A world order based on coercion invites backlash. Weaker nations, when oppressed by a single superpower, will band together and use surreptitious methods to disrupt and weaken the hegemon. Civilization itself is a model of the weak uniting against the strong.

The US has shifted from anchoring a liberal international order to signaling it stands for nothing beyond its own power and interests. This amoral, transactional stance has alienated democratic allies and eroded the nation's soft power on the world stage.

For generations, Western societies have viewed peace and prosperity as the default state. This perception is a historical outlier, making the return to 'dog eat dog' great power politics seem shocking, when in fact it's a reversion to the historical norm of conflict.

Alex Karp dismisses the idea of a purely law-based international system as theoretical. He argues that in the real world, global stability and the ability to set the rules are determined by decisive military superiority. For the West, this power is the only thing that guarantees its influence against rivals like China and Russia.

Superpowers often view their own aggressive rhetoric as strategic posturing while taking their adversaries' similar statements as literal threats. This double standard makes them blind to the long-term consequences of their actions, such as creating grievances that birth future insurgencies.

A country's power on the world stage is not just military or economic might, but its belief in its own value system. When a nation ceases to indoctrinate its next generation with these values and loses the will to defend them, it cedes global influence to other powers with stronger ideological conviction.

In global conflicts, a nation's power dictates its actions and outcomes, not moral righteousness. History shows powerful nations, like the U.S. using nuclear weapons, operate beyond conventional moral constraints, making an understanding of power dynamics more critical than moralizing.

Holding out for morally perfect leaders is naive and paralyzing. The reality of geopolitics is a "knife fight" where leaders inevitably make decisions that result in death. Progress requires working with these flawed individuals rather than disengaging over past actions.

The last 80 years of a rules-based international order was an exception, not the norm. The world is reverting to its historical state of raw power politics, where nations act out of self-interest and military strength.