Mainstream American political leaders regularly argue that the United States adheres to, defends and promotes a “rules-based international order.” What’s that? It’s rarely defined.
The best summary I’ve been able to find was articulated by John Ikenberry of Princeton University, introduced by the Financial Times in 2023 as “an influential scholar whose former pupils populate the American government.”
“I think the rules-based order has a history that predates the U.S. and even predates 1945 and the great order-building efforts after World War II,” Ikenberry said.
He continues: “But if you were to try to identify what open rules-based order is, it’s a set of commitments by states to operate according to principles, rules and institutions that provide governance that is not simply dictated by who is most powerful. So it’s a set of environmental conditions for doing business — contracts, multilateral institutions — and it comes in many layers. At the deepest level it’s really the system of sovereignty. It’s the belief that the world has a kind of foundation built around self-determined states that respect each other. On top of that, you have these layers of treaties and institutions, culminating really in the United Nations system, building rules and principles around aspirations for the inclusion of all peoples and societies. Everybody gets a seat at the table that has a membership based on statehood. And then on top of that, even more work-oriented rules and institutions that came out of World War II that are based on problem-solving, regulating interdependence: the (International Monetary Fund), the World Bank, the (World Health Organization).”
If this is the rules-based international order, the U.S. is working overtime to undermine it.
At the core of an arrangement in which “self-determined states … respect each other” is formal diplomatic recognition. Countries open embassies and consulates on one another’s territory, exchange ambassadors and issue tourist and work visas so their citizens can visit one another. Most essentially, they acknowledge each other’s territorial integrity, right to exist and right to govern their populations as each sees fit.
At present, the U.S. neither maintains nor seeks diplomatic relations with North Korea, Syria, Iran or Afghanistan. As the more powerful potential partner, the bulk of the blame and responsibility for the lack of ties lies with the U.S. Beginning in the 1950s, for example, the U.S. unilaterally imposed crippling economic sanctions against North Korea for having committed the sin of not losing the Korean War. U.S. sanctions against Iran date to the 1979 Islamic Revolution that overthrew the American-backed dictator, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. After negotiating its withdrawal from Afghanistan with the Taliban, the U.S. closed its massive embassy in Kabul, ending consular services. (The U.S. also does not have formal diplomatic relations with isolationist Bhutan, but ties are friendly.)
The U.S. seems to view the establishment of diplomatic relations as a reward for good behavior. In fact, their purpose is to maintain means of communications to resolve conflicts and keep one another informed as needed. If the U.S. wanted diplomatic relations with the aforementioned countries, it could have them.
For “everybody (to get) a seat at the table that has a membership based on statehood,” the goal is a world in which every person on the planet has citizenship of an internationally recognized nation-state. However, millions of people live in places that, as far as the U.N. and other international governing bodies are concerned, might as well as not exist, like Kashmir, Palestine, Taiwan and post-Soviet frozen-conflict zones like Abkhazia, South Ossetia and the Transnistria. Along with stateless people like the Roma in Europe, the Gaalje’el of Kenya and Burkino Fasans living in Cote d’Ivoire, the U.N. estimates that 4.4 million people on the planet don’t have a legal home and live in diplomatic purgatory.
The U.S.’s geopolitical policy of regional disruption — divide and conquer, or at least divide and keep weak — helps maintain this state of affairs. The U.S. maintains favorable economic and political ties to smaller nation-states that feel threatened by their larger neighbors all over the world, especially outside Europe. Though the U.S. does not recognize Taiwan as a sovereign entity and officially maintains that it belongs to China, America sends billions of dollars of year in cash and weapons to Taiwan to try to keep China off balance. U.S. military aid props up the government of Ukraine, which stripped many residents of the eastern, ethnic-Russian Donbas of citizenship, rendering them stateless until Russia annexed the region following the start of the war in 2022.
It goes without saying that the U.S. does not respect the sovereignty of other countries. It invaded Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq in 2003, Haiti in 2004, Libya in 2011, Syria and Yemen in 2014 … the list goes on. None of these interventions was justified or legally approved by Congress.
Further to the U.S.’s bullying other countries, it routinely weaponizes “institutions that came out of World War II that are based on problem-solving, regulating interdependence: the IMF, the World Bank, the WHO.” In 2014, for example, then-President Barack Obama ejected Russia from the G8 group of the world’s biggest economies — now it’s the G7 — to punish Russia for its annexation of Crimea, despite reports by international observers and Western pollsters that the Crimean plebiscite vote was free and fair. The IMF kicked out Russia from consultation meetings after the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian war began, but those talks are now set to resume. And Russia was banned from the 2024 Paris Olympics. These sanctions all stemmed from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. If invading another country is just cause for trying to turn a country into a pariah, however, what could be more ridiculous than the effort being led by the U.S. — which has invaded 10 countries, most of them distant from its own borders, over the last 20 years.
Mahatma Gandhi, asked what he thought of Western civilization, supposedly replied: “I think it would be a good idea.” A rules-based international order? It would be a good idea — if there were some way for the U.S. to stop trying to kill it in its crib.
Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis.
