No, the International Community Isn’t Dead Yet

But there’s a larger lesson to be found in the extraordinary spectacle of the usually fractious Europeans standing united against the man whom many now see as the mad king of Washington—and in the sudden revolt of global markets against Trump’s behavior. The markets have since stabilized, but “Sell America” sentiment persists, an ever-present threat hovering over Trump’s “ A+++++ ” economy.

The newest conventional wisdom among the commentariat is to lament the passing of our “rules-based international order”—especially in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s plundering raid through Davos, Switzerland, when the U.S. president nearly upended NATO in pursuit of what he called a “piece of ice,” or Greenland.

The newest conventional wisdom among the commentariat is to lament the passing of our “rules-based international order”—especially in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s plundering raid through Davos, Switzerland, when the U.S. president nearly upended NATO in pursuit of what he called a “piece of ice,” or Greenland.

But there’s a larger lesson to be found in the extraordinary spectacle of the usually fractious Europeans standing united against the man whom many now see as the mad king of Washington—and in the sudden revolt of global markets against Trump’s behavior. The markets have since stabilized, but “Sell America” sentiment persists, an ever-present threat hovering over Trump’s “A+++++” economy.

The lesson is that an awful lot of people—not just the Europeans but also the international economic system and all its key players, even arguably many leading Chinese—don’t want to see the breakdown of this system and are absolutely terrified of what could ensue.

Why? Anyone marginally acquainted with human history knows what such an outcome would likely mean: the decimation of international trade, a reversion to impoverishment through anarchy and isolation, and an unstable balance of power marked by the ever-present threat of war. And the risks would be vastly greater in the 21st century in a hair-trigger environment of high-tech (possibly nuclear) war and the unleashing of global threats, from cyberattacks to climate change to unrestrained artificial intelligence to future pandemics—all without any international cooperation to govern them.

It’s fair to say that few people want to risk a descent into that potential abyss, except possibly for Trump and his minions, such as Stephen Miller, the senior White House aide who dismisses international norms as “niceties”; Russian President Vladimir Putin and his fellow neoimperialists in the Kremlin; some factions of Chines