Bhumics Week 6: The RBIO Part 3
In the litany of the rules-based international order, we start with the great institutions that uphold it, however flawed. The United Nations, the WTO, treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. There's also the retreating Leviathan of the United States, who acts as the backstop. Trump still holds fast to the financial of the RBIO - even as he threatens tariffs, he is very clear in saying that the role of the dollar as the world's reserve currency cannot be questioned. The economic regime - the one aspect of the RBIO that 'worked' has been weaponized, though Trump is far from the first president to do so - it's been weaponized by every president in the last 20 years or so. Economic sanctions have become the tool of choice for exerting control.
In Amartya Sen's preface to Albert Hirschman's great book, 'The Passions and the Interests,' Sen says, "the basic hypothesis, the articulation and development of which Hirschman investigates, makes the case for capitalism rest on the belief that it would activate some benign human proclivities at the expense of some malignant ones." Today, we see 'interests' as a motive force, like a businessman seeing opportunity in using AI to make hiring more efficient. The 'interests' are given a positive role in promoting efficient allocation of resources, rather than the negative role of blocking harmful passions. But Hirschman has a very different take: that (in Sen's words) 'violent passion is subdued by innocuous interest' in Sen's words.
The most harmful passions we know today are wars between nations, and the emotional basis for the rules-based international order after 1945, is the blocking of warring passions. I want to end with one last quote from Hirschman, or rather from Sens' preface to Hirschman: 'Montesquieu's argument in a passage that inspired Hirschman to undertake this historical inquiry related to his belief that even though passions may prompt people to be wicked they have nevertheless an interest in not being so.'
That idea is repeatedly expressed in the RBIO - for example, in the Tom Friedman version of 'The World is Flat,' that countries that both have McDonalds don't go to war against each other (not true any more!), because they have a joint interest in promoting trade and not going to war.
Is that assumption flawed? Maybe interests aren't the stable, passion decreasing forces we think they are, for they don't stop with the regulating of negative passions. They become a source of new passions that are as destabilizing of the order as the ones that they were replacing - and social media has had a big role to play in this reversal.
This tension between interests and passions reveals a deeper structural weakness in the rules-based international order. While the system was built on the assumption that rational interests would naturally lead to cooperation and stability, it failed to account for how those same interests could morph into new forms of passion - especially when wielded by powerful actors. This brings us to a crucial distinction in how global order is maintained. I wanted to call this week's essay "The Law without the Leviathan," but that would only tell half the story.
When we talk about the international order, at least in the last 30, 40 years, the Globe and Globalization have always had the United States as the guarantor of this rules-based international order. In its own self-image, if not in reality. Nevertheless, there is a difference between an explicit global state and one which is only de facto managed by one superpower. And you can see that difference now today, because if there had been a global state, we wouldn't have been able to back away from the rules-based international order in the way that the United States is doing today. To understand why this distinction between a global state and a superpower-managed order matters, we need to examine the fundamental legal architecture of the RBIO itself. At its core, the rules-based international order is deeply anchored in legal principles that aim to guide how states interact with one another.
The Juridical Nature of the RBIO
Some History
At its core, the rules-based international order is deeply anchored in legal principles that aim to guide how states interact with one another. From the very beginning, international law treated states as its primary legal subjects, recognizing the concept of pacta sunt servanda—“agreements must be kept”—as a foundational norm for binding commitments. This shift away from a raw state of nature, where power alone dictated the terms, was meant to create a more predictable framework. Rather than relying on the brute force of sovereign power, the system rests on the idea of formal equality among states, striving to ensure each is subject to the same legal standards.
Over time, this juridical approach evolved from debates over the justification of war (jus ad bellum) to the codification of how wars should be fought (jus in bello). By setting rules for the conduct of conflict, international law sought to tame the chaos of warfare through explicit legal norms. Paralleling this evolution is the broader aspiration to transform the international legal system into a form of cosmopolitan law—one that reaches beyond traditional notions of state sovereignty and includes, in principle, all peoples of the world.
This evolution from raw power politics to a legal framework was gradual and hard-won. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) marked an early milestone, establishing the principle of territorial sovereignty. But it wasn't until the late 19th and early 20th centuries that we saw systematic attempts to codify international law through conventions like the Hague Conferences (1899 and 1907).
The concept of pacta sunt servanda itself has deep historical roots, appearing in ancient Roman law and medieval diplomatic practice. But its modern interpretation gained force through the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (1969), which formalized how international agreements should be interpreted and enforced.
The distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello became particularly crucial after World War II. The UN Charter essentially outlawed aggressive war (with exceptions for self-defense), while the Geneva Conventions elaborated detailed rules for warfare conduct. This dual approach reflected a pragmatic recognition that while war couldn't be eliminated entirely, it could be constrained.
The aspiration toward cosmopolitan law, influenced by Kantian ideals, manifested in developments like universal human rights law and international criminal justice. The Nuremberg Trials marked a watershed moment, establishing that individuals could be held accountable for international crimes, regardless of state sovereignty claims. To uphold these principles, institutions such as the United Nations emerged, deriving their authority from inter-state agreements. The proliferation of international courts and tribunals, including the International Criminal Court and the WTO’s Dispute Settlement Body, reflects an ongoing judicialization of global affairs. These bodies interpret and enforce the rule of law at the international level, ideally serving as impartial venues to address grievances. In so doing, they go beyond the original state-centric model and move toward a global order where legal recourse exists for violations of widely held norms.
The Problem of Sovereignty
Crucially, the international rule of law presupposes equality before the law—a principle stating that similar cases ought to be treated alike, regardless of the states or actors involved. Yet this notion challenges the traditional Westphalian concept of absolute sovereignty by suggesting states’ rights and duties might eventually stem from an emerging global normative framework, rather than from their status as independent equals. Still, respect for sovereignty remains woven into the fabric of international law, ensuring that external intervention in domestic matters has limits.
Despite these foundations, the rules-based system faces serious hurdles. Unlike domestic legal systems, the international sphere lacks a centralized enforcement mechanism. The weight of compliance often rests on whether states—particularly powerful ones—consent to being bound by these norms. Power disparities also mean that states with greater influence can shape or circumvent legal standards. And while legal procedures provide structure, they do not guarantee substantive justice. Procedural adherence can mask the pursuit of national interests or even serve as a cloak for manipulative practices.
It is also important to note that the rules-based order is not solely juridical. Political, social, and ethical factors help shape its contours, with shared goals, norms, and knowledge frameworks playing key roles. Governance sometimes happens outside formal legal structures, through networks and self-regulating processes that approximate law but are not strictly codified. Diplomatic engagement and political negotiation can be just as critical to the success of this order as the statutes of any international treaty.
In essence, while international law and juridical mechanisms lie at the heart of the rules-based order, they do not exist in a vacuum. They intertwine with broader forces—diplomatic, economic, cultural—that all shape how well these rules are observed and enforced. The ambitious goal remains the same: to foster a predictable, just, and stable environment in which all states, and potentially all peoples, can operate under a common set of legal principles. Yet realizing this lofty vision depends as much on political will and global cooperation as it does on the strength of the legal frameworks themselves.
Which brings me to the problems:
The Contradictions in the Juridical Conception of the Globe
I want to be generous to the rules-based international order. I don't want to condemn it as wrong at its core, liberal imperialism masquerading as world peace (but it is! but it is!). We have, after all, spent some time talking about Machiavelli and the positive attitude that he brings to the study of politics.
Looking at the rules-based international order through that Machiavellian lens - it emerged in its current avatar out of the ashes of the Second World War and was one of several attempts to prevent future catastrophic violence - mutually assured destruction was another such even less believable doctrine. And despite the inequalities between sovereign martins and the motives and the power-seeking of all the actors involved, the rules-based international order managed to keep a lid on catastrophic violence.
What about the millions who died in Vietnam and Cambodia and the Congo and Central America and in South America? Were the coups and the brutality justified? Of course not. But a Machiavelli might say that a ruler has to make hard decisions. And as long as the decisions keep the system going, they are the right decisions.
I'm not going to defend Machiavelli. But for many people, American power was preferable to other forms of hegemony - lots of colonized peoples, especially their elites, loved the British empire too, and some, with some justification, saw it as an emancipatory force. And the rules-based international order was the good cop version of Pax Americana. Continuing along Machiavellian lines, I will choose not criticize the rules-based international order from the outside, from some abstract point of view, but to reveal its contradictions from the inside. Take it as the kind of order it was and is, and ask: what are the forces that reveal its failings? What is it that this order was not able to contain and as a result is now collapsing?
I can think of three internal contradictions, of which I will cover one today
Abdication
One argument against the RBIO is that it presupposes a credible claimant to the Leviathan throne. What happens when the current claimant abdicates their seat?
