What Will Replace the Old Order?

he pivotal question of what will follow the crack-up of the liberal international order dominated the highest levels of European politics last week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave his own, forceful answer at the 2026 Munich Security Conference. Following Vice President JD Vance’s provocative speech last year, Rubio delivered an equally spirited address that issued an ultimatum: rationalizing collapse and weakness is no longer the policy of the United States—and it should no longer be Europe’s policy either. America has no “interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline,” he stated forthrightly.

Instead, Rubio urged a reformation of the “global institutions of the old order” to defend and strengthen the key pillars of Western civilization.

The problem in Rubio’s mind was that the 20th-century web of international alliances, designed to counter the Soviets in the wake of two devastating world wars, took on a life of its own. Its keepers began putting the preservation of their supranational relations “above the vital interests of our people and our nations.” Institutions like the U.N. have utterly failed to protect national interests, and they simply have no answers to the most pressing problems in international affairs today. Instead, they actively encourage deindustrialization, mass migration, and shortsighted climate policies, causing a loss of confidence in the very sources that have supplied the West’s vitality for centuries.