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An international order is supposed to ensure the security of states. The so-called international liberal order was sold on the premise that it had something for most, if not all, countries. Now, with signs of the United States (US)’s decline and a crisis in the world order it had shored up, Washington appears most threatened by the prospect of changes to that order.

This is clear in US imperial policies, which the country has pursued while masking them as efforts to help people liberate themselves from what are labelled as oppressive regimes. As Robert Vitalis argues in White World Order, Black Power Politics, “The project of liberation was from its inception (and by necessity) a world-spanning political and theoretical movement in response to the theory and practice of white supremacy.” This posture of imperial policy makes the statement of President Trump – “I’m willing to live with” the fact that 165 school girls were killed – appear normal.

All efforts are being made to protect the racist international order that the US shaped at the end of World War II. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made this clear at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, where he invoked the apparent superiority of “Western civilisation”. Rubio said, “And finally, we can no longer place the so-called global order above the vital interests of our people and our nations. We do not need to abandon the system of international cooperation we authored, and we don’t need to dismantle the global institutions of the old order that together we built. But these must be reformed.”

Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.

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From this position, it can be inferred that the crisis in the world order is essentially a crisis of legitimacy, driven by voices from the Global South seeking equality and fairness. Therefore, the US will seek to influence and shape the emerging new order in line with its interests.

For this, Washington seems keen to push its allies into joining its wars, without even attempting to build consensus. The ongoing US-Israel invasion of Iran, which started on February 28, has sent a clear message: when it comes to the US interests, it not only flouts the basic principles of the existing order but can also trample upon the rights of those it associates with its opponents.

More importantly, the US can, at will, take its weak allies for granted and overlook their security concerns. President Donald Trump did not spare even Spain, a NATO ally, when it refused to support his illegal war on Iran. He responded with threats that the US could use Spain’s military base unilaterally and “nobody is going to tell us not to use it”.

An order for the hegemon

Alliances in international politics are generally forged on the basis of converging interests of the alliance partners, which are meant to maintain peace and the security of all members. This implies that each member state in the alliance gets a say in alliance decisions and that its security concerns are taken into account when such decisions are made.

In the case of the US, however, alliances seem to take on a different meaning. Membership in a US-led alliance or world order implies subservience of its members and the partners giving preference to US interests. There is a growing realisation of this dynamic not only in the non-West but in the West as well. At the Munich Security Conference, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney pointed out that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited”.

In the context of the Russia-Ukraine war and the Iran war, countries like India – and Russia as well – are victims of a policy to weaponise oil. First, New Delhi was forced to stop buying oil from Russia; then, with Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz and creating a supply shortage, the US gave it “permission” to resume buying Russian oil.

Thus, the US does not seem prepared to give up its hold over the world. By attacking Iran, it not only blatantly flouted international law, but also coerced its weaker allies into rallying behind a narrative rolled out by Washington – that Iran posed an imminent threat to global peace, was pursuing nuclear weapons, aimed to attack the US and its allies and so on.

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In the end, in the context of the West versus the Global South, President Trump was trying to uphold the existing world order by resorting to older tactics of racialised and demeaning policy towards a southern country. The US can possess thousands of nuclear weapons – and remains the only country to have used them twice – yet Iran’s uranium enrichment program for civilian use is cast as dangerous. Various reports have stated that Iran was not planning to attack the US, nor seeking to build nuclear weapons.

A sense of regional security

In the US, the war on Iran is being debated, and many argue that Trump invaded Iran because of the influence of the pro-Israel lobby and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If so, America is fighting Israel’s war. Despite their differences with Iran, it is unlikely that Gulf countries would prefer a stronger Israel at the cost of an unstable Iran – at least that is what a strategic calculation would dictate.

Moreover, despite hosting US military bases and bearing significant costs associated with that, many in Washington do not seem to think the Gulf states are doing enough. It wants the Gulf countries to join the war – one that even the US’s NATO allies have refused to join. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has, for instance, been critical of Gulf countries publicly, demanding that they join the US-Israel war against Iran, and warned Saudi Arabia of “consequences”.

Some in the Gulf appear aware of the larger game at play. As the former prime minister of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim noted in a tweet, the region should avoid being drawn into the war on Iran. He warned that “there are forces that want the [Gulf Cooperation] Council’s states to become directly embroiled with Iran.” He added that any such engagement would “deplete the resources of both sides and provide an opportunity for many forces to control us under the pretext of helping us escape the crisis”.

The Gulf region thus offers an instructive instance of how a security architecture formulated by a global hegemon who believes in an inherently racist world order cannot guarantee security. Instead, it risks endangering the security of others through pursuing policies and waging wars that are meant to shore up its political and economic hegemony.

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To avoid getting dragged into the conflicts of a hegemon and its imperial ambitions, the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran offers an instructive lesson. Countries – particularly the Global South – can deepen regionalism and develop some regional security architectures to make themselves independent of the US-led world order. In the absence of an alternative global hegemon, regional security arrangements may help create balanced regional orders, diminishing the perceived need for a global hegemon.

Moreover, a regional security framework would help mitigate military conflicts within these regions themselves. The US-Israel invasion of Iran illustrates how even unwilling European countries – those not even informed about the invasion – could be pulled into rallying behind the US-Israel alliance. In fact, till the evening of February 27, the discussions were about NATO and the Western-led world order being under strain. After the invasion of Iran, even the Canadian Prime Minister threw his weight behind the US-Israel alliance and justified it.

If countries in the West can overcome their severe differences, those in various regions of the Global South should not find it as difficult to overcome theirs. In fact, compared to tensions within the West, where President Trump has threatened partners such as Canada and Greenland and openly criticised Germany – differences across much of the Global South remain manageable. They can start by identifying the issues that unite them and address local and regional security concerns.

Nazir Ahmad Mir holds a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Peace Building and is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Research Centre for Asian Studies (RCAS), Hong Kong.

This piece was first published on The India Cable – a premium newsletter from The Wire – and has been republished here. To subscribe to The India Cable, click here.

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