As others have pointed out, perhaps the U.S. is no longer desiring to be a Leviathan straddling the globe. It may choose to be the greatest power rather than the supreme power, a first among equals rather than one without an equal. If the only way to impose a rules-based international order is for there to be a Leviathan, and the U.S. no longer wants to be that Leviathan - and, of course, doesn't want anyone else to be the Leviathan - then it's in the American interest to bring the RBIO down.
Trump's decision to shatter the rules-based international order might have to do with his and a section of the American establishment's assessment that it can no longer be the Leviathan.
In any case, do we even need a Global Leviathan? Hobbes, the originator of the idea, wasn’t so sure:
because states uphold the Industry of their Subjects; there does not follow from the international state of nature, that misery, which accompanies the Liberty of particular men
This Hobbesian insight raises an intriguing possibility: perhaps the international order doesn't require a supreme authority in the way that domestic peace does. States, unlike individuals in a state of nature, have internal structures that maintain order within their borders. They can engage in trade, diplomacy, and other forms of cooperation without necessarily submitting to a global sovereign.
Yet this optimistic reading runs into problems in our interconnected world. Modern challenges like climate change, pandemic response, and nuclear proliferation seem to demand coordinated global action. The absence of a supreme authority makes addressing these existential threats significantly more difficult. When the U.S. steps back from its role as global coordinator, we see immediate effects: the fracturing of international consensus, the rise of regional powers pursuing narrow interests, and the weakening of global institutions.
The question then becomes: can we develop new models of international cooperation that don't depend on a single dominant power? Perhaps a multipolar world with strong regional powers could maintain stability through mutual interests and deterrence. Or maybe new forms of international governance could emerge, based on overlapping networks of cooperation rather than hierarchical authority. But the transition to such a system, if possible, would likely be marked by significant instability and conflict.
The Exception is the Rule
The second reason, which is related to the first, is that an abdicating Leviathan may nevertheless choose to maintain or even increase its control - control enabled by its access to other regions of the world when it presented itself as a generous benefactor - and threaten retribution to those who resist. You can see that most clearly in the economic realm; all recent presidents have used sanctions and other economic forms of coercion, but the assumption was that if you play by our rules, or rather, if you play by the rules that we think are fair to everyone, you will not be subject to those forms of control.
But now the retreating Leviathan may say, well, we are not going to play by the rules, but you better play by those rules. And they can enforce that asymmetry because the financial infrastructure, including the default currency (the dollar) is controlled by the abdicating power.
This weaponization of economic power represents a fundamental shift in how the RBIO operates. When the U.S. was fully committed to its role as global hegemon, economic sanctions were presented as enforcement mechanisms for maintaining international norms and rules. Now, they increasingly appear as tools of raw national interest, deployed selectively and often in contradiction to the very rules they were meant to uphold. The dollar's reserve currency status, the SWIFT payment system, and America's outsized influence over global financial institutions have become less like neutral infrastructure and more like pressure points that can be squeezed at will.
This transformation reveals perhaps the deepest contradiction in the rules-based international order: it was built on the premise that rules would constrain all players equally, including the system's primary architect. But as the U.S. steps back from its role as global guarantor while maintaining its grip on key economic levers, we see the emergence of what might be called "rules for thee but not for me" – a situation where the former Leviathan claims exceptional status while still demanding compliance from others.
The implications of this shift are profound. Other nations, seeing this asymmetry, are increasingly motivated to create alternative financial systems and institutions. China's Belt and Road Initiative, the BRICS' New Development Bank, and various attempts to de-dollarize international trade all represent efforts to escape the weaponized remnants of American economic hegemony. Yet these alternatives themselves don't necessarily promise a return to rule-based order – they may simply represent the emergence of competing spheres of influence, each with its own set of rules and enforcement mechanisms.
In conclusion, the rules-based international order finds itself at a crossroads. Born from the ashes of World War II and sustained by American power, it achieved a degree of stability through the combination of legal frameworks and hegemonic oversight. But as we've seen, its internal contradictions – from the abdication of the Leviathan to the weaponization of its infrastructure – have begun to undermine its foundations. What emerges from this unraveling remains unclear, but one thing is certain: the assumption that economic interests would naturally lead to a stable, rule-based system has proven more fragile than its architects imagined. The passions that the system was designed to contain have not disappeared; they have merely found new expressions through the very mechanisms meant to suppress them.
