No-Rules Based Order: The World As It Really Is

One of the most common mistakes in the analysis of geopolitics is to respond to events without sufficient attention to the processes in which every event is necessarily embedded. This is particularly evident in times of more than usual volatility such as we now face. The consequent loss of perspective accentuates the volatility as we over-react or under-react and correct our reactions and then correct our corrections in a continual cycle of responses. So, here is a sense of the perspective which I think is missing in the present discussion about US-China relations and current events in the Middle East. Perspective cannot eliminate volatility but may at least narrow the range of oscillations in our responses.

A Loss of Perspective

In 2014, then US Secretary of State John Kerry criticised the Russian annexation of Crimea by calling it 19th century behaviour in the 21st century. There are many excellent reasons why the annexation of Crimea was unacceptable. But the reason advanced by Mr Kerry was not among them. In fact, it was absurd because the underlying assumption was that your adversary ought to share your values. But if your adversary shared your values, it would not be your adversary in the first place. Failure to recognize this simple fact and thus respond effectively, contributed to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine nine years later.

In January this year, speaking at Davos, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada called on middle powers who shared common values to work together to uphold an international order that he argued had ‘ruptured’ now that America was no longer willing to uphold it. The speech was widely acclaimed; Mr Carney spoke with the fervour of an Old Testament prophet sharing a revelation vouchsafed by God. But the content was trite, and his argument flawed by a fundamental internal contradiction.

The content was trite because although Mr Carney had apparently failed to notice, the countries of the Asia-Pacific had in fact already been doing exactly what he advocated for many years without the melodrama of evoking a world crumbling about their ears. The contradiction arose because among the values he espoused was, obviously, an order governed by rules. This was also what Mr Kerry meant when he talked about 21st century behaviour.

Rules, however, cannot operate effectively without a foundation of stability and stability requires deterrence and a balance of power. It is patently obvious that middle powers cannot by themselves either deter Russia or balance China, both of which in different ways are challenging the order whose rupture Mr Carney had lamented. So, if he was correct that America was no longer willing to uphold order, what middle powers could do would necessarily be limited in scope and could not uphold international order as he conceived it.

More than a decade – 12 years to be precise – separated the two statements. But the mistake made by Mr Kerry and Mr Carney was the same. This was to idealize and reify their idea of international order as if it had an objective reality.

The International Order

What do we mean by ‘international order’ anyway? The use of the phrase is so ubiquitous that we take its meaning for granted. In its common meaning and domestically, ‘order’ refers to some stable pattern of relationships underpinned by law or rules. It is a fundamental purpose of democratic politics to establish and maintain a consensus on domestic laws and rules. That consensus, once established, can be legitimately changed only through constitutionally mandated processes.

But to think of ‘order’ in the same way in international relations is to be dangerously naive about how states actually behave. International law and international rules are not autonomous realities that exist regardless of our ideas about them. Law is only one instrument in the toolkit of statecraft which also includes force and the threat of force, as well as diplomacy, unilateral action or multilateralism, and others.

There is no single tool that is fit for all purposes. States choose to use law or not to use law according to their interests. Interest – not law or rules or principles – is the primary organising concept of international relations. Most states comply with most of international law and most rules most of the time. They do so because it is in their interest to do so. But only a recklessly sanguine state would commit itself to comply with all of international law or every rule all the time under all circumstances. This is because while international relationships are not entirely anarchic, the unfortunate fact is that the world is still very largely a jungle, with different degrees of savagery in different regions.

The Jungle is Never Far Away

Europe seemed to be one of the tamest of regions. But a hundred years or so ago – and a century is a rather short time as history is reckoned – two of the most savage and destructive wars in history broke out in Europe; only 30 or so years ago, there was a vicious genocidal war in the Balkans, and, of course, war is on-going in Ukraine.

The Ukraine war came as a great shock to most Europeans – as if war in Europe was inconceivable. This puzzled me. After the Balkan war of the mid-1990s, it ought not to have been such a shock. Conflict is endemic in Africa and the Middle East, two regions that are practically on Europe’s doorstep, and human nature is the same everywhere. Europe is subject to the same vicissitudes of fickle fortune as any other region.

We in Singapore are fond – perhaps a little overly fond – of saying that a world governed in accordance with law is in the interest of small states. This seems so self-evident as to require no further comment; it is almost akin to saying water is wet. But the more salient question is whether we really live in such a world?

The honest answer is not all the time and only in certain domains. Water is not always wet or a liquid. Under certain conditions it becomes a solid or turns into a vapour. That is why we in Singapore have invested very heavily in a strong and technologically advanced military. This is at once both a necessary precaution against the day water may boil over and a means of ensuring that the temperatures of our relationships never reach boiling point. That is to say, strong deterrence makes for stable relationships.

Europe allowed its defence capabilities to degrade in the mistaken belief that the jungle had been permanently tamed. Europe is now paying the price of that delusion. Fortunately, most of Asia, whatever other mistakes we may have made, has never suffered from that particular delusion, or at least if we ever entertained it, did so only fleetingly.

