When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a great sigh went up across much of the Western world. The Cold War had ended without the expected catastrophe. Nuclear war had been avoided. The Communist challenge had disappeared. For the first time since the beginning of the twentieth century, there seemed no obvious rival to the political and economic arrangements of the Atlantic powers. Many intelligent people allowed themselves to believe that they were witnessing not only the end of a conflict, but the end of conflict itself. The future, they assumed, would be characterised by growing prosperity, increasing international cooperation and the gradual disappearance of the ancient causes of war. Nations would become less important. Trade would become more important. Politics would increasingly concern administration rather than power. There would still be disputes, but these would be managed through international institutions and legal mechanisms. The age of ideological and geopolitical rivalry was supposedly drawing to a close.

History, according to one famous formulation, had reached its destination. Yet, looking back from the middle of the twenty-first century’s third decade, it is difficult to think of a major prediction that has been more falsified. The international order that emerged after the Cold War has failed on its own terms. It has failed to preserve peace. It has failed to produce stable government. It has failed to create prosperity that is broadly shared within the societies that supposedly benefited most from it. It has failed even to maintain confidence in the institutions through which it operated.

The largest European war since 1945 continues in Ukraine. Relations between China and the United States deteriorate with every passing year. The Middle East remains trapped in recurring cycles of conflict. Public debt throughout much of the Western world has reached levels that would once have been regarded as alarming. Trust in government, the media, universities and other institutions has collapsed. Political systems throughout Europe and North America are increasingly characterised by paralysis, mistrust and open hostility between rulers and ruled. This is not the outcome that was promised.

The usual explanation is that the post-Cold War order was a noble project undermined by unfortunate mistakes. This explanation is comforting because it avoids difficult questions. It allows us to believe that the architects of the present disorder were motivated by wisdom and good intentions and that they only suffered from occasional lapses in judgement.

I do not believe this explanation is adequate. The problem with the post-Cold War order was not that it occasionally departed from its founding principles. The problem was that its publicly stated principles were never its real foundations. The phrase “rules-based international order” provides a useful starting point. Few expressions have been repeated more often during the past thirty years. Few expressions have become so detached from observable reality.

The first difficulty is identifying the rules themselves. They are frequently invoked but rarely specified. They seem to exist in a curious condition somewhere between law and diplomacy. They appear whenever a government in Washington, London or Brussels wishes to condemn the conduct of another state. They become harder to locate when those same governments or their allies behave in similar ways.

International law prohibited the invasion of Iraq. International law prohibited the destruction of Libya. International law prohibited the bombing of Serbia. Yet all these actions were justified as necessary measures in defence of international order. More recently, the same governments that have spoken with moral certainty regarding Ukraine have discovered remarkable reserves of caution whenever questions arise concerning the conduct of Israel in Gaza.

The contradiction is no longer hidden. Most of humanity can see it plainly. The conclusion reached across much of Asia, Africa and Latin America is equally plain. The rules-based order is not really based on rules. It is based on power.

This does not mean that international law is worthless. It does not mean that treaties, conventions and customs should be discarded. It means only that these things have never been the true foundation of the system established after 1991. The real foundation was power concentrated to a degree unprecedented in modern history. The Soviet Union had vanished. Russia appeared exhausted. China remained poor. Europe depended on American military protection. Japan remained strategically subordinate. For a brief period, the United States and its allies enjoyed a position of dominance unmatched by any previous coalition of powers.

The temptation to treat this temporary condition as permanent proved irresistible. A generation of policymakers persuaded themselves that traditional constraints no longer applied. Geography mattered less than before. National interests mattered less than before. Industrial capacity mattered less than before. Military power remained important, but mainly as a tool for enforcing decisions already made elsewhere.

What mattered increasingly was finance. The great beneficiaries of the post-Cold War settlement were not factory owners, engineers, skilled workers or productive entrepreneurs. They were financial institutions and the classes attached to them. The age of globalisation allowed capital to move with unprecedented freedom. Manufacturing could be relocated. Labour could be imported. National governments could be pressured by markets operating beyond their immediate control. Whole industries could be dismantled and reconstructed elsewhere.

