN and the vaunted rules-based order.

Furthermore, the reason why the decades-long Cold War between West and East, more specifically the US and the Soviet Union, never erupted into a full-scale conflagration and a nuclear war, was clearly not because of the operation of the rules of law, but thanks to the tried-and-tested mechanism of balance of power between these two great powers.

The rules-based system has always fundamentally failed in its aim of guaranteeing international order and peace; and although the great powers can cause great disruption, ironically, they are often the restorers of order and peace.

For that, they use their power. Sometimes they do this by intervening in raging conflicts, such as when the US launched Operation Midnight Hammer on 22 June, 2025 to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations and then angrily instructed Israel to cease its bombing of Tehran.

And in general, great powers secure the peace among themselves by keeping each other in check with the risk of mutually assured destruction. Thus, on the one hand power is extremely dangerous, but, on the other, highly productive because it prevents war and guarantees peace.

This was true for more than four decades during the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union and preserved the peace between them.

The Present Challenge

The great challenge for the foreseeable future is to steer the rivalry between the great powers in such a way that they feel secure, thus preventing large-scale conflicts between them.

The two major rivals are the US and China (Russia is a weakened factor that is tactically making common cause with China.) That is also how the US reads the situation, and correctly so. It confronts China in three, possibly four theatres.

Firstly, in its immediate vicinity in the Western Hemisphere. Here China has significantly expanded its presence by establishing close ties with several states hostile to the US. The rules-based international order cannot prevent this rising tension in the Western Hemisphere. According to it, states – China and states in the Western Hemisphere in this case – are free to forge ties by virtue of their sovereignty. The rules-based order therefore puts the US at risk, thus leaving it with no choice but to unilaterally do what its security interests dictate.

Therefore, the US violently removes Maduro from power in Venezuela and, in doing so, deprives China of its foothold in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba and Colombia will somehow follow suit. In this way, the US protects itself against its great rival from the Far East, contrary to flawed international law, but in the interest of order and peace in the Western Hemisphere.

Secondly, there is Greenland and the Arctic Ocean. This is a region with a growing Chinese and Russian presence, and thus of increasing rivalry between the US and China/Russia. For the US, this region is uncomfortably close, and it views it as essential to establish itself more strongly in that part of the world. It can hardly rely on the weakened European members of NATO and therefore believes that it must expand its presence on its own. If Western Europe and specifically Denmark, which exercises jurisdiction over Greenland, agree to a greater US presence in Greenland, the US can strengthen its position there within the framework of international law. But if they refuse, the US will simply act outside the rules-based order to achieve this. Effective competition with, and the maintenance of, a secure balance of power in the region requires this.

Third, the US wants to neutralise China right on China’s doorstep with the assistance of its own (US) allies, namely India, South Korea, Japan, and others. The US and its allies can do this by virtue of exercising their national sovereignty within the framework of current international law. If China wants to prevent this, it must (just like the US in the Western Hemisphere) act contrary to international law.

There might even be a fourth theatre: South Africa, where the African National Congress (ANC) and the Chinese are nourishing ever warmer relations, also militarily. In January 2026 there were once again joint naval exercises off the Cape coast involving China, Russia, Iran, and the South African navy (the latter providing Simonstown naval base and the sea water). Significantly, the exercises were under Chinese command. And recently Rapport reported that China is rebuilding the military installation at De Brug in the Free State, bankrolling the project and using its own staff. Clearly it is not for charity; China is doing it in its own interest. Note that this is in full conformity with the rule-based order – China and South Africa exercising their national sovereignty rights and South Africa also its territorial integrity.

Yet in doing so ANC-South Africa (ANCSA) is drawn ever closer into the Chinese orbit. The US clearly and for good reason takes a very dim view of that, and ANCSA is unwisely making the country into a theatre of great power rivalry. No doubt, the paper tiger of international law will provide no cover.

Finally, the US is responding to the reality of growing rivalry between itself and especially China. This is forcing it to breach existing international law. It is, as it were, obliged to do so simply because international law has become obsolete. It cannot deal effectively with the new competition and power struggle in new regions.

Great powers are not going to put their own interests, especially their security, at risk for the sake of obeying outdated international law. They are simply going to break the law, especially since it does not entail any adverse consequences for them in any case.

All that will hold them back is the counterforce of competing powers. This is precisely what was the best guarantee of peace and order during the Cold War; not an outdated international law or a decayed rules-based international order.