The Unravelling, When the Ghosts of the 1930s Haunt the 2020s
The Liberal International Order and the Return of Unmediated Anarchy
There is a photograph from June 26, 1945, that captures a moment of profound optimism amidst the ruins of the most destructive war in human history. Harry S. Truman stands before the delegates assembled in San Francisco for the founding of the United Nations, his words carrying the weight of a world that had peered into the abyss and recoiled. “We all have to recognise—no matter how great our strength,” the American President declared, “that we must deny ourselves the license to do always as we please. No one nation… can or should expect any special privilege which harms any other nation… Unless we are all willing to pay that price, no organisation for world peace can accomplish its purpose. And what a reasonable price that is!”
Those words, if spoken today by almost any world leader, would be met with cynicism or outright derision. The world that once imagined it had buried the demons of the 1930s now finds them prowling again—less dramatic in their initial appearance, perhaps, but no less corrosive in their cumulative effect. The post-war order, born in San Francisco with such high hopes, is not so much collapsing as it is quietly, steadily unravelling.
This is not a lament for a golden age that never existed. The liberal international order was always imperfect, always hypocritical, always shot through with the contradictions of its great-power architects. But it was also, for seven decades, a framework within which disputes could be mediated, norms could be established, and the naked exercise of power could at least be required to wear the clothing of legitimacy. That framework is now fraying to the point of dysfunction, and the consequences for every nation—including India—are profound.
The Paradox of Power and the Erosion of Restraint
The founding insight of the United Nations system was that power needed to be restrained not by eliminating it but by channelling it through institutions. The Security Council gave the great powers privileged status—the permanent seats, the veto—in exchange for their commitment to a rules-based system. It was a bargain: the strong would get special privileges, but they would also accept that their power was not unlimited, that they too must submit to certain constraints.
That bargain has always been tested. The Cold War saw the veto used hundreds of times, paralysing the Council on the most critical questions. The United States intervened in Vietnam, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, both in flagrant violation of the Charter’s prohibition on the use of force. Yet even in their transgressions, the great powers felt compelled to offer justifications, to invoke exceptions, to claim that their actions were consistent with some broader principle. Hypocrisy, as the French saying goes, is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. And tribute, however insincere, still acknowledges the authority of the virtue it dishonours.
What has changed in recent years is the shift from hypocrisy to indifference. When a major power no longer feels the need to justify its actions in the language of international law, when it treats treaties as optional and alliances as transactional, the entire edifice begins to crumble. The contemporary posture of the United States under Donald Trump’s leadership—withdrawing from international organisations, dismissing multilateral agreements, treating sovereignty as negotiable—represents not merely a policy shift but a philosophical one. It is the assertion that power is its own justification, that might is not merely a fact of international life but its only meaningful reality.
Analysts have sometimes compared this approach to the way Italian drivers treat red traffic lights: not as binding commands but as optional suggestions, useful when they serve your purposes, ignorable when they do not. The metaphor is apt, but it understates the stakes. Traffic lights work because enough drivers treat them as authoritative, even when no policeman is watching. When enough drivers decide that red is merely advisory, the system breaks down not gradually but catastrophically.
The Contagion of Unilateralism
The danger is not simply that one power acts unilaterally. It is that unilateralism becomes contagious. If Washington can disregard Venezuela’s sovereignty with minimal consequence, what stops Beijing from concluding that Taiwan’s status is similarly malleable? If Moscow can treat Ukraine as a historical correction rather than a sovereign state, what argument remains that would constrain such revisionism? If New Delhi decides that a smaller neighbour’s objections are an inconvenience rather than a constraint, what principle prevents that calculation?
The question ceases to be whether international law prohibits aggression. It becomes whether the target is powerful enough to raise the costs of it. This is not a hypothetical concern. We have already seen the annexation of Crimea, the military pressure on Taiwan, the grinding conflict in Ukraine, the subversion of democracies through cyber and disinformation campaigns. Each of these, viewed in isolation, can be explained by local circumstances and particular grievances. Viewed together, they reveal a pattern: the guardrails that once constrained great-power behaviour are weakening.
For decades, the fear of a third world war acted as a grim stabiliser. The horror of total conflict kept lesser conflicts in check because no one could predict where escalation might lead. But if the fear recedes—if the great powers convince themselves that they can manage limited conflicts without triggering broader conflagrations—the world risks not one great war but a proliferation of smaller, grinding wars. Each too limited to trigger global alarm, yet collectively capable of eroding the foundations of peace.
