Three major reasons why the old world order isn't about to collapse

China thinks it will be able to replace the post-1945 system, but history shows that is not going to happen.

“Reports of my death have been vastly exaggerated”, said Mark Twain more than a hundred years ago. 

I am reminded of it because ever since the West started the sanctions on Russia there has been a torrent of articles predicting the collapse of the post Second World War international order devised and supervised by the West led by the US. The argument goes that the sanctions are causing a lot of collateral damage which will weaken Pax Americana as countries question the US decisions that hurt them. 

This presumes that the Americans haven’t thought it all through. Really? And is Putin a democrat?

At the most charitable, all this end of the old order is wishful thinking. Less charitably, it’s just plain nonsense. 

In fact, it’s like those who said that British rule in India was about to collapse after Gandhi ji started his non-cooperation movement during 1920-22. 

Let me explain why. There are three major, and several minor reasons, why the old order isn’t about to collapse. 

The first major reason is a lesson from history. Established things take an awful long time to give way to a new way of doing things. 

You look back at any major order anywhere in the world that was displaced. It took anything from 75-100 years. 

To go no further back than the British empire, it took from about 1870 when the German challenge first became a proper threat till 1945--and two world wars--for it to give way. 

There have been other empires too. You can check how long it took for them to decline and disappear from the date they first got comprehensively challenged. It’s not something that happens overnight. 

The second important reason is that the networks of commerce are extremely hard to disentangle. Money changing hands is only the last step. It represents just the tip of an iceberg. 

Underneath lie innumerable rock solid relationships, of both convenience and emotion. It’s not easy for them to switch allegiances very quickly. Ask any businessman. 

The third reason is the soft and implicit power that empires enjoy. Broadly speaking this is what custom is. Over two generations accepted norms develop that are never quickly replaced by new ways. 

An important aspect of this is dispute settlement. If it’s seen as being efficient, effective and fair businesses are loathe to move to some other system. 

With all its weaknesses and deficiencies, the systems put in place by the US and the rest of the West have inspired confidence. True, it has favoured their interests more often than has been desirable. 

But on the whole its rewards have not been insubstantial either. As even China discovered it was better to be in than out. It grovelled before the US to be let in. 

Now it thinks it’s time has come and it will be able to replace the post-1945 system and its own. Well, let me say this at the very outset: keep dreaming. It’s not going to happen. 

What China forgets is that the post-1945 arrangements were based on negotiation and consensus. Even if the weaker countries didn’t get everything they wanted, let’s not forget that neither did the strong countries. 

Can you imagine China accepting any concessions to anyone? That’s simply not the way that society functions when it’s not negotiating from a position of weakness as it was when it was looking to become a member of the WTO. 

And everyone knows what happened next. It reneged on all its commitments. 

The short point is this. Third rate behaviour can’t inspire confidence and China has so far not shown any capacity to behave otherwise.