The Unraveling: How the World Order Is Breaking–and What Comes Next

Commentary

To observe the current dismantling of “globalization with Chinese characteristics” is to witness the unwinding of a decades-long experiment. Whether by explicit design or reflexive instinct, the Trump administration has acted as the wrecking ball for the postwar rules-based order, clearing the ground for a world of sovereign nation-states.

It is worth noting that, in their early decades, both the “rules-based international order” and post-Cold War globalization delivered real and substantial benefits to the United States as a whole. They helped secure American strategic primacy after 1945, fueled decades of economic expansion, spread Western technological and institutional influence, and contributed to the peaceful end of the Cold War. For a long time, the system appeared to reinforce rather than undermine U.S. standing. Yet over time, those same arrangements gradually undercut the very advantages they had once provided.

From Decoupling to De-risking

Both of President Donald Trump’s administrations have advanced, more substantially than any other in recent decades, these two processes. On the economic side, Trump treated the U.S.–China relationship not as mutually beneficial integration but as a zero-sum dynamic that had long favored Beijing through forced technology transfers, subsidies, mercantilism, and World Trade Organization loopholes.

From the first term’s Section 301 tariffs, Huawei blacklisting, and investment restrictions—which triggered initial decoupling and reframed policy from engagement to competition—to the second term’s sharper escalation with higher tariffs, expanded export bans on critical technologies, and explicit supply-chain de-risking, the cumulative pressure measurably slowed and began reversing decades of deepening interdependence. Even amid pauses, legal challenges, and short-term volatility, the overall trajectory consistently prioritized national economic sovereignty over global efficiency gains skewed toward China.

On the institutional front, the president moved decisively against the multilateral framework that had increasingly subordinated national sovereignty to U.N. bodies, climate pacts, the World Trade Organization, and similar structures. The first term delivered withdrawals from the Paris Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and UNESCO, coupled with NATO burden-sharing demands and a clear rhetorical emphasis on sovereignty.

The second term accelerated this dramatically with an immediate re-withdrawal from Paris, an exit from the World Health Organization, and a sweeping January 2026 presidential memorandum directing withdrawal from 66 international organizations—including key U.N.-related entities—along with funding cuts and a full treaty review. These steps replaced supranational governance with transactional bilateralism and voluntary alliances among equals.

By the time Trump took office, powerful undercurrents were already gathering momentum. The president did not create these forces, yet his personality, timing, and transactional “America First” instincts turned him into a high-leverage catalyst. His aversion to the usual compromises and willingness to endure short-term pain produced sustained pressure where conventional leaders would have hedged or returned to traditional “engagement.”

The End of the Transatlantic Consensus

This shift has sent ripples well beyond the United States. European capitals, which initially condemned the U.S. withdrawals and tariffs as “damaging to global cooperation,” now face mounting pressure to diversify supply chains, raise defense spending, and reexamine their own deep economic entanglement with China.

Allies such as Australia, Canada, the UK, and Japan have responded with a characteristic mix of public hedging and quiet acceleration—speeding up friend-shoring initiatives and tightening technology restrictions even as they voice reservations. The cumulative result is a gradual but unmistakable fragmentation of the old transatlantic and Western consensus. Medium and smaller powers are increasingly forced to choose: cling to the fading multilateral order, or adapt early to a more sovereign, transactional international landscape.

For any rational actor—whether the leader of a medium-power country or the CEO of a multinational corporation—the sensible response is neither fatalistic surrender nor head-on resistance. The structural momentum toward a nation-state-centric world is now too deeply rooted in security imperatives, economic realities, and domestic political pressures to be easily reversed. Fighting the current wastes scarce capital and political bandwidth. The smarter course is to adapt aggressively and early.

Businesses that move first can lock in friend-shored suppliers, reposition critical assets, and capture government incentives before competition intensifies. Countries that act decisively can attract redirected investment, strengthen bilateral alliances, and build resilience in defense and critical industries. Early adapters gain measurable advantages: higher foreign direct investment inflows, greater strategic leverage, and lower long-term transition costs. Late adapters, by contrast, risk stranded assets, sudden compliance shocks, and diminished competitiveness.

And yet resistance remains loud and widespread. Many business leaders continue to lobby aggressively for tariff exemptions and carve-outs, while European leaders and others publicly denounce the U.S. policy shifts as “profoundly damaging.” This is not evidence that the underlying trend has stalled. It is the predictable sociological lag that accompanies any paradigm-level transition.

Incumbents—deeply invested in the old order—face high sunk costs in China-centric supply chains and multilateral institutions, short-term quarterly or electoral horizons, ideological commitment to the previous consensus, and a lingering belief that the shift might still be moderated or reversed. Such resistance explains why the transition feels uneven and messy. It also highlights why those who read the momentum correctly and move early continue to pull ahead, while those who lag behind pay a heavier price.

Understanding this dynamic does not require us to celebrate the change. It simply allows us to navigate it with clear eyes—and, perhaps, to leave space for latecomers to adjust without unnecessary friction.

A Paradigm Shift

Thomas Kuhn, in his 1962 book “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” argued that scientific progress is not a steady, linear accumulation of knowledge, but an episodic process driven by paradigms. A paradigm is a shared framework of assumptions, methods, and values that defines “normal science”—the everyday puzzle-solving that scientists do within accepted rules. Over time, anomalies arise that the existing paradigm cannot adequately explain.

When these anomalies pile up, the field enters a crisis phase marked by confusion, resistance, and ad hoc fixes. Eventually, a revolutionary paradigm shift occurs—not through gradual persuasion, but through a gestalt-like conversion to a new framework that better accounts for reality.

This same dynamic maps strikingly onto today’s geopolitical and economic order. The post-WWII “rules-based international order” and China-centric globalization functioned as the dominant paradigm. For decades, elites engaged in “normal science”: optimizing global supply chains, negotiating multilateral deals, and assuming engagement would liberalize China. But persistent anomalies—mercantilism without liberalization, supply-chain fragility, institutional gridlock, and sovereignty backlash—kept piling up.

The resistance we now see from governments and business leaders could be seen as classic Kuhnian behavior: structural defense of a dying paradigm.

Conclusion

From an observational standpoint, the contradictions within the existing systems drive the outcome, with Trump as a catalyst and embodiment of the change. Through a Kuhnian lens, anomalies led to crisis, resistance, and now paradigm replacement.

Perhaps on a deeper level, there is a sense, echoing through various traditions, that systems collapse when they lose their moral or functional equilibrium—as if a providential hand is clearing away the unfit to make room for the vital, operating through the very structural weaknesses and human actors we observe. Whether one interprets this literally as providence, interprets it metaphorically, or dismisses it as poetic flourish is a personal choice.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.