This transformation was presented as a triumph of efficiency. In one sense, it was. A factory closed in Birmingham and reopened in Guangdong might indeed produce goods more cheaply. An industrial worker replaced by a call-centre employee might appear more economical when viewed from a boardroom or treasury department. Public assets sold into private hands might create attractive opportunities for investors. The difficulty is that societies are not accounting exercises. A nation is not simply a collection of balance sheets. It possesses social structures, habits of cooperation, shared assumptions and forms of solidarity that develop over generations. These things are difficult to measure and easy to destroy.

Throughout the Western world, productive industry was steadily weakened. The process varied from country to country, but the general pattern remained the same. Factories closed. Technical skills declined. Communities built around productive employment entered long periods of decay. In their place emerged economies increasingly dependent on finance, administration, retail and various forms of bureaucratic management.

At the same time, mass immigration transformed the demographic character of many societies. This was justified by economic arguments that often changed according to circumstance. Sometimes immigrants were needed because labour shortages existed. Sometimes they were needed because populations were ageing. Sometimes they were needed because diversity itself was regarded as an intrinsic good. Whatever the justification, the practical effect was to weaken existing forms of social cohesion.

A population divided by language, culture, religion and historical memory is generally easier to administer than a population bound together by strong common assumptions. This may not have been the primary objective in every instance. It was certainly one of the consequences.

The result was a paradox. The societies at the centre of the international order were becoming weaker even as their governing classes congratulated themselves on their success. For a time, this weakness remained hidden. Financial markets expanded. Asset prices rose. Credit became abundant. Consumption continued. Many people experienced rising living standards. The system appeared to function. Yet beneath the surface, an uncomfortable reality was developing. The productive foundations of power were being neglected.

No civilisation can permanently separate wealth from production. It may distribute wealth. It may consume wealth. It may borrow against future wealth. Eventually, however, somebody must still make things. This truth was forgotten by many of those who governed the post-Cold War world.

The first major warning arrived in 2008. For years, Western governments and financial institutions had celebrated themselves as pioneers of a new economic age. Manufacturing was old-fashioned. Heavy industry belonged to the past. The future lay in financial innovation, knowledge work and the increasingly sophisticated manipulation of credit. Wealth would no longer be created primarily through production. It would be created through information, services and the management of increasingly complex financial instruments.

The crash revealed how much of this confidence had rested on illusion. Much of the financial system had become detached from productive reality. Vast structures of debt and speculation had been constructed On assumptions that proved unsustainable. When confidence vanished, the system began collapsing under its own weight.

The crisis should have provoked a period of serious reflection. It should have encouraged policymakers to ask whether societies can prosper while neglecting their productive foundations. It should have led to questions about the relationship between finance and the wider economy. Instead, the lesson drawn was that the system needed more support. The institutions most responsible for the disaster were rescued. The losses were socialised. Central banks created unprecedented quantities of money. Asset inflation resumed. The deeper structural problems remained unaddressed.

The significance of 2008 was not only economic. It revealed that much of the prosperity associated with the post-Cold War settlement had depended on financial mechanisms that could not continue indefinitely. The order was not collapsing, but the first cracks had become visible.

At roughly the same time, another development was becoming impossible to ignore. The Western governing classes had assumed that China would remain what they had intended it to become: a vast reservoir of cheap labour integrated into a system designed elsewhere and managed elsewhere. Chinese factories would manufacture products. Western firms would control capital, technology and higher-value activities. The arrangement would enrich everyone while preserving the existing hierarchy.

This assumption proved as mistaken as many assumptions of empire have proved throughout history. The Chinese accepted foreign investment. They accepted participation in global trade. They did not accept permanent subordination. Western capital flowed eastward in search of lower costs. Technology followed. Industrial capacity followed. Skills followed. Entire supply chains followed. The consequence was the emergence of an industrial power unlike any seen since the rise of the United States itself. Factories that disappeared from Birmingham, Sheffield, Detroit and countless smaller towns did not cease to exist. They reappeared elsewhere. The machine tools, engineers and productive capacities on which industrial civilisation depends were not abolished. They were transferred. The policies that generated enormous profits for financial interests also financed the emergence of the greatest strategic rival the West had faced since the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, Russia slowly recovered from the chaos of the 1990s. Many Western policymakers had convinced themselves that Russia would remain weak indefinitely. The collapse of the Soviet Union appeared so complete that it encouraged a belief in permanent Russian eclipse. Economic disorder, demographic problems and political instability seemed to confirm the assumption. What this analysis neglected was the persistence of geography, resources and national interest. Russia remained the largest country on earth. It remained rich in energy and raw materials. Most importantly, it retained a governing elite that understood itself to be defending a great power rather than administering a medium-sized state. This did not make Russia invincible. It did make the fantasy of permanent Russian weakness increasingly difficult to sustain.

