“A stable world order is a rare thing,” writes Richard Haass, a former U.S. diplomat who has dealt with such trouble spots as Afghanistan and Northern Ireland.

Haass summarizes the history of the world order the United States helped create after World War II. (“How a World Order Ends,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2019.)

The U.S., tired of being dragged into two world wars it did not want, decided to work with allies on a new order. The new order would manage the growing Soviet threat with international organizations and treaties and cooperation between allies.

This order had its imperfections, but it staved off the totalitarian threat without another world war.

Now Haass fears a return to the end of this stable order that has worked for seventy years.

Factors influencing present instability include: the economic rise of a non democratic state, China; technological challenges; terrorist networks; drug cartels; smaller actors with the power to upend the order like North Korea; a refugee surge; climate change; greater inequality—to name a few destabilizing forces.

Haass believes the actions of the United States in leaving the world it helped create are disastrous: “It is one thing for a world order to unravel slowly; it is quite another for the country that had a large hand in building it to take the lead in dismantling it.”

He acknowledges the need for the U.S. to put its own house in order—dealing with debt, education, infrastructure, a better immigration system, the social safety net, and so on.

Concludes Haass: “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”