This is the world of the 1930s in slow motion. Not the dramatic collapse into global war, but the gradual erosion of constraints, the normalisation of aggression, the acceptance that might makes right. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 did not trigger world war. The Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 did not trigger world war. The German remilitarisation of the Rhineland in 1936 did not trigger world war. Each was a step, and each step was tolerated because the alternative seemed worse. Until suddenly the steps had crossed a threshold from which there was no return.
The Retreat from Multilateralism and the Vacuum It Creates
Compounding this erosion of restraint is the systematic retreat from multilateralism. The withdrawal of the world’s most powerful state from dozens of international organisations and agreements—UNESCO, the World Health Organisation, the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, arms-control frameworks—signals a deeper scepticism about the very idea of shared governance. It is not merely that the United States disagrees with particular policies. It is that the entire project of solving problems through collective action is dismissed as naive or self-defeating.
The tragedy is that the twenty-first century’s most urgent challenges are precisely those that no nation can solve alone. Pandemics do not respect borders. Climate change does not pause at immigration checkpoints. Cyber threats originate from jurisdictions that may be half a world away. Financial contagion spreads through interconnected markets faster than any regulator can respond. These are, in Kofi Annan’s memorable phrase, “problems without passports”, indifferent to sovereignty and immune to unilateral solutions.
When the world’s most powerful state steps back from collective action, the vacuum does not remain empty. Others step in, shaping institutions, norms and standards in ways that reflect their own preferences. China’s Belt and Road Initiative, its dominance of global supply chains, its increasing influence in international organisations—these are not simply the result of Chinese ambition. They are also the consequence of American retreat. The result is not merely a shift in influence but a fragmentation of global governance itself. We are moving from a world of relatively coherent, if imperfect, multilateral institutions to a world of competing blocs, overlapping jurisdictions, and conflicting norms.
For a country like India, which has historically invested heavily in multilateralism as a hedge against great-power domination, this fragmentation is deeply threatening. Without strong international institutions, smaller and middle powers are at the mercy of the strong. They must navigate a world where alliances are transactional, where commitments are revocable, and where the only reliable guarantee of security is the capacity for self-defence.
The Fluidity of the Contemporary Order
We inhabit a world that has become profoundly fluid. It is increasingly difficult for any nation—not only India but also its larger competitors and allies—to say with certainty where it stands in a shifting geopolitical order. Old certainties have frayed. Alliances that once seemed eternal now appear contingent. The transatlantic partnership, the foundation of post-war stability, is strained by divergent interests and mutual suspicion. The Indo-Pacific, once a geographical description, has become a contested concept, with competing definitions reflecting competing ambitions.
This fluidity is not merely a matter of policy. It is a matter of psychology. Leaders who grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, who internalised its certainties and its constraints, are being replaced by a generation for whom those certainties are history. They have not experienced the horror of great-power war. They have not internalised the caution that such horror produces. They are more willing to test boundaries, to take risks, to treat the unthinkable as merely another option.
History, that indefatigable saboteur of good intentions, continues to complicate the present. Grievances are inherited more reliably than wisdom. Old wars cast long shadows. Unresolved injustices continue to poison relations between states. Leaders are asked to negotiate peace while being reminded never to forget past wounds. The Kashmir dispute, the Taiwan Strait, the Korean Peninsula, the Balkans, the Caucasus—each is a palimpsest of historical injuries, overlaid but never erased.
The Hollowing Out of Institutions
Perhaps the most profound obstacle to a renewed international order lies in the paradox of power itself. Those entrusted with maintaining global order also possess the greatest capacity to disrupt it. The system rests on their willingness not to do so. That willingness has faded in many cases.
The institutions established after the Second World War were noble in conception but unequal in design. They reflected the hierarchies of power prevailing at the time of their creation. Authority was concentrated in the hands of a few, while responsibility was shared by all. The Security Council’s permanent five members, each with veto power, were the victors of 1945. They wrote the rules, and they exempted themselves from the fullest application of those rules.
This imbalance has always been a source of tension. But it has become increasingly unsustainable as the distribution of power has shifted. Why should a Europe that no longer dominates the world retain privileges that reflect its nineteenth-century pre-eminence? Why should India, with 1.4 billion people and the world’s fifth-largest economy, have no permanent seat at the table? Why should Africa, home to the world’s fastest-growing populations, be effectively excluded from the council that authorises intervention in its affairs?
When powerful states act as both guardians and exceptions to the rules, the legitimacy of the system suffers. And legitimacy matters. Rules that are seen as imposed by the strong on the weak, that are applied selectively, that serve the interests of some while ignoring the grievances of others—such rules eventually lose their authority. They become, in the eyes of those they disadvantage, mere instruments of power, deserving of no more respect than power itself.