The response of the Western establishment to these developments revealed the deeper intellectual failures of the post-Cold War order. Rather than reconsidering the assumptions of the previous thirty years, policymakers doubled down on them. Every difficulty was interpreted as evidence that the existing system required more vigorous enforcement. Every challenge was treated as a temporary obstacle to an inevitable future.

This tendency reached its most dangerous form in foreign policy. Throughout history, successful statesmen have generally recognised one fundamental reality. Great powers possess interests that cannot safely be ignored. They may negotiate. They may compromise. They may even retreat. But they do not cease to have interests because somebody else disapproves of them.

The architects of the post-Cold War settlement increasingly behaved as if this principle no longer applied. NATO expanded steadily eastward. Western influence moved deeper into regions that previous generations of statesmen would have recognised as vital to Russian security. The language used to justify these developments focused on democracy and self-determination. The language was often sincere. It was also irrelevant to the underlying strategic reality.

A Russian government of any ideological complexion was unlikely to accept hostile military alliances advancing towards its borders. The same would be true of the United States if the situation were reversed. It would be true of China. It would be true of any major power in recorded history. To recognise this is not to approve every Russian action. It is simply to acknowledge reality. The Ukraine War exposed the consequences of forgetting it.

Much commentary has focused on military operations, sanctions and diplomatic manoeuvres. The more important lesson lies elsewhere. The war demonstrated the limits of financial power. For decades, Western elites had assumed that economic sanctions, financial pressure and technological superiority could compel compliance from almost any adversary. The assumption reflected the broader belief that finance had become more important than production.

Reality intervened. Russia adapted more effectively than many expected. China provided economic alternatives. Much of the Global South declined to participate enthusiastically in Western pressure campaigns. Energy markets adjusted. Trade routes adjusted. The world proved more multipolar than the architects of the post-Cold War order had imagined.

The conflict also exposed a deeper weakness. Countries that once possessed immense industrial capacity discovered that they struggled to manufacture sufficient quantities of basic military equipment. Stockpiles dwindled. Production lines proved inadequate. Supply chains stretched across multiple continents created vulnerabilities that could not be solved through financial ingenuity. The lesson should have been obvious. Power still rests on production. Banks matter. Stock markets matter. Currency systems matter. Yet behind every financial system stands a physical economy. Behind every military alliance stands an industrial base. Behind every ambitious foreign policy stands the capacity to manufacture, transport and sustain material power. The post-Cold War order had spent decades undermining these foundations. This is why its present difficulties are not temporary. The problem is not that its enemies suddenly became stronger. The problem is that the societies at its centre became weaker.

A system designed to facilitate global extraction gradually consumed the productive capacities On which its own strength depended. The same policies that generated extraordinary wealth for a financial elite hollowed out many of the nations from which that wealth had originally been drawn. Like many empires before it, the order succeeded so thoroughly in pursuing its immediate interests that it undermined its long-term survival.

This brings us to the question of what should replace it. The answer is not a world government. It is not a more aggressively enforced version of the existing order. Nor is it a return to ideological confrontation on a global scale. The starting point must be a recovery of political realism.

The first principle of any stable international settlement is that every great power possesses a sphere of influence. This is not a moral claim. It is a description of reality. The United States has one. China has one. Russia has one. India is developing one. Western and Central Europe have the potential to emerge as the equivalent of one of those Hellenistic leagues by which the Greek City States preserved their autonomy in an age of extended and aggressive monarchies. Though I am not suggested the European Union here, I am recommending a European Union to which Britain should stand as Athens did to the Achaean and Amphictyonic Leagues. Attempts to abolish these realities through legal language or moral condemnation have consistently failed. A stable order begins by recognising them.

