One morning in Tehran, a person checks her phone before stepping outside, the streets look normal, cafes are open, traffic is fine, yet her social media feed is filled with images of burning tires, riots, chaos, and crowds chanting against the state.
Across the world, a Ukrainian father watches Russian drones fall on his neighborhood via telegram. In Caracas, the fate of a president seems to be debated not in parliament, but in Washington.
None of the mentioned people have met, nor do they know each other, but their lives are constantly influenced by the same invisible force, a world where power is no longer restrained by rules.
Apparently, these crisis seems separate, protests in Iran, war in Ukraine, tensions in Gaza, and political uncertainty in Venezuela. The reality is that they are symptoms of a transformation, the collapse of the unilateral world order, and the arrival of a far more dangerous global system. The system, as we can call it the Global Disorder.
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The international system is no longer drifting, it is actively breaking apart. What we are seeing is not simply the decline of American power, but the collapse of the unilateral world order that once enforced rules, alliances, and red lines.
In its place is emerging something far more unstable, a trilateral or multipolar system of competition between the United States, China, and Russia, in which international law, alliances, and sovereignty are becoming flexible instruments rather than fixed principles.
This shift explains why actions that would once have been highly undesirable, such as the United States asserting legal or political authority over foreign leaders, or openly threatening regime survival, are now being normalized. When Washington pursues coercive measures against figures like Venezuela’s leadership or intensifies pressure on Iran amid domestic unrest, it is no longer acting as a guardian of a system, but as one power among several seeking advantage in a fractured world.
The danger of such behavior is not what it will achieve today, but what it will authorize tomorrow.
Today, when the United States claims the right to decide who governs Venezuela or how Iran should respond to its internal protests, Russia and China are given the strategic permission to apply the same logic. Moscow can justify its war in Ukraine not as a conquest, but as the enforcement of its security order. Beijing can frame Taiwan not as an independent political entity but as a domestic jurisdiction requiring “stabilization.” The precedent is clear: power defines legality.
Europe will become the primary theatre where the price of this transformation will be evident. In this context, NATO, is quietly entering its most dangerous phase, not because of Russian tanks, but because of American uncertainty. President Trump’s repeated remarks questioning and even suggesting territorial ambitions toward Greenland, a claimed territory of Denmark, a NATO member, have undermined European confidence in US reliability.
For the first time since the Second World War, European states might be considering the possibility that the alliance’s leading power might not be fully committed to defending them. This erosion of trust weakens deterrence.
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When European states fear that Washington might hesitate in a crisis, Russia gains strategic space. Every doubt inside NATO becomes a green light for Moscow to continue, or even expand, its operations in Ukraine. The war thus becomes not only a regional conflict, but a test of whether Western alliances still function in a multipolar world.
Ironically, American political uncertainty is now one of Russia’s greatest strategic assets. At the same time, non-traditional security threats are merging with these geopolitical shifts. Sanctions, cyber warfare, domestic protests, information campaigns, and legal warfare are now as important as armies.
Iran’s protests, Venezuela’s economic and political collapse, Europe’s energy crisis, and Ukraine’s war are all part of a single battlefield, one where instability itself has become a tool of power. This is the essence of global disorder: a world where no single actor can enforce rules, but every major actor feels empowered to break them.
This transition from a US-led system to a trilateral or multipolar order was always inevitable. But it was supposed to be managed through diplomacy, institutions, and shared norms. Instead, it is being driven by rivalry, punishment, and collapsing trust.
The result is a world that is not balanced, but fragile. Europe may ultimately pay the highest price. Trapped between an unpredictable America and an encouraged Russia, its security is no longer guaranteed by alliances but threatened by their weakening.
In this new order, even the strongest institutions are only as reliable as the political will behind them. Global disorder is not chaos; it is the normalization of insecurity. Unless the great powers rediscover the value of restraint and multilateralism, the future will not belong to stability or even rivalry, but to permanent crisis, where every region becomes a front line in a world that no longer knows where its limits are.
*The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Diplomatic Insight.
Abdul Momin Rasul is a contributing author on TDI
