Has the Mask of Global Order Fallen?

Analysis

By Zahid Sultan and Irshad Ahmad Bhat 

The first lesson in understanding the global order — and perhaps its most unsettling truth — is that there is no order. Or rather, that what is paraded as a rules-based international system is neither rules-based, nor international, nor systemic. It is a patchwork of convenience, held together not by norms but by the privilege of power. If the ongoing confrontation between Israel and Iran reveals anything, it is not the breakdown of a world order — but the embarrassing revelation that such an order never really existed beyond rhetoric.

The liberal international order was always more aspiration than architecture — more sermon than structure. The real architecture of the world system has always been anarchic, as Realists have long maintained. The absence of a central authority capable of enforcing norms in a truly impartial manner renders the global arena one of self-help, strategic calculation, and survival by strength. What has changed, however, is not the system itself, but the collapse of belief in the fictions that once concealed its raw mechanics. What we are witnessing today is not the crisis of international law. It is the exposure of its limits and its hypocrisies.

Israel, backed by the unflinching support of the United States and insulated by Western moral indifference, has developed a strategic doctrine of pre-emption that rests on the right to kill before being threatened, to strike before being attacked, and to act outside legal frameworks with impunity. The targeted assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, deep-strike operations in Syria and Lebanon, and cyberattacks such as Stuxnet are not aberrations — they are doctrinal manifestations of a state that has long understood what the rest of the world is slowly learning: that power has never needed permission.

Iran, on the other hand, despite being a signatory to the NPT, remains permanently under suspicion. Its every defensive move is construed as a prelude to aggression. Its diplomatic engagements are framed as delay tactics. Its technological advancements are interpreted as existential threats. It is not Iran’s actions that make it dangerous — it is its place in the global hierarchy that makes it easier to frame as such.

This asymmetry is not incidental. It is systemic. The architecture of normativity in international politics is not horizontal — it is profoundly vertical. It does not adjudicate actions equally; it distinguishes between actors. The Israeli-Iranian antagonism merely dramatizes a wider phenomenon: the enforcement of norms is contingent on who you are, not what you do. This is not a breakdown of international law. It is how international law has always functioned — as a veil for interests, not as a shield for justice.

In this anarchic system, survival is the currency of legitimacy. And survival, as John Mearsheimer reminds us, depends not on goodwill or institutional membership, but on capabilities. The more powerful you are — militarily, economically, and diplomatically — the greater your ability to shape narratives, evade accountability, and manufacture legitimacy. The so-called liberal order was never meant to be a neutral adjudicator; it was designed to discipline the weak, not restrain the strong.

It is here that the Israel–Iran confrontation takes on global significance. This is not merely a regional flashpoint. It is the harbinger of a deeper structural shift: the resurgence of naked power politics, and the global normalization of militarised self-interest. The consequences are already visible. The war in Ukraine has reignited NATO’s purpose. China’s strategic assertiveness has prompted military recalibration in the Indo-Pacific. And now, with Israel and Iran on the brink of open war, states across the Global South and beyond are rethinking what security really means.

We are entering a phase where deterrence replaces diplomacy, where air defence replaces international guarantees, and where the best insurance against isolation is the ability to strike. The age of institutional reassurance is over. What replaces it is a security spiral, where states hedge against abandonment by building capabilities, not consensus. From New Delhi to Riyadh, from Ankara to Seoul, governments are no longer reassured by signatures on paper — they are reassured by the range of their missiles and the depth of their alliances.

This is not a return to Cold War bipolarity. It is something far more complex and dangerous: a multi-nodal insecurity spiral where global politics lacks even the stabilising grammar of mutually assured destruction. The U.S.–China rivalry lacks the predictability of U.S.–USSR deterrence. The Middle East, once a theatre of proxy competition, now risks becoming an arena of direct escalation. And the global South, long expected to comply with Western normativity, is finally asking what moral authority remains when those who preach peace are the first to violate its principles.

The coming years will not be defined by treaties or summits. They will be defined by arms races, informal blocs, and militarised dependencies. The Israel–Iran war — should it escalate — will provide the justification every state needs to invest in surveillance, deterrence, and strike capacity. Air defence systems, once the luxury of advanced militaries, will become central to national security policy. Nuclear latency will be revalued. Dual-use technologies will proliferate. This is how empires fall — not with dramatic collapses, but with the slow corrosion of shared truths.

Yet, the greatest casualty in all of this may be moral language itself. When norms are selectively enforced, they cease to be norms and become instruments. When international law applies only to adversaries and never to allies, it ceases to be law and becomes geopolitical etiquette. What is striking about this moment is not just the brazenness of Israel’s actions or the fury of Iran’s retaliation — it is the silence of those who once claimed to stand for peace, rules, and restraint.

Can we still speak of peace with a straight face when we know that peace is granted only to the compliant? Can we talk about the rule of law when those who wrote its clauses now refuse to be bound by them? Can we still summon the courage to demand justice when every demand is met with the cold shrug of strategic necessity?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the questions that must animate our intellectual and moral inquiry if we are to salvage any meaning from the wreckage of our illusions.

Israel and Iran are not anomalies. They are archetypes. One shows how power inoculates you from critique. The other shows how resistance, no matter how legally justified, is criminalised in advance. Both point to the death of international pretence. The more dangerous outcome of their confrontation is not military escalation — though that would be catastrophic — but the possibility that the world internalises this asymmetry as natural.

What follows is not chaos. It is a new kind of order — an order where disorder is routinised, where militarism is the grammar of diplomacy, and where morality is a luxury states can no longer afford to claim.

We are living not at the end of history, but at the end of pretense. And the international system, stripped of its illusions, may finally reveal the truth Realists have always known: that in a world without an overarching sovereign, the only guarantee of peace is the capacity for war.

Disclaimer: This paper is the author's individual scholastic contribution and does not necessarily reflect the organization's viewpoint.

Zahid Sultan (Freelance Researcher.  PhD in Politics and Governance from Central University of Kashmir. 

Irshad Ahmad Bhat (Pursuing PhD in Political Science)