The Patchwork That Was Never a Monolith
What makes this moment especially fraught is that the rule-based liberal international order was never a monolith. It was always a patchwork: of norms, institutions, habits of cooperation, and shared expectations. Its ingredients included sovereign equality, human rights, multilateral problem-solving, collective security, and open trade. Each of these has been violated repeatedly—by great powers and smaller states alike, by democracies and autocracies, by the architects of the system and its supposed beneficiaries.
Yet the order endured. It endured because enough states believed that the alternative was worse. It endured because the costs of exit were higher than the costs of staying and trying to reform from within. It endured because even the most powerful states recognised, however grudgingly, that their long-term interests were served by a system that restrained others even as it occasionally restrained them.
Today, that belief is wavering. Sovereignty is breached with increasing brazenness. Non-aggression is honoured in the breach. Collective security is paralysed by vetoes. Trade is weaponised. Human rights are dismissed as ideological. Multilateral institutions are starved of legitimacy and resources. International law, never more than a fragile consensus, is increasingly treated as optional.
Institutions may possess statutes and mandates, yet without political will their authority remains largely aspirational. When powerful states ignore international law or apply it selectively, institutions lose credibility. Peace cannot be enforced by rules alone. It requires good faith, and good faith is increasingly in short supply.
The Persistence Amidst the Decay
And yet—and this is crucial—the order is not dead. It limps, it strains, it disappoints, but it persists. International courts still adjudicate disputes. Peacekeepers still deploy to conflict zones. Trade flows still depend on predictable rules. The World Health Organisation still coordinates responses to pandemics, however imperfectly. The Paris climate accord still provides a framework for collective action, however inadequate.
Middle powers—from Europe to India to South Africa to Canada to Brazil to Japan—still invest in multilateralism because they know that without it, they are at the mercy of ruthlessly self-interested hegemons. They accept Dag Hammarskjöld’s famous dictum that “the United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.” Sometimes the best the world order can do is to prevent things from getting worse. That is not nothing. In a world sliding toward chaos, preventing things from getting worse is a significant achievement.
India’s own foreign policy reflects this ambivalence. New Delhi has never been entirely comfortable with the liberal international order, seeing in it the imprint of Western dominance and the hypocrisy of selective application. Yet India has also been one of the order’s most consistent defenders, contributing troops to peacekeeping missions, participating in multilateral negotiations, and arguing for reform rather than rejection. This is not inconsistency; it is the recognition that the alternatives to order are worse.
The Interregnum
We are living in what the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci might have called an interregnum: the old world is dying, the new world is struggling to be born, and in the meantime, all kinds of morbid phenomena appear. The old order—the post-1945 settlement, with all its flaws—is fading. What will replace it remains unclear.
The possibilities are multiple and not mutually exclusive. A Sino-centric architecture, with Beijing at the centre of Asian and eventually global governance? A world of competing blocs, with the United States, China, Russia, India, and Europe each leading their own spheres of influence? A patchwork of issue-based coalitions, with cooperation on climate change coexisting with conflict on trade and security? Or a return to unmediated anarchy, where the only rule is that there are no rules?
Each of these futures is imaginable. Each has its advocates and its opponents. Each would have different consequences for different nations, different regions, different populations. The outcome will not be determined by any single decision or any single actor. It will emerge from the interaction of countless choices, countless calculations, countless miscalculations.
The danger is not that the system collapses overnight in a dramatic crisis that mobilises the world to rebuild. The danger is that it decays slowly, incrementally, imperceptibly—until one day we wake up and realise that the institutions and norms we took for granted have simply evaporated, leaving a vacuum filled by opportunism and coercion.
The Task for This Generation
The promise of 1945 was that law could tame power. The peril of today is that power may once again tame law. The task for this generation is not to resurrect the past—that past is gone, and much of it does not deserve resurrection. The task is to prevent the future from sliding into a world where the only real rule is that there are no rules at all.
This requires clear-eyed realism about the nature of power, but also stubborn idealism about the possibility of restraint. It requires recognising that international institutions are imperfect, often unjust, and frequently ineffective—but also that they are all we have. It requires accepting that great powers will always seek to bend the rules to their advantage, but insisting that the rules themselves must remain visible, must remain available as a standard against which behaviour can be judged.
