Oct 5, 2023 • Article A Requiem for the Rules-Based Order: The Case for Value-Neutral Ethics in International Relations U.S. Global Engagement Initiative By Arta Moeini

The Unraveling of the Established Order Regardless of how it eventually concludes, the Russo-Ukrainian War represents a seismic event signaling profound changes in the global landscape. The unipolar era is at its end, major countries are more concerned with their cultural sovereignty and strategic autonomy than they have been in decades, and it seems inevitable that the once-dominant Western hegemony must gradually yield to a more diverse and multipolar system. The period following World War II witnessed the ascendancy of the United States and its allies as architects of a new international order premised on the institutionalization of Western values such as democracy and human rights. This Western-centric approach to global governance—known as the “rules-based order”—has encountered mounting challenges. China's rise, Russia's geopolitical subversiveness, and the growing assertiveness of emerging powers from the Global South have eroded Western dominance. The outcome is a more diverse world, characterized by multiple centers of power coexisting, challenging any single ideology or set of substantive values. We live in a period we should perhaps call the Great Transition. We are witnessing the emergence of a polycentric, regionalist, and interest-based order centered around middle powers and civilizational states: These states hold historic disagreements and rivalries but are nevertheless united in rejecting a U.S.-led system, which they consider the latest instantiation of a Western exceptionalism and colonial hubris that abhors genuine difference and opposing worldviews. With peer great power China putting its weight behind this informal non-aligned axis and the non-Western economic bloc BRICS expanding to six new members including Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Argentina in 2024, trepidations have risen among U.S. and European observers as to the future of the international order they created and underwrote since 1945. While a crux of these worries stems from questions of power and structural change—after all, no great power (certainly not one that spent more than two decades as the undisputed global superpower) looks kindly at being challenged by peer rivals—this transition also raises crucial questions about future international norms and the ethics that should underpin them. In the halls of power in Brussels, London, and Washington DC, one hears lots of talk about the threat to the “rules-based” order or the importance of a “values-based” foreign policy. According to these elites, to not protect the extant status quo and its normative framework is an inexcusable offense presaging the fall into tyranny.