Aslı Bâli and Samuel Moyn
America is in decline. And so is Pax America: the American-led world order. While there are many genuine dangers of American decline, there has never been a better chance to say clearly how much the unipolar order always left to be desired, and to imagine a multipolar world that might secure peace better than the old order ever did.
Idealizing the American peace since 1945 and its “rules-based international order” – a phrase that came into common use only decades later, but never mind – is a misguided response to our current situation.
The dominant response has been a futile effort to get the good old days back: liberal commentators mourn the fact that Atlanticism is under threat, and issue sentimental defenses of lost multilateralism, and, often enough, a hankering for morally uplifting wars to wage.
When charged with idealizing the past, these nostalgists retreat to a defense of useful illusions: yes, the old order lied, but at least it lied in the name of ideals.
The speech by the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, at Davos in 2026 was greeted in some quarters as daringly honest for saying aloud that, at least for great powers, the old talk of ideals and rules had always rested on a pleasant myth. But that was hardly news.
And Carney was wrong to suggest that the lie had once made the world better. Few outside the Atlantic core ever mistook Pax Americana for the best of all possible worlds. Carney soon exposed the limits of his own candor when, only weeks later, he publicly supported Trump’s war of choice against Iran.
The old order of high-minded hypocrisy was never good enough for the global south; it was not simply ruined by a president offering too raw a deal.
More important, the conventional responses to our moment are not only unconvincing and undesirable; they are also unavailable. That is a good thing. Instead of trying to revive a flawed and morally bankrupt former world order, the current moment calls for an antiwar agenda suited to an inevitably plural and rivalrous world.
An antiwar agenda for this world should begin with four commitments….
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/29/us-decline-world-order-replacement
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