A new international order? Fine. Let’s at least pretend to think this through. What exactly is this order supposed to look like—and more importantly, who is going to enforce it? Because an order without consequences for those who overstep is not an order at all. It is a decorative document. Suitable for framing, useless for reality.
We already know what international rules are worth when confronted with actors who simply do not care. We have watched this movie often enough. There are plenty of very powerful players on the global stage who will happily cite international law when it suits them and shred the rulebook the moment it becomes inconvenient. Russia does it. China does it. They are not special in this regard. The United States does it. India does it. Many others do it too, whenever they believe it is in their interest and—crucially—when they believe they can get away with it.
This is not a moral observation. It is a structural one. Power does not submit to abstractions. It tolerates them only as long as they are useful. The idea that yet another layer of international “order” will change this dynamic is touching in the same way children believing in bedtime stories is touching.
What the world does not need is another hollow order whose primary function is to spawn useless institutions staffed with well-paid bureaucrats producing reports no one reads and rules no one follows. That machinery does not restrain power; it merely feeds itself.
Let every nation do what it believes it must do. Let them bear the costs, the consequences, and the outcomes of their choices without the moral fog of faux legitimacy. There is something brutally honest—almost pedagogical—about being forced to face one’s own ruin without excuses. Reality is a far better teacher than any international committee.