Knowing the treaty processes behind these organizations, this is a generational shift that cannot easily be undone.

One day the USA will just announce without preamble that they’ll leave NATO or the United Nations Organization.

Every day I’m surprised I’m still surprised by these developments.

Yes and no.

As a last resort, the threat of violence (or enforced consequences more generally) is ultimately behind the authority of any institution.

But legal and institutional frameworks can persist if power to inflict consequences is distributed and governed by rules, the incompliance with which is again sanctioned, and so on. The system is then kept stable by preventing consolidation of power with few actors and not tolerating arbitrariness in how it is welded. The fact that any authority is ultimately rooted in the threat of violence does not mean that we as social and reasonable animals cannot find reasonable and stable arrangement that should prevent us from actually having to resort to violence all too often.

And we have absolutely slipped up in this regard. Relying on one party (the USA) as the primary locus is power in NATO and the world to keep peace. Allowing big social media platforms to consolidate and grow beyond any reason. Turning a blind eye to violations of international law

Let’s appreciate what this means for the global order.

Russia has proactively attacked Ukraine. Now the US has attacked Venezuela. If China ever needed a permissive international environment to attack Taiwan, this attack was a major step in this direction.

We are quickly sliding back to a world of great powers, where might makes right and hence smaller countries will be bullied into submission without any concerted opposition by what remains of the ‘international community’.

If the US gets away with this, the same is going to happen to Panama in the not too distant futute and to Greenland soon after.

Unless Russia is burned out after the Uktain war, they might try their hand at the Baltics.

Should Russia collapse, China might integrate some of the Siberian regions.

And so on.

I wonder how this all will end.