Enduring Realities

The post-Second World War international order rested on two pillars. First, a balance of power that ultimately depended on nuclear deterrence. Second, a network of institutions based on the idea of law and rules constructed around the UN and Bretton Woods systems.

The first pillar has held up remarkably well. International stability still ultimately rests on the balance of terror. Nuclear disarmament – a nuclear-weapon free world – is another mythical creature, and chasing it is dangerous as it could undermine stability.

But the second pillar never worked as quite as envisaged by its founders. The UN system was based on a false premise: that the wartime anti-axis alliance would survive the defeat of the axis powers. And even when it worked, it was dysfunctional by design. The veto given to the five permanent members of the Security Council is a clear derogation of the principle of sovereign equality which is one of the most basic foundational ideas on which the UN is based. But the veto is a necessary sacrifice of principle to the necessity of maintaining balance.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian and political theorist, once pointed out that hypocrisy is an inherent quality of international relations. He argued that Americans being more uncomfortable than most other peoples with the idea of power, they have usually found it necessary to wrap up their exercise of power in ideas of universal significance.

President Trump – and in different ways, President Putin and President Xi – have ripped off the wrapping to expose the realities that have always existed beneath it – always existed for all states, big or small. Mr Trump’s personality is certainly unique but, seen in the perspective I have outlined, his actions are not uniquely capricious. In an interview with the New York Times in January this year he said that his exercise of power would only be restrained by his own morality and that his compliance with international law would be based on his own judgement of whether it was in accordance with US interests. That is as good a definition of sovereignty as anything written by Thomas Hobbes, Carl Schmidt, Jean Bodin or any political theorist anywhere who has reflected on the nature of sovereignty.

Like every country, the US now puts its interests first. American generosity was a tool in its global struggle with the Soviet Union. When the US opened its markets after the Second World War, it was not out of altruism or even primarily for economic benefit, but to bind its allies and friends to itself during the existential Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. China and post-Soviet Russia do not pose the same kind of challenge to the US as the former Soviet Union. You might call it the US reverting to a more normal definition of national interests and a return to the historical norm of how all states act after an exceptional period where the imperatives of the Cold War dictated a different approach.

The American policies that we had grown accustomed to were an artefact of a particular set of historical circumstances that are now past, will never return, and cannot be recreated. This is a new reality that we must accept whether we like it or not.

An Enduring Alliances?

NATO, and the global American alliance system generally, will survive a more transactional US. There is a very simple reason for this. Balance and deterrence whether against Russia or China are inconceivable without the US; there is no other real choice. So, American allies, partners and friends – all countries who understand the need for balance in geopolitics and the irreplaceable US role in maintaining balance – will adapt.

In April, Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim country with a long and proud tradition of non-alignment and a ‘free and active’ foreign policy, concluded a defence cooperation agreement with the US, and did so while the US was fighting a war against Iran, another Muslim country. Of course, Indonesia will continue to deal with China and Russia and with Iran too. But this is nevertheless a remarkable development.

Asia understood the new post-Cold War America earlier than other regions. Nobody in Asia liked Mr Trump’s tariffs. But, China excepted, nobody wasted much time threatening retaliation – as did Canada and Europe – or bewailing a cruel fate as too many in the West are still doing. We cut what deals we could. It would have come to that anyway, so why waste time and emotional energy?

Asia’s Balancer-in-Chief

The US, whatever its other gyrations of policy, has been remarkably consistent in maintaining equilibrium in Asia as off-shore balancer for half a century. Consistent and irreplaceable. That is why we do what we must to maintain relations with the US regardless of who occupies the White House. There is only one United States. It has not always been easy dealing with it, and it is more difficult than usual dealing with this administration. But since there is only one America, the ease or difficulty of dealing with it is moot.

America is not doing us a favour but is in pursuit of its own interests. Asia is an economically crucial region. America will not concede it to its competitors. Since the US withdrawal from Indochina, Asia – including formal US allies like Japan and South Korea – have always worked with the US on the basis of common interests, not the comforting illusion of common values. This is an easier – albeit not an easy – way of dealing with the more transactional post-Cold War America.

What will evolve is a looser, more fluid, more eclectic and more limited conception of order. Different configurations of states will form around specific issues according to their interests, and dissolve and reconstitute in different configurations around other issues as their interests dictate. Some configurations will include China or Russia but not the US; some will include the US but not China or Russia, and some may exclude all major powers.

We should learn to think of orders in the plural, rather than any universal order in the singular. The determining factor that will shape different configurations will be interests, not any conception of order based on universal values. This is not a bad thing; the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington, once pointed out that the logical consequence of universality was imperialism.

Singapore’s first and greatest foreign minister, Mr S. Rajaratnam, once said that every country has two foreign policies: a foreign policy of theology in which we all stand for high ideals, and a foreign policy of practical diplomacy which is what we need to do to survive in a jungle world. The difference is between what actually is and what we think – or pretend to think – ought to be. Every country needs and uses both types of foreign policy, but, Mr Rajaratnam argued, to confuse them is suicidal.

