What remains when the vocabulary of order loses its authority is not an alternative vocabulary. It is a silence filled by force, transaction, and the management of immediate interests.
The phrase "rules-based international order" has become, in the years since 2014 and more sharply since 2022, a contested term of art. Its critics — primarily though not exclusively in Beijing and Moscow — argue that it is a euphemism for American hegemony, a Western legal vocabulary imposed without consent on states that had no role in its construction. Its defenders argue that it describes real achievements in reducing interstate violence, enabling trade, and establishing norms that benefit weaker states disproportionately.
Both positions contain truth. The "rules-based order" was built predominantly by the Western powers after 1945, reflects their interests and legal traditions, and has been applied selectively in ways that weaken its universal claims. These are legitimate criticisms. They do not, however, establish what should replace the order, or whether its replacement would benefit those who claim to suffer under it.
The deeper problem is not the content of the rules but the collapse of shared investment in them. An international order is not self-enforcing. It requires states to believe that the system's maintenance is in their interest even when particular rules operate against their preferences. That belief — partial, contingent, never universal — has eroded among several major powers simultaneously.
What remains when the vocabulary of order loses its authority is not an alternative vocabulary. It is a silence filled by force, transaction, and the management of immediate interests without reference to rules. This condition has a name: it is the normal condition of international relations before the construction of the post-1945 system. We are not there yet. But the direction of travel is visible.