For India, this moment presents both dangers and opportunities. The danger is that a fragmenting order leaves India exposed to pressures it cannot resist and conflicts it cannot control. The opportunity is that India, as a large democracy with a growing economy and a tradition of strategic autonomy, can help shape whatever order emerges. Not by imposing its will—India lacks the power for that—but by demonstrating that there is an alternative to both American dominance and Chinese hegemony. By showing that multilateralism can serve the interests of the global South as well as the global North. By insisting that sovereignty and human rights are not opposites but complements.
The ghosts of the 1930s are prowling. Whether they can be contained depends not on any single nation but on the collective willingness to learn from history rather than repeat it. That willingness is, at best, uncertain. But uncertainty is not inevitability. The future remains to be made.
Q&A: Unpacking the New World Disorder
Q1: What was the fundamental bargain of the post-1945 international order, and why is it unravelling?
A: The fundamental bargain of the post-1945 order, embodied in the United Nations Charter, was that great powers would receive privileged status—permanent seats on the Security Council, veto power—in exchange for their commitment to a rules-based system. They would accept that their power was not unlimited and that they too must submit to certain constraints. This bargain is now unravelling because the shift from hypocrisy to indifference. Previously, even when great powers violated norms, they felt compelled to offer justifications in the language of international law, thereby acknowledging its authority. Today, major powers increasingly treat international rules as optional, sovereignty as negotiable, and multilateral commitments as disposable when inconvenient. This erosion of restraint, particularly by the world’s most powerful state, creates a contagion effect, encouraging others to similarly disregard norms and legal constraints.
Q2: How does the comparison to Italian drivers treating red traffic lights illuminate contemporary great-power behaviour?
A: The metaphor captures the shift from rules as binding commands to rules as optional suggestions. In Italy, the stereotype suggests, drivers treat red lights as advisory—useful when they serve your purposes, ignorable when they do not. This works only because enough drivers still treat lights as authoritative. When enough drivers decide that red is merely optional, the system fails catastrophically. Similarly, international law and norms function because enough states treat them as binding, even when inconvenient. When major powers signal that treaties, sovereignty, and multilateral commitments are merely optional—to be honoured when convenient and discarded when not—they undermine the entire system’s effectiveness. The traffic light analogy understates the stakes: traffic violations cause accidents; norm violations cause wars.
Q3: Why is the retreat from multilateralism by major powers particularly dangerous for middle powers like India?
A: Middle powers like India have historically invested in multilateralism as a hedge against great-power domination. Strong international institutions, clear norms, and predictable rules create space for smaller and middle powers to advance their interests without relying solely on military or economic might. When the world’s most powerful state retreats from multilateralism, it creates a vacuum that other powers—most notably China—fill, shaping institutions and norms to reflect their own preferences. For India, this fragmentation is deeply threatening. Without robust multilateral frameworks, New Delhi must navigate a world where alliances are transactional, commitments are revocable, and the only reliable guarantee of security is self-sufficiency. This is a far more dangerous and unpredictable environment than the one multilateralism was designed to create.
Q4: What does the text mean when it describes the contemporary moment as an “interregnum”?
A: The term “interregnum,” borrowed from the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci, describes a period of transition when the old order is dying but the new order has not yet been born. During such interregnums, “all kinds of morbid phenomena appear.” The post-1945 liberal international order—with all its flaws, hypocrisies, and inequalities—is visibly fading. Its institutions are hollowed out, its norms are violated with impunity, and its legitimacy is increasingly questioned. Yet no coherent alternative has emerged to replace it. We face multiple possibilities: a Sino-centric architecture, a world of competing blocs, issue-based coalitions, or outright anarchy. The danger is not dramatic collapse but gradual decay—a slow erosion that leaves a vacuum filled by opportunism and coercion. We are living in that vacuum now, uncertain which future will emerge from the fog of transition.
Q5: What task does the text identify for the current generation, and what role might India play?
A: The task is not to resurrect the post-1945 order—that past is gone, and much of it does not deserve resurrection. The task is to prevent the future from sliding into a world where the only real rule is that there are no rules at all. This requires clear-eyed realism about power combined with stubborn idealism about the possibility of restraint. For India specifically, this moment presents both dangers and opportunities. The danger is exposure to pressures it cannot resist and conflicts it cannot control. The opportunity is to help shape whatever order emerges—not by imposing its will, but by demonstrating an alternative to both American dominance and Chinese hegemony. India can show that multilateralism can serve the global South as well as the global North, that sovereignty and human rights are complements not opposites, and that a large democracy can navigate between competing powers without sacrificing its autonomy or its values. This is not a guaranteed outcome, but a possibility worth pursuing.