US-China Relations

When Mr Trump met Mr Xi Jinping in Beijing in May 2026, it was the first time in almost a decade that a sitting American president had visited Beijing. But much western media coverage of the summit missed the point and was generally puerile. Too much seemed to reflect dislike of Mr Trump and a determination to present his meeting as a failure. But it is only in Hollywood that two leaders and their aides huddle and emerge to triumphantly announce all problems resolved and peace in our time.

US-China competition is not going to go away. It is a new structural condition of post-Cold War international relations. All that can be done is manage it. The real significance of the recent summit was that it was held. And that it was held in the midst of a war in the Middle East that has placed China in an uncomfortable position, signals that both sides clearly wanted to stabilize their competition.

The specific agreements they reached – on trade and establishing boards of trade and investment – were means towards this end; they should be seen as tools for the management of competition and are less important in and of themselves. Management of competition is a process not a discrete event. It is not very meaningful to try and evaluate who got the better of whom at any particular point of a process. That will differ from issue to issue and over time.

Most of the issues, whether geopolitical or economic, that divide the US and China do not lend themselves to definitive resolution. But it is highly improbable that US-China competition will result in conflict. Mr Xi warned Mr Trump of the dangers of the Taiwan issue and evoked the Thucydides Trap; the latter is a rather silly theory by an otherwise brilliant academic. Either way, since the good professor had been kind enough to draw attention to the trap, the US and China would have to be particularly obtuse to walk into it. The theory also ignores nuclear deterrence which kept the peace between the US and the Soviet Union and will prevent war between the US and China. The risk is of accidents, not war by design.

Chinese sensitivities over Taiwan are a constant factor. Notwithstanding Mr Trump’s musings about arms sales to Taiwan giving the US leverage over China and possible delays in planned sales, the fact is the Taiwan Relations Act legally requires the US to make available to Taiwan what it needs for self-defence.

It has always been unclear how the US will respond to a Taiwan contingency; President Biden’s clarity about the US defending Taiwan was the exception and was promptly denied by his own officials each time he mentioned it. Much will depend on the nature of the contingency and on Taiwan’s own response. But I think a direct Chinese invasion of Taiwan is most improbable.

Iran’s Enduring Challenge

Whether unleashing a war against Iran was justified or not depends on whether one believes that this Iranian regime can be trusted with nuclear weapons and if one thinks it cannot be trusted, whether there were other means than war to prevent it from acquiring them. My view is that Iran should not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons and that diplomacy and sanctions have both failed to get Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapon ambitions. There was no other option than the use of force.

Yet regardless of one position on these issues, there are certain realities about countries with nuclear weapon ambitions that have to be faced. There are only two countries that had nuclear weapons and voluntarily gave them up: South Africa and Ukraine. And the latter has had reason to regret its decision. If it had not given up the nuclear weapons it inherited from the Soviet Union, Ukraine would not now be in an existential struggle for national survival. President Zelensky has publicly said as much on several occasions, and watching Ukraine struggle, other countries around the world have also drawn similar conclusions.

Among the casualties of the Ukraine war is the non-proliferation regime; I would be pleasantly surprised if South Africa were not quietly and a tad ruefully pondering whether its decision was in its best interest.

Once a country has nuclear weapon ambitions, you can only delay its acquisition of the weapons, because the knowledge of how to enrich fissionable material and construct a nuclear weapon cannot be erased no matter what damage to its capabilities are inflicted.

The damage to Iran’s capabilities and hence the delay imposed on its realisation of its nuclear ambitions is substantial. But Tehran will not give up its nuclear ambitions and the failure of its conventional defences has almost certainly enhanced them. Therefore, sooner or later, there will be another war. This is what Israel calls a ‘lawn-mower problem’ – you cut the grass but it will grow back so you will have to cut the grass again and again.

Iran’s strategic mistake was to close the Straits of Hormuz and its corollary, attacking the Gulf states. In the short term, disrupting energy supplies to the world gave Tehran leverage in a situation where it had almost no other cards to play. But this is a card that can be played effectively only once. Asserting sovereignty over the Straits has been unacceptable to almost every country, including China.

Furthermore, attacking the Gulf states has accentuated and solidified the distrust that already characterised their relationships with Iran. The Gulf states will also have drawn the obvious conclusion that the only effective balance to Iran are the US and Israel and will formally or informally enhance their defence relationships with these countries. Since periodic wars with Iran are well-nigh inevitable, these are permanent strategic liabilities to Tehran.

The harsh realities listed here are eternal verities of international relations. But they were masked during a short, exceptional period of world history of about 20 years in the immediate post-Cold War when Russia had not yet regained internal coherence and China was hiding its light and biding its time. That period is over and what we are now experiencing is closer to the historical norm of geopolitics.

The key to navigating the risks and uncertainties we face is to discard the habits of mind and expectations developed during that period and confront the world as it really is. Our countries and organisations have all survived and prospered under worse conditions and if we look at the world coldly and without illusion, there is no reason why we cannot do so again.

© Bilahari Kausikan, 2026, published by RUSI with permission of the author.

The views expressed in this Commentary are the author's, and do not represent those of RUSI or any other institution.

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