With increasingly dangerous confrontations between major powers, the outbreak of conflicts and crises worldwide, a global economic meltdown, a growing climate crisis, the virtual irrelevance of the United Nations system and the utter disregard for international law, the world today is inexorably blundering towards chaos. The recent American abduction of the Venezuelan president on spurious grounds, the threat to occupy Greenland and the creation of a Board of Peace as a supranational organisation are symptomatic of this trend.

This situation is alarmingly reminiscent of the circumstances that led to both the First and Second World Wars when the international order collapsed due to the expansionist and belligerent policies of some major powers, undermining the global balance of power. The United Nations system that emerged in 1945 under the shadow of nuclear weapons has survived so far despite the Cold War because of the nuclear balance of terror, enforced by the reality of mutual assured destruction. However, this balance has been severely tested — especially since the end of the Cold War and the emergence of the US as the sole superpower.

Perhaps the most destabilising event in modern history was the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, which undermined the bipolar balance of terror, enabling American hegemony in a unipolar world. Even though the end of the Cold War presented an opportunity to establish an equitable and stable world order, free from ideological and geopolitical contestation, this opportunity was squandered by American imperial hubris, determined to impose........

© The Express Tribune