I thought it would be useful to have a thread regarding the end of the “rules based order” in this inter-war period. It is clear that the UN isn’t functioning. The outdated permanent membership system of the security council and the veto power of those members has hobbled it. NATO is no longer reliable. The US has hobbled that. Great powers are overwriting the rules they themselves created, and are competing with each other to grab as much as they can before they need to confront each other. Middle powers (Germany, Japan) are taking steps towards rearming. It very much feels like what happened with the League of Nations. I find Mark Carney to be the most clearheaded world leader when it comes to the rupture of the post WW2 era. His recent talk at the World Economic Forum was a great speech IMO. I am wondering what systems will replace the post WW2 institutions, or if it will just be replaced by bilateralism/unilateralism into the great power struggle is resolved through war. To the Americans in this thread - I suspect you will end up being the bad guys in the next world war.
We're not all bad guys. Hoping the skin tone will let them know that I had absolutely no agency in anything that America's done, ever.
The good news is, after World War 3, what’s left of humanity will be more concerned about surviving the nuclear ice age than getting a Ph.D. In history.
Check! If one is of a certain age, these times we are living in are a real kick to the head! Confusing to the younger generations and yet hovering on that Brave New World to us of some age. Living in what some of us did not expect to occur until we were old. Like when us soccer junkies would be old to celebrate World Cup Spain 2056. Those alive that can recall the Cold War Era and what existed as funneled propaganda. The fact that "the enemy" was behind a wall or for them behind said wall, we, "the West" were some Hollywood generated, offsides, yellow card society. To then years later in the 90's those of us that actually got to travel the planet post 1990, it is incredible to witness where our geo-political planet has become here in 2026. I mean I am an old inner city coach here in Houston Texas. Which we have an old saying, Houston is the South with a college education. The world migrates to us in the 60's and 70's, blended with JFK going long on the Space Race to challenge a generation to explore and be leaders in math, science and engineering. Where the math, chemistry, astrophysics and the men and women that got loaded on 216,000 U.S. gallons of rocket fuel really did answer the bell. I have not posted in our off soccer forums in many years but today did need a bit of reflection on where we have been as a global people, to where we just were in 2016 to where we all are here in 2026. Decades on, and you are still cute.
Garrett Graff: “Across the first three weeks of 2026, and especially yesterday, President Trump’s Mad King rantings about Greenland have accelerated into something far more stunning and alarming: We are watching in real-time as a superpower dies by suicide — an all-but unprecedented choice to self-immolate and torch the country’s remaining global trust and friendships.” “The entire world order we built across eighty years, a never-before-seen geopolitical success that has been tended and fostered by Republican and Democratic administrations across a dozen presidencies, has been sacrificed this week on the altar of Donald Trump’s legacy-mad narcissism.”
And there is a new defence strategy published by the US regime which tells its vassals that they are basically on their own. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj9r8ezym3ro So there is absolutely no reason for the vassals to remain vassals. If Russia is primarily a European concern, then China is the USA’s concern and there is no need for Europe to treat China any less favourably than the USA when it comes to trade, security etc. There is a need for independent European institutions to be set up outside of the NATO framework to establish common European defence and energy policies. There is no need for the Europeans to get dragged into US messes like Iraq, Afghanistan etc (and potentially Taiwan, Korea, Gaza, South America) when there is no obverse to the reverse of that coin.