The Farce of the World Order and the Collapse of Illusions
Today, there is talk—with a solemnity bordering on the liturgical—of the supposed “end of the international order.” Diplomats, analysts, and opinion leaders lament the erosion of a system said to have been built after World War II, grounded in clear rules, multilateral cooperation, and an almost sacred mutual respect among states. However, this narrative, repeated ad nauseam in global forums, does not stand up to an honest examination of history or the harsh reality of recent events. What we are witnessing is not the collapse of an established order, but rather that of a collective fantasy.
The so-called liberal international order has never been universal, neutral, or effectively binding on the powers that created it. From its inception, this system has served as a functional arrangement for the victors of war, cloaked in legal and moral language to legitimize power relations that are, in essence, profoundly asymmetrical. As Hans Morgenthau rightly warned, international law has never had the necessary force to replace the politics of power; at most, it has served to organize its appearance and make it palatable to public debate.
Historically, the United States has never behaved as an actor truly bound by multilateral norms when its strategic interests were at stake. Episodes such as Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Kuwait should not be viewed as “deviations from the course” or isolated mistakes, but as the recurring expression of a clear power strategy. The UN Security Council, often hailed as the pillar of this order, has always been respected only when its resolutions confirmed decisions already made in Washington. When the body became an obstacle, it was simply ignored, revealing that the exception, in fact, has always been the rule.
The Return to Realism and the Geopolitics of Power
Russia, for its part, has never bothered to pretend that it plays by universal rules. The invasion of Ukraine does not represent a break with the international order, but rather its most brutal confirmation. It is the logical continuation of a foreign policy founded on spheres of influence, coercion, and the pursuit of strategic security. As John Mearsheimer observes, great powers do not tolerate threats in their immediate surroundings, and no institutional architecture or treaty on paper has the power to alter this fundamental fact of international politics.
Even the Western reaction to the war in Ukraine, presented as a heroic defense of the “rules-based order,” reinforces the fragility of the legal argument. The application of selective sanctions, convenient legal exceptions, and the opportunistic relaxation of principles demonstrate that norms continue to apply only according to the identity and power of those who violate them. The norm, therefore, is not universal in nature; it is strictly geopolitical. In the South China Sea, this pattern of power is clearly repeated: Beijing’s gradual and methodical advance, with the construction of artificial islands and the militarization of trade routes, ignores decisions by international arbitration tribunals without suffering any real consequences. Where there is sufficient power, the law becomes optional.
Against this backdrop of stark realism, Europe emerges as the epitome of strategic impotence disguised as moral virtue. The bloc has built a sophisticated market, but it has outsourced its security and fragmented its foreign policy to the point of losing any autonomous capacity to project power. In times of calm, European discourse is full of shared values; however, in the face of real crises—whether energy, migration, or war-related—each nation acts in isolation, proving that European unity is purely circumstantial.
The Fragility of Middle-Income Countries and the Case of Brazil
It is on this stage of giants that middle-sized countries reveal their deepest limitations. Unable to impose rules and reluctant to bear the costs of effective leadership, these nations teeter dangerously between rhetorical sovereignty and defensive multilateralism. They extol autonomy when the economy is doing well, but desperately appeal to international cooperation at the first sign of crisis—not out of ideological conviction, but out of sheer material necessity.
Brazil fits perfectly into this pattern of hesitation. Lacking the material power needed to shape the global order and the internal cohesion required to lead coalitions that truly matter, the country often takes refuge in an overly declaratory diplomacy. Our foreign policy is marked by a strategic ambiguity that masks the absence of clear priorities, championing multilateralism less as an instrument of power projection and more as a shield against our own irrelevance on the world stage.
As Raymond Aron warned, middle powers that refuse to acknowledge the relentless logic of power inevitably end up subordinate to it. In a competitive world, those who lack the courage to define and pursue their own interests end up merely carrying out the interests of others. Behind this dynamic of submission lies the absence of global leaders capable of articulating coherent national projects that can survive international competition.
As Henry Kissinger noted, robust international orders can only be sustained when they reflect a balance of power accepted by the system’s key actors. The postwar period was never such a balanced consensus; it was, in fact, a long era of American hegemony disguised under the veneer of normative universalism. Now that this hegemony is weakening, the moral veneer is rapidly crumbling. The “rules-based order” has always operated selectively: human rights and sovereignty were applied as flexible criteria, invoked against enemies and relativized in relation to allies. This is not a matter of occasional hypocrisy, but of fundamental strategic coherence.
The present moment is not a historic rupture, but rather a revelation of the truth. International politics is merely returning to its most honest form: open competition for power, security, and influence. The widespread unease we feel stems less from the brutality of the world than from the collapse of the comforting narrative that allowed elites to pretend that rules had replaced force. Perhaps the true contemporary challenge is not to try to save anemic institutions or restore fictitious consensus, but rather to abandon the infantilization of global debate. The world has never been governed by good intentions—and insisting on this fantasy only makes us easy prey in an environment that demands, above all, realism and preparedness to face things as they are.
This article was originally published on Canal Comtexto. Check it out!
