We keep hearing about the “Rules Based International Order” (RBIO) as if it is some holy thing we are all supposed to worship and protect. Funny thing is that this is just a meme to get people to think it is something more than it is.
The term was not used to any extent prior to the end of the Cold War. Instead there was talk of liberal institutions and international law and such. So what is it and how did it come about?
Woodrow Wilson wanted to create a new liberal international order after World War I. Resistance in America prevented the US from joining the League of Nations. Even so, the concept was doomed to fail, given that Germany was unhappy, Russia was revolutionary, and China was in disarray.
Even before the US entered World War II, FDR was planning for a new American dominated world order that open the world's markets to American business. The post World War II systems and institutions were created. The UK was brought to heel and its empire eliminated. Pax Americana took over, except for the Soviet bloc countries and the Non Aligned Nations.
American hegemony had a huge cost and eventually America faced domestic economic turmoil. The cost of the Vietnam War broke the gold back dollar. The rise of OPEC likewise hurt the American economy. The 70s were a decade of change.
Michael Hudson wrote about the US engaged in what he called “Super Imperialism”, using its debt empire to control the world, the first time such a thing had happened in the world.
Even so, it look like the US dominance was over, at least until Reagan pushed the Soviet Union to destroy its own economy and empire.
At that point, the US should have taken the opportunity to have a nice multipolar world. The US could have taken its troops home and stop playing world policeman.
Instead, Bush 43 brought us the Gulf War and Somalia. And then Clinton adopted a humanitarian interventionist strategy and began American hegemony in the post Cold War era.
Even the defenders of the so called RBIO can't say what those rules are. It is merely that the US can do whatever it wants, always in the name of humanitarianism, and overthrow governments, invade countries, but no one else can. With over 800 military bases outside the US, the empire has expanded.
The RBIO is not international law. It ignores international law whenever it wants to do so. It does not tolerate competitors. It likes designated enemies.
NATO is a mere extension of the American empire. The US still occupies Germany and Japan 77 years after WW2. Those countries would act differently if not occupied. We alleged security, but it isn't. It is too extend our own power.