The second principle is that secondary powers should largely be left alone. The great ideological interventions of recent decades have produced an impressive catalogue of disasters. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and numerous lesser experiments demonstrate the limitations of foreign social engineering. Societies develop according to their own national circumstances. External powers rarely understand them well enough to redesign them successfully. Governments should therefore be free to arrange their domestic affairs according to local conditions. Intervention should occur only where vital interests or regional stability are genuinely threatened.

The third principle is that relations between states should be governed by customary international law rather than universal ideological missions. The Peace of Westphalia remains relevant because it recognised sovereignty. The Congress of Vienna remains relevant because it recognised restraint. Neither system abolished conflict. Both understood that peace depends less on moral perfection than on mutual recognition of limits. That is the lesson modern policymakers most urgently need to relearn.

The practical difficulty is that no international order lasts forever. The Peace of Westphalia endured because it reflected the realities of seventeenth-century Europe. The settlement established at Vienna survived because it reflected the realities of nineteenth-century Europe. The post-war order survived because it reflected the realities of 1945. The post-Cold War order survived for a generation because it reflected the realities of 1991. The problem arises when circumstances change but institutions continue behaving as if they have not changed. Much contemporary diplomacy resembles the behaviour of elderly aristocrats who continue issuing orders to servants who left the household years before. The language remains confident. The assumptions remain unchanged. The authority, however, has quietly evaporated.

This is particularly visible in the relationship between the West and what used to be called the developing world. During the 1990s, governments across Asia, Africa and Latin America often had little practical alternative but to accept Western preferences. Access to markets, finance and technology depended heavily on compliance. Opposition was costly. Resistance appeared futile. That world no longer exists. China provides alternative sources of investment and trade. Regional organisations have become more important. Russia, despite its difficulties, has demonstrated that resistance to Western pressure is possible. Even small states possess room for manoeuvre that did not exist thirty years ago.

The consequence is a redistribution not only of power, but also of confidence. Governments that once listened respectfully to lectures from Washington, London and Brussels now ask awkward questions in return. They observe the state of Western societies and wonder whether the lecturers have much left to teach.

This change has generated considerable anxiety among Western governing classes. They frequently describe it as a threat to the international order. What they usually mean is that it threatens their position within that order. There is an important distinction. The decline of American predominance does not necessarily imply the collapse of civilisation. It does not necessarily imply global chaos. It does not necessarily imply a world of permanent warfare. Such assumptions rest on another illusion inherited from the 1990s: that stability depends On a single hegemonic power.

The nineteenth century was not peaceful because Britain dominated every region of the globe. It was comparatively peaceful because the principal powers of Europe recognised each other’s interests and generally exercised restraint in pursuing their disputes. The Concert of Europe was often cynical. It was frequently self-interested. It nevertheless succeeded in preventing a general European war for nearly a century. The reason was straightforward. Its architects understood that legitimacy grows from realities that powerful states cannot safely ignore. A settlement that attempts to abolish the interests of major powers will eventually fail because those powers retain the ability to disrupt it. A settlement that recognises those interests has at least some prospect of durability.

This was the insight that Talleyrand stated at Vienna and that later generations forgot. Stability does not emerge because one power becomes strong enough to dictate terms indefinitely. Stability emerges when the principal actors accept a common framework within which competition can occur without becoming existential.

The difficulty with the post-Cold War order was that it encouraged the opposite tendency. Having achieved an unprecedented position of dominance, the United States and its allies gradually lost the habit of thinking in terms of balance and accommodation. Every problem came to be viewed as something that could be solved through pressure. Every disagreement became evidence of illegitimacy. Every challenge became proof that more vigorous enforcement was required. This approach was sustainable only while the distribution of power remained unusually lopsided. As that distribution changes, a different style of diplomacy becomes necessary.

