Three Cheers for the Collapsing ‘Rules Based’ Global Order

Together Trump and Israel had launched a direct strike on Iran. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was dead. Much of his inner circle was gone with him. No United Nations resolution had authorized the attack. No effort had even been made to secure one. Even the U.S. Congress had not been informed.

The postwar “rules-based international order” invoked for decades had simply been ignored.

Since its post-World War II inception, western leaders insisted that this order was the indispensable framework of global stability: rules, institutions, procedures, legitimacy. Yet when the moment came, those same rules proved optional — discarded not after debate, but quickly and unceremoniously. Even its most ardent defenders now seemed to concede its weaknesses. As the crisis unfolded, the European Commission president lamented that the system was being eroded by a “league of authoritarians” before adding a striking admission: it could no longer be relied upon as the sole means of defending Western interests.

Others had already reached that conclusion. Donald Trump, fresh from his own precedent-shattering intervention in Venezuela, had long treated the “rules-based order” less as a constraint than as an inconvenience. Israel, facing existential threats, had spent years undergoing heightened scrutiny.

What happened on February 28 did not destroy the tottering rules-based order. It merely revealed what it had already become: a system with rules invoked selectively, enforced unevenly, and defended most loudly by those who benefited from its ambiguities.

Iran, a fanatical regime with apocalyptic goals, has long stood as a stark illustration of its failures, revealing deep flaws in both its foundational assumptions and structure. Reexamination and clarification are increasingly urgent priorities if we are to understand its apparently sudden collapse.

 The “Rules-Based Order” Under Strain From Tensions Between Nation States

The reality is that today’s world is far removed from the post-World War era. The “rules-based” order was built for state-to-state relations among like-minded nations with defined borders, territorial control, and accountable governments as primary actors. Those assumptions have steadily eroded.

In the decades that followed, decolonization brought a surge of newly independent states into the system, while the geopolitical rivalry of the Cold War reshaped global alignments. Over time, major powers such as Russia and China became entrenched members of the UN Security Council, often advancing interests that diverged sharply from those of Western democracies. Coalitions, like CRINK, underscore that the “rules-based order” is no longer anchored in a single, unified vision, but instead operates within a contested and pluralistic global landscape.

At the same time, the system expanded to include states with widely varying levels of stability and governance. Failed states and authoritarian regimes — despite documented human rights violations — have held positions within bodies such as the United Nations Human Rights Council fueling criticism that the legitimacy and consistency of the system’s standards are unevenly applied.

Tensions from Global Non-State Actors

Moreover. some of the biggest threats today come from non-state, transnational networks placing even greater structural strains on the” rules based” order.

Sovereign states battle narco-terror networks operating beyond established legal and military norms, enjoying near-unfettered access to global funding and media platforms. The challenge is compounded for western democracies facing not only infiltration and subversion — through “weaponized migration” — but also the constraints of electoral cycles, a limitation their adversaries do not share.

War Itself Has Changed 

Compounding these challenges is a deeper shift in the nature of warfare itself.

Rules governing warfare — particularly the prohibition on offensive war absent UN Security Council authorization — were intended to reduce large-scale conflict. In practice, however, they have produced prolonged stalemates, repeated ceasefires and drawn-out negotiations in conflicts where decisive outcomes remain elusive.

Nevertheless, we cannot return to the clear-cut victories and defeats of earlier eras. In a world shaped by asymmetric warfare, conflict now tends to end in ambiguity, with protracted, low-intensity struggles replacing decisive outcomes.

For many non-state actors, especially ideologically driven ones, survival alone can be framed as victory, even success. This redefinition complicates deterrence and blurs the line between tactical loss and strategic messaging.

In an era of global media and digital communication, the perception of victory can be as consequential as battlefield outcomes. Armed groups that endure — even after suffering heavy losses — may claim success by shaping public narratives, influencing regional audiences, and reinforcing their ideological bases. This dynamic highlights a central vulnerability in the current system: rules designed for state-centric wars are increasingly strained when applied to conflicts where legitimacy, perception, and persistence matter as much as territorial control.

Iran : A Case Study in the Collapse of the “Rules Based” Order

Today’s contested and incoherent world order benefited Iran most. Bluster and bravado kept the U.S. and Israel at bay for 47 years while Iran used time it gained from endless negotiations to cheat repeatedly. Even after the June 2025 strikes, its negotiators claimed 440 kg of uranium enriched to 60% (which it offered to “dilute”); revealed long-range IRBMs capable of reaching Europe; and deployed cheap proprietary drones in swarms overwhelming expensive Gulf and Israeli missile defense systems.

Iran straddled and weaponized the new global landscape by funding and arming proxies to create a “ring of fire” to fulfill its core theocratic goals: to eliminate Israel and remove the U.S. from the region. During the 2026 conflict it did not hesitate to attack its Gulf neighbors with the same intensity it attacked Israel’s civilians. Briefly claiming ownership of Hormuz to choke off 20% of global oil shipments, it levied tolls in crypto giving it a new ability to evade the entire dollar-based banking system under which its assets had been frozen.

Future Imperfect — The Core Problem

Taken together, these trends suggest a growing mismatch between the original design of the “rules based” order and the evolving realities of modern conflict.

Traditional warfare focused on defeating an enemy’s army as the decisive path to victory.

In today’s networked conflicts involving non-state groups, the dynamic has shifted. Adversaries disperse, adapt, and endure, frequently outlasting democratic states. Organizations such as Hamas or the Taliban demonstrate that persistence, combined with a widely distributed narrative, can translate into strategic advantage even after severe battlefield losses. In this context, survival and the ability to regroup can matter as much as, if not more than, conventional military success.

The gap between rhetoric and reality has become too large to ignore and acknowledging that gap is a necessary first step toward developing a more honest and effective framework for global stability. It’s time to move on.

Image: Pixabay