"The world order as we know it that we have been fighting for 80 years is over and I don't think it will return," Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said during a conference in Paris last week, according to the Norwegian news agency NTB.
Canada's Prime Minister, Mark Carney, also recently made a similar assessment at the World Economic Forum in Davos, after Canada entered into a new trade agreement with China.
Espen Moe, professor at NTNU's Department of Sociology and Political Science, believes that the leaders are right.
"Without fighting for liberal democracy, it may turn out to be a parenthesis in world history after a 'nice run' of about 500 years. That's a real possibility," he says.
In Davos, Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke about the world order.(Photo: Kilpatrick Sean / CP / ABACA / NTB)
The current world order
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Moe explains that world orders usually emerge in the aftermath of major wars or other significant upheavals.
"After World War II, there was a divided world order, with one Western bloc and one communist bloc. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Western democratic side emerged as the winner," says Moe.
The term world order refers to a set of international norms and rules, laws and justice, and human rights.
"Put simply, it's about which ground rules apply to almost every country," he says.
The Western world order is characterised as liberal, democratic, and rule-based, according to Moe.
Even without a global police force, the world order has largely been upheld by the United States, supported by NATO.
But Moe stresses that norms alone are never enough to sustain a world order:
The West also has to have economic dominance and military power.
After 1945, and especially after the Cold War, Western countries possessed exactly this combination: economic superiority, normative authority, and military strength.
"Today the situation is different," says Moe.
China's growth challenges Western dominance
"Historically, world orders have come and gone at intervals of about 100 years," says Moe.
The reason is simple: The world changes. Structural conditions change, and states grow at different speeds.
"The major structural change today is China’s explosive economic growth over several decades, which is makes the country want a larger role in the global hierarchy of power," he says.
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Moe questions why China should accept a world order it had no part in creating.
"Why should a Marxist China accept this world order? What legitimacy does it offer China?" he asks.
"With the United States turning inward and Europe struggling with weak economic growth, it's no longer clear why other countries – especially China – should view the West as normatively superior in any way," he says.
Moe argues that norms lose their force once the power behind them disappears.
"When Europe is unable to generate growth and defend itself, other systems can gain equal normative influence. In that case, authoritarian African states have little reason to look to Europe as a model rather than China," he says.
After the Cold War, many believed the liberal world order had triumphed for good.
"It seemed like the end of the historical cycle in which new world orders replace one another – as if everyone ultimately recognised that the West was right. But then China kept growing, while Europe stagnated," says Moe.
A more authoritarian world order
"What a new world order might look like is the big question, and it's extremely difficult to predict," says Moe.
He warns of serious consequences if the rules-based system collapses, pointing to conflicts and wars in parts of the world where Western liberal enlightenment ideas never took hold.
"In those wars, mass rape and massacres become routine rather than the exception. People do whatever they need in order to win, without regard for civilians," he says.
According to Moe, the absence of shared rules could become the new norm.
"Without a liberal world order, one possibility is that all means of power will be on the table every time a conflict arises," he says.
In such a scenario, he envisions a more authoritarian world order, organised around the spheres of influence of major powers.
"The great powers could collectively decide among themselves who gets to do what in different regions. That would mean a United States far more willing to let Europe fend for itself," he says.
He adds that a collapse of American democracy would make this outcome even more likely.
"American democracy could very well collapse. Then we would be left with a world order that's neither democratic, liberal, nor governed by rules," he says.
Moe also questions whether the US will eventually realise that breaking with NATO and Europe would weaken the country.
"It could end with China and the United States setting the boundaries. The result would be a more authoritarian world, not a liberal one," he says. "There are several possible outcomes, but it's hard to imagine the world returning to how things once were. We're not going back to the eras of Obama, Bush, or Clinton."
A decisive year
Moe explains that major structural breaks rarely unfold slowly.
"A structural shift represents a huge window of opportunity, which there is often an intense political struggle to win," the researcher says.
He believes 2026 could be decisive.
"2026 is a pivotal year for NATO, American democracy, and the entire Western world order – if one collapses, all three are likely to collapse," he says.
For Europe to remain relevant, the continent must take greater responsibility for its own security, Moe argues.
"Liberal ideas can no longer be taken for granted. They must be actively defended, both politically and economically," he says.
Moe believes that current developments may force a reckoning with old assumptions that the liberal world order represents permanent progress.
"Europe, and later the United States, have dominated for centuries. If the liberal world order collapses, we may have to accept that this 500-year period could be a parenthesis in world history that's now coming to an end," says Moe.