The world that is emerging will be less ideological and more transactional. Many commentators regard this prospect with alarm. They imagine that diplomacy conducted through calculations of interest is somehow more dangerous than diplomacy conducted through universal moral claims. The opposite may be true. When governments pursue clearly defined interests, it is generally possible to identify areas of compromise. Interests can be negotiated. Interests can be traded. Interests can be balanced against one another. Universal missions are more difficult. A government that claims to be defending all humanity leaves itself little room for retreat. A government that claims to be advancing civilisation itself is unlikely to accept limits on its ambitions. The ideological wars of the twentieth century demonstrated this danger repeatedly. So have many of the interventions undertaken since the Cold War ended.

The future international order will therefore need a greater degree of modesty than its predecessor. Great powers will need to accept that some regions fall primarily within the influence of others. Smaller states will need to recognise that geography imposes constraints which legal theory cannot abolish. International institutions will need to recover a role as forums for negotiation rather than instruments through which one bloc seeks to legitimise its preferences.

None of this requires abandoning international law. On the contrary, customary international law may become more important than it has been for many years. The difficulty with much contemporary legal thinking is that it attempts to treat states as if they were individuals appearing before a domestic court. International politics has never functioned in that manner. There is no world sovereign capable of enforcing decisions with perfect consistency. The effectiveness of international law therefore depends less on formal mechanisms than on widespread acceptance of shared rules and expectations.

Customary law developed historically because it reflected practical realities recognised by multiple powers. It rested On reciprocity rather than ideology. Governments complied because they expected similar treatment in return and because the system as a whole benefited from predictability. A revived international order will almost certainly depend on similar foundations. States will respect rules that they regard as applying generally. They will ignore rules that appear to function as instruments of selective enforcement.

The objective should therefore be neither legal absolutism nor naked power politics. It should be the restoration of a framework within which power operates under recognised constraints and within which legitimacy derives from consistency rather than propaganda.

There will undoubtedly be dangers during the transition. Periods of shifting power have often produced instability. Rising powers may become overconfident. Declining powers may become reckless. Regional conflicts may intensify before new arrangements become established. It would be foolish to pretend otherwise.

At the same time, instability is not unique to periods of transition. The existing order has hardly been a model of tranquillity. The record of the past thirty years includes military interventions, financial crises, mass migration, growing censorship, political polarisation and the steady erosion of public trust across much of the Western world. The argument for change does not rest on the promise of perfection. It rests on the observation that the present arrangements are no longer functioning.

The greatest opportunity created by a more balanced international system may be that it allows governments to concentrate once again on the internal condition of their societies. For decades, Western elites have often appeared more interested in remaking distant countries than in maintaining their own. Vast resources have been devoted to ideological projects abroad while infrastructure decayed, productive capacity declined and social cohesion weakened at home. A more restrained foreign policy would not solve these problems automatically. It would, however, remove one of the principal distractions from addressing them.

The deeper reason for hoping that a new settlement can emerge lies not in diplomacy but in technology. Humanity stands on the threshold of advances that would have appeared miraculous to previous generations. Artificial intelligence, automation, biotechnology, advanced energy systems and other innovations possess the potential to transform living standards on a scale comparable with the Industrial Revolution. The tragedy would be to squander these opportunities through geopolitical folly.

The post-Cold War order promised a peaceful and prosperous future. Instead, it produced a world characterised by growing tensions abroad and declining confidence at home. Its central mistake was the belief that power could be detached from production, that financial mechanisms could replace economic foundations, and that a temporary distribution of power could be elevated into a permanent principle of international organisation. Reality has returned to collect its debt.

The task now is not to preserve a system that has manifestly failed. It is to construct a settlement more closely aligned with enduring political realities. Such a settlement would recognise spheres of influence, respect sovereignty, encourage restraint among great powers and rely on customary international law as a framework for managing disputes. It would seek stability through balance rather than dominance and legitimacy through consistency rather than rhetoric.

No international order can eliminate conflict entirely. Human beings are too ambitious, too fearful and too imperfect for that. What a successful order can do is reduce the frequency with which rivalries become catastrophes and provide mechanisms through which competing interests may coexist without resorting to war.

That achievement may sound less grand than the promises made during the euphoric years after 1991. It is also more realistic. History has resumed its course. The best hope for the future lies not in pretending otherwise but in learning once again how to live with it.