A Week That Shook the Old Order
Most Western leaders are flailing while foreign foes capitalize on their opportunity.
Sept. 15, 2025 The Wall Street Journal
A line widely but wrongly attributed to Lenin states that there are decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen. Last week was one of those weeks.
Israel struck Hamas negotiators in Qatar and, despite an intensifying global outcry, moved toward a full-scale invasion and occupation of Gaza City. Amid a wave of cyberattacks and sabotage against European countries, a large group of Russian drones invaded the airspace of Poland, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization member. President Trump demanded that NATO allies slap massive secondary sanctions on India and China as the first step in a renewed campaign to force Russia to end its attack on Ukraine.
The French government fell after losing a confidence vote in the National Assembly, and the prime minister of Japan announced he was stepping down after a disastrous tenure during which the long-governing Liberal Democratic Party of Japan lost its majorities in both houses of Parliament.
“Far right” parties continued their advances across Europe. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (formerly the National Front) and Alice Weidel’s Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, all lead national polls. The AfD tripled its vote in the prosperous former West German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, while the streets of London filled with antiestablishment and pro-Trump demonstrators.
Only the intervention of South Korea’s foreign minister prevented some 316 Hyundai workers from being handcuffed on the long deportation flight from Atlanta to Seoul. Brazil’s former president was sentenced to 27 years in prison after being convicted of plotting a coup. Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. was dismissed after the publication of embarrassing emails he sent to his former friend Jeffrey Epstein.
And the assassination of Charlie Kirk sharpened questions at home and abroad about the social and political stability of the U.S., the country on which what remains of world order depends more than ever.
Any one of these events would dominate a week’s news in calmer times. What we are seeing today is the accelerating dissolution of the post-1945 world order. It isn’t merely that the old order’s foreign opponents have combined more effectively to disrupt it. The order’s defenders are flailing.
There are many reasons for the West’s poor performance. The current tranche of leaders for the most part can neither defend their countries from foreign foes nor defend the political status quo from populists at home. The muddled thinking of a generation of policy elites, who foolishly supposed that geopolitical conflict had ended forever, left the West radically unprepared for resurgent opponents. Voters everywhere remain unwilling to support vigorous defense and foreign policies that offer hope of reversing the global drift toward great-power conflict. Universities no longer provide the grounding in intellectual, cultural, diplomatic and military history that enables leaders to plan wisely and inspires them to lead well.
As the old order fades, its boundaries become fuzzy, and its foes respect them less. That is happening in Europe, where Russia daily tests its belief that the trans-Atlantic alliance is more of a bluff than a real and living force. It is what is happening in the western Pacific, where China probes the defenses of its maritime neighbors with increasing confidence and aggression.
In this context, if the Kirk assassination exacerbates American polarization, the consequences will be global. America’s brutal political competition heightens the chance that the promises of one president will be repudiated by his successor. It also increases the likelihood that an America consumed by internal divisions will have fewer resources and less energy to devote to foreign policy—no matter who is president.
The news isn’t all bad. While controversial in many quarters, Kirk’s example of patriotism, religious faith and commitment to open dialogue inspired young people all over the country. America’s capacity for economic and technological innovation is, if anything, renewing itself. The absurdities and excesses of identity politics have led to such intellectual follies, antisemitism and other forms of hate that even many strongly liberal intellectuals are reconsidering some long-held assumptions. And rising foreign threats are slowly but surely concentrating minds on the need to shore up our defenses.
Time will tell whether the green shoots of revival can renew the West and whether newly empowered populists will grow into their new responsibilities quickly enough to avoid disaster. For now, the upholders of the existing world order lack the conviction and clarity of vision required to defend it. Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and even the shell-shocked mullahs of Iran will inevitably seek to capitalize on their historic opportunity. There is no reason to suppose that these powers will lose interest in probing the West for weaknesses anytime soon.
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Appeared in the September 16, 2025, print edition as 'A Week That Shook the Old Order'.