Bhumics Week 4: The RBIO Part 1
Why am I talking about the rules-based international order (RBIO)?
The most immediate reason, is that it's collapsing, and its most powerful patron, the United States, is no longer interested in upholding it. RBIO is breaking news, both as breaking and as news. There are other longer-term reasons for me to be interested in writing about it - to do with the juridical conception of society, where the law is seen as the instrument through which the society comes into being. You can see this in the idea of the social contract - contracts are legal instruments. The nation state is an imaginary institution that comes into being through legal documents, most prominently, the constitution. In democracies, we call our representatives lawmakers. Whether in the House of Representatives in Parliament, the most prominent members of the state apparatus deliberate on laws for a living. The laws can be just or unjust, but in both cases, the law is the primary instrument of order.
On to the reasons:
The first reason is because I am interested in the nature of order itself, and in particular, what I call the 'weight of government.' There is an older term, 'the arts of government,' that instructs those who wield power - Machiavelli, for example, is teaching the arts of government in The Prince. When I say the 'weight of government,' I mean the creaking edifice of the state system, international organizations and the rules of global commerce. I want to understand why the failure of the rules-based international order is part of our inability to bear the weight of government.
The second reason is that I am interested in understanding the juridical conception of humanity as such, “The Globe,” a conception that runs through the RBIO and even more expansive ideas of World Government. The Globe is always there as a regulative ideal, one that unites all of humanity. If there's one central principles in bhumics, it is:
The Globe is not enough. The Earth is much bigger than the Globe. The Planet is the ultimate giver of order.
I'm ultimately interested in the liberal art of governance. No, the liberal weight of governance. What was it? What made it tick, and what is making it collapse under its own weight? The international situation is what got me started, but I'm going to also write about other liberal arts.
Philosophical analysis or conceptual analysis isn't enough for a proper requiem for the liberal empire. Even history feels lacking. If you want to do a thorough memorial, you have to understand the emotions that this regime evoked, the harms it did, and the inspiration it gave to many. It also had a sacred element to it, a political theology. It was an all-illuminating, perhaps all-devouring empire, so we cannot do justice to its memory without bringing our entire humanity to its memorial. A requiem requires a novel more than a scholarly monograph, but it's not a novel of characters. It's not even a novel of ideas mouthed by characters; a different genre altogether.
Breaking News
Just in the last week, Trump has threatened to invade Greenland, annex Canada, and impose tariffs on more countries than we can count on our fingers. As the African proverb goes:
The sheep will spend its entire life fearing the wolf, only to be eaten by the shepherd.
The shepherd is inviting people over for dinner (who?), and he’s slaughtered the rules-based international order in preparation. The skeptical among us might ask if that order ever existed or if it was just a proxy for U.S. hegemony. Probably the latter, but I have friends who argue that if you needed a hegemon, the U.S. was a better hegemon than China or the Soviet Union or any other contender. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. And given that the current greatest power is quite actively destabilizing its own commitment to that order, I don't see how that order is going to come back.
Will the EU survive its member nations arming themselves to the teeth? What if Germany expresses a desire to build nuclear weapons?
Europe's response to these threats has been telling. Rather than treating this as a temporary aberration, European leaders are preparing for a fundamental shift in transatlantic relations. They're bolstering their defense capabilities not just against traditional threats from the east, but with an eye toward potential American unreliability or even hostility. The dual threat of Russian aggression and American unpredictability has forced European nations to consider unprecedented measures.
They're not just increasing defense spending—they're reconsidering their entire security architecture. When European leaders discuss "strategic autonomy," they're no longer just talking about being able to act independently of American support; they're talking about being able to defend against American economic and diplomatic aggression. The threatened tariffs, the aggressive overtures toward Greenland (an autonomous territory of Denmark), and the general undermining of NATO commitments have created a perfect storm that's pushing Europe toward military self-reliance.
Europe's response to these threats has been telling. Rather than treating this as a temporary aberration, European leaders are preparing for a fundamental shift in transatlantic relations. They're bolstering their defense capabilities not just against traditional threats from the east, but with an eye toward potential American unreliability or even hostility. The dual threat of Russian aggression and American unpredictability has forced European nations to consider unprecedented measures. They're not just increasing defense spending—they're reconsidering their entire security architecture. When European leaders discuss "strategic autonomy," they're no longer just talking about being able to act independently of American support; they're talking about being able to defend against American economic and diplomatic aggression. The threatened tariffs, the aggressive overtures toward Greenland (an autonomous territory of Denmark), and the general undermining of NATO commitments have created a perfect storm that's pushing Europe toward military self-reliance.
This unraveling of long-established alliances and norms marks more than just a geopolitical realignment—it signals the death of a particular vision of international order. One where rules, rather than raw power, governed relations between states. One where even the strongest players at least paid lip service to agreed-upon principles. As we stand at this inflection point, it's worth examining exactly what we're losing.
