World Order at Risk, Warn US Security Experts

World War II ended 80 years ago with the U.S. emerging as the go-to leader of implementing and enforcing a new world order against annexation and other aggressions among nations.

Today, the U.S. is putting that power in the rubbish bin, panelists said in a CERAWeek by S&P Global conference session in March.

“We’ve had an order. It has worked pretty well for those 80 years,” Richard Haass, senior counselor with advisory firm Centerview Partners, said.

Haass was an adviser to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration, chaired negotiations that ended the conflict in Northern Ireland, was a special assistant to President George H.W. Bush and was a senior director on the National Security Council.

“And normally, political orders come to an end in one of two ways,” he said.

Typically, it’s by becoming a less-strong world power.

“Either they’re overwhelmed by a revisionist power that doesn’t accept them and has the strength to do something about it,” Haass said.

Or it’s an inside job: “The country is promoting the order to crumble from within.”

Examples are the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and the Soviet Union.

In the 2025 world order, though, “what’s so crazy about this moment, so unique about it, is it’s the first time I can think of [when] the country that built the order and maintained the order is now dismantling the order,” Haass said.

“That is a first in history.”

Carlos Pascual, the session’s moderator and senior vice president, geopolitics and international affairs, for S&P Global, had asked panelists for a few “watch words” from their historical experience to give people some perspective on how to view current world events.

Pascual was U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in the George W. Bush administration, ambassador to Mexico during the Obama administration and special assistant to President Bill Clinton for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia on the National Security Council.

Centerview’s Haass said that looking to history to inform what is happening today is difficult to provide.

There is no past to provide a prologue.

“We have never exactly seen this happen before and how it plays out,” Haass said. “And I would assume it continues to play out.”

Angela Stent, a senior adviser to The Brookings Institution’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, said, “The most unpredictable element in global politics now is the United States.”

Stent is a professor emerita of government and foreign service at Georgetown University, was a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council, served under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and was a senior adviser to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

The Trump administration is frequently “changing positions, saying different things, saying contradictory things,” she said.

“The thing to watch is, does this continue? Is this the way that it’s going to be going forward?”

Will world leaders and their constituencies continue to be “unsure of what the next move will be and people are confused by all of it? Or will there be more clarity going forward?”

There isn’t a good answer to that yet, she concluded.

Haass said, “I don’t assume this is a kind of prelude to going back to tradition. I also think it’s too late to go back to certain traditions.

“So, I actually think, for those of you who like to watch the tectonic plates move, for those of you who like to get a close-up view of history, this is your moment.”

It’s a feast for the world’s powers that are unallied with the U.S.

The U.S. is in an economic war with longtime friends—and free countries: Canada and Mexico.

Trump doesn’t like China but doesn’t support NATO either and hasn’t stated support of Taiwan, for example.

Elizabeth Economy, Hargrove senior fellow with the Hoover Institution, said, “I am shocked.”

Many of Trump’s actions are “what China would like to see,” she said.

Hargrove was the senior adviser on China in the Commerce Department in the Biden administration, is on the board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and was vice chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on the Future of China.

“So, basically when [China’s] Xi Jinping says that China and Russia together are ushering in changes not seen in a century, it is all about the dissolution of the current rules-based order,” she said.

“And now he can say, ‘President Trump is joining us to usher in these changes.’”

Meanwhile, The Brookings Institution’s Stent noted, Trump has been cozy with Vladimir Putin.

But the idea that “if you offer Russia a carrot, then it’ll make concessions” is misinformed, she added.

“In my experience of looking at what Russia’s been doing for a long time, the Russians eat the carrots or they hit you on the head with the carrots,” Stent said.

Putin wouldn’t have launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 without the backing of China.

“The Chinese have helped the Russians to the extent that they’re winning the war,” she said.

The two countries “have a similar view: They want to get rid of an American-dominated world.”

The idea that Russia will pivot away from China “fails to understand the reality of how important China is as not an ally, but at least a partner with no limits to Russia,” Stent said.

“I don’t think the Russian view of that’s going to change.”