Three paths to the collapse of the unipolar global order.
Nothing lasts forever: every international order eventually comes to an end. The Pax Romana stabilized the Mediterranean world until it began to decline.
The British world order flourished in the 19th century, but it disintegrated amid two world wars in the 20th century. Today, in a chaotic world led erratically by the United States, one cannot help but wonder whether the American-led order is collapsing.
The American-centered world order emerged after the end of World War II in 1945 and made the United States the undisputed hegemonic power in the world for many years. But the pressures on this order—both from rivals and from within the United States itself—are mounting.
Bloomberg News recently quoted Brendan Sims, a prominent historian at the University of Cambridge, as saying that international orders usually end in one of three ways: through defeat in war or a catastrophic failure of deterrence; through economic decline or a disintegration of political and economic arrangements; or through a breakdown in respect for the rules and norms that guide them.
The American order has been remarkably resilient, but its collapse is increasingly likely because the United States has accumulated risks in all three dimensions at the same time.