What is this beast we are going to miss in the coming years?
A Brief History of the RBIO
The Rules-Based International Order (RBIO) is a vast network of institutions, laws, and norms that has shaped international relations for much of the modern era, especially since the mid-20th century. At heart, the (ideal, not actual!) RBIO is built on several key principles. State sovereignty--enshrined as the notion of sovereign equality--aims to ensure that all nations, regardless of power, share certain foundational rights and obligations. Non-aggression seeks to prohibit the use of force to alter borders or settle disputes, while peaceful resolution emphasizes diplomacy, negotiation, arbitration, and judicial processes through venues like the International Court of Justice (Ikenberry, 2001). The system also prizes economic openness, advancing the idea that free trade and shared prosperity diminish the likelihood of conflict (Slaughter, 2004). The principle of accountability--manifested in international criminal mechanisms--has steadily grown, reflecting the belief that individuals and states alike can and should be held responsible for egregious violations of international law (Hurrell, 2007).
Although its formal foundations crystallized in the aftermath of the Second World War, the ideas underpinning the RBIO have deeper historical roots. Early diplomatic and legal frameworks--such as the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which established principles of state sovereignty--foreshadowed the collaborative ambitions that later came to define the post-1945 global order (Mazower, 2012).
Throughout the 19th century, notions of international cooperation continued to take form, albeit in less institutionalized ways. The Concert of Europe, established after the Napoleonic Wars, aimed to preserve stability by bringing the great powers together to resolve disputes through consensus rather than conflict (Ikenberry, 2001; Mazower, 2012). Other pioneering attempts to codify international norms included the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which addressed the laws of war and mechanisms for the peaceful settlement of disputes. Despite these modest successes, the devastation wrought by the First World War underscored the urgency of constructing a more structured approach to global governance.
In 1919, the League of Nations emerged as the first broad-based institution devoted to collective security, aspiring to unite states under shared legal and moral principles (Mazower, 2012). Yet it struggled to fulfill its mandate. The absence of key powers--most notably the United States--combined with weak enforcement provisions and the rise of totalitarian regimes left the League ill-equipped to prevent renewed global conflict. In the wake of the Second World War, recognizing the need for a more robust framework, world leaders created the foundational institutions of what we now know as the RBIO.
Chief among these institutions was the United Nations (UN), established in 1945. Its Charter set forth the primary objectives of maintaining peace, promoting human rights, and upholding the sovereign equality of states (Ikenberry, 2001; Hurrell, 2007). Meanwhile, the Bretton Woods conference led to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (later the World Bank), both designed to foster economic stability, offer developmental assistance, and avert the economic turmoil that had contributed to interwar instability (Slaughter, 2004; Ikenberry, 2001). In 1947, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) further strengthened the emerging economic order by setting rules for trade liberalization and reducing protectionist barriers, thereby knitting states more tightly into an interdependent global economy (Hurrell, 2007).
Although these post-war institutions represented a significant evolution in cooperative international governance, their influence was soon overshadowed by the ideological and geopolitical tension of the Cold War. The UN's ideal of inclusive global governance gave way to bipolar competition, as the United States and the Soviet Union each formed alliances, established spheres of influence, and shaped parallel sets of norms (Mazower, 2012). Nonetheless, the Cold War era also witnessed surprising moments of collaboration. Membership in the UN swelled as decolonization brought new states into the international community, and both blocs saw value in arms control treaties, non-proliferation initiatives, and at times human rights agreements (Hurrell, 2007).
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, many observers believed that the liberal vision of the RBIO would deepen and spread. A wave of optimism followed as new international tribunals tackled war crimes in the Balkans and Rwanda, culminating in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 (Ikenberry, 2001). The World Trade Organization (WTO), created in 1995, sought to cement global trade rules and provide a venue for binding dispute resolution (Slaughter, 2004). At the same time, treaties and frameworks addressing issues like climate change (the Kyoto Protocol in 1997) and global health underscored a growing emphasis on transnational challenges.
However, the early 21st century also introduced serious strains. The 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq--widely considered questionable under UN mandates--raised doubts about the universal respect for international law (Hurrell, 2007). The global financial crisis of 2008, meanwhile, cast doubt on the capacity of existing institutions to protect worldwide economic stability. New powers, notably China, India, and Brazil, emerged as significant economic and political players and began calling for reforms to mirror their enlarged clout. Russia's interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014, and again from 2022) directly challenged the principle of territorial sovereignty, a core RBIO norm (Mazower, 2012).
References
• Hurrell, Andrew. On Global Order: Power, Values, and the Constitution of International Society. Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Ikenberry, G. John. After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars. Princeton University Press, 2001.
• Mazower, Mark. Governing the World: The History of an Idea. Penguin, 2012.
• Slaughter, Anne-Marie. A New World Order. Princeton University Press, 2004.
