The days of the United States being the world’s police force are over — and good riddance. The idealist’s vision of a U.S.-enforced rules-based international order, noble as it might have been once, was never firmly rooted in reality. Perpetual global instability meant perpetual military interventions, and even America’s vaunted military might has limits. In a world teeming with nukes, bioweapons, and whatever horrors the AI race might yield, the idea of the U.S. single-handedly enforcing a global order is not only unworkable but dangerously naive. 

Indeed, nations that do not share the West’s esteem for liberal democracy, economic openness, or “human rights” as defined by the United Nations were never going to be persuaded or coerced into aligning with an American-centric global order. The further we get from the Bush era’s preemptive wars, the more they appear driven by utopian delusion.