Someone once remarked that the world is increasingly starting to resemble a vast psychiatric hospital. No offense is intended toward mental health institutions, which serve an important purpose, but it's hard to deny that we've recently witnessed a rapid erosion of the world order or more precisely the principles that underpin it.

This isn't the result of some sudden explosion that's thrown everything into chaos. Rather, it's been a slow crumbling that has continued for years. And if we look even more closely, signs of this disintegration have been visible for decades. They simply weren't as widespread back then and the warning signs were seen as outliers. Like a passing cold or a brief muscle spasm, something that would soon go away. But it didn't. It got worse.

In today's context, one of the key accelerants of this process seems to be the actions of the U.S. administration in dismantling the international order. For too long, the United States was considered the guarantor of the existing global system. But now it has become clear that there's a hole in international politics the size of the United States.

At the turn of the last century, people still believed that international order meant a system of rules, institutions and obligations. Today, we live in a world where laws no longer define the boundaries of what is permissible and international institutions have lost not only their effectiveness but also their symbolic weight. Power is once again becoming or has already become the dominant factor in interstate relations. The international order did not vanish overnight; it gradually dissolved through compromises, exceptions and, all too often, through silence.

International law has always relied on the goodwill of states. But that goodwill has been in short supply for decades. Time and again, events that violated the rules were dismissed as exceptions or aberrations. It was always assumed that violators of the world order would be held to account and punished if necessary under agreed-upon principles. But more often than not, that never happened.

Great powers have always enjoyed greater rights, while smaller nations have had to make do with smaller ones. Just look at the track record of the International Criminal Court: most of its cases have targeted African despots or the occasional figure from a former socialist country. This is one of the main reasons the Global South accuses the Global West of discrimination.

More recent examples are even starker. Arrest warrants were issued for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges. But everyone knows the chances of either of them ever ending up in the dock in The Hague are vanishingly small.

Furthermore, a number of countries, including the United States, Russia, Israel and several others, have refused to join the court's statute. In other words, these countries do not recognize the court's authority to try their citizens. Hungary has now joined this club, announcing its withdrawal from the Rome Statute in connection with the Israeli prime minister's visit.

The United States has taken its opposition to the court particularly far. Shortly after the court was established in 1998, Congress passed a law known as the "Hague Invasion Act." It authorized the president to use all necessary means to secure the release of U.S. government officials if they were ever detained by order of the court. So, undermining international structures and ignoring their authority is not a new development.

At the same time, it's worth noting that even authoritarian regimes feel the need to justify their actions under international law. Russia has worked hard to cast its full-scale aggression against Ukraine in a legal light. Hamas, similarly, sought to justify its terrorist attack on Israel through legal arguments.

Israel has repeatedly cited international law to justify its massive assaults on Gaza. And for decades, it has ignored UN resolutions by establishing settlements on the occupied West Bank. This underscores the fact that international law is, at its core, a collection of convenient words — words that often lose their connection to reality.

International organizations are a whole other story. Russia is now a member of fewer and fewer of them, while the U.S. under the Trump administration systematically withdrew from such bodies. One might expect the United Nations to help, but it doesn't. The UN is a well-intentioned organization whose weakness was built in from the start through the veto power granted to permanent members of the Security Council. This arrangement allows five countries to do whatever they like within the global framework and then block any condemnation. Changing that situation would require those same five countries to agree, which will almost certainly never happen.

What we're seeing now is likely a natural process that's simply moving in a negative direction. No law, including international law, is set in stone. Everything changes with circumstances. And it may be that we are simply in a historical phase where states are returning to the principles of power that governed most of human history. Only now, that power is being exercised at a vastly more destructive and dangerous level.

This points to a shift in the world order. International organizations may not disappear, but their roles and uses will change. The gap between words and deeds will widen and the changes will be driven not only by international developments but by domestic ones as well.

There's no point even mentioning Russia when it comes to democracy. But right now, it's the U.S. administration that is dismantling its own democratic system. The country long regarded as the anchor of the Western democratic order can no longer claim that role. That concept can be put to rest. The United States is no longer the solution — it is increasingly part of the problem. And it's time we got used to that. The sooner, the better.

At a time when the United States has lost its role as the leader of the democratic world or indeed the international world, China is on the rise. As the U.S. pulls out of international organizations, China is deepening its engagement, trying to reshape these institutions in line with its own vision. As the U.S. cuts back on development aid and support for the Third World, China is quick to step in. So the world may be moving toward a new order, one increasingly shaped according to Chinese models.

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