They call it Schrödinger’s ceasefire – like the famous scientist’s cat that was both dead and alive – it is not clear whether the war in Iran has ended or whether the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed. For commentators and leaders fond of distinguishing between war and peace, order and disorder, this is unfamiliar – and uncomfortable – terrain.
Our leaders complain about a new global disorder. But to talk about disorder implies that there is an agreement on what order looks like – and that some leaders are breaking the rules. What is so perplexing about our world is not that the rules are being violated – it is that they are not even recognised by any of the main players.
Leaders in Washington, Tel Aviv and Tehran are constantly evaluating their respective situations, but the one thing that doesn’t seem to trouble anyone is whether what they are doing is in line with an rules-based order.
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These tensions are different from previous periods of chaos – like the Iraq War or even Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In the past, the key capitals put forward arguments about the legality of what they are doing. They argued with each other. They went to the United Nations. And they tried to compartmentalise the chaos. Today, things start in one place and spread – to shipping lanes, to food security, to energy prices, to civilian infrastructure across the region. One crisis bleeds into another.
This is what happens when there is no stable balance of power, no agreement on what the rules are, and not even a shared idea of what the facts are. The great powers have quite simply moved on. Welcome to the Age of Un-Order.
I want to be clear: what we are experiencing now is just the hors d’oeuvre. We tend to think that the cause of chaos has an orange face and an improbable quiff. But Donald Trump is a symptom rather than a cause. The main course is still to be served up by big structural forces that are changing capitalism, climate, technology and demography – and blowing up the certainties that governed the world.
In the world of “Un-Order”, crises will no longer be resolved – they will compound and metastasise. And great powers will try to manipulate them to get ahead of each other rather than co-operating. We will see more uncontrolled wars for territory – from Taiwan to Western Sahara.
The world will become one of chokepoints where states weaponise energy routes, semiconductor supply chains, financial infrastructure and shipping lanes. And global governance will become ever harder as our idea of the truth fractures and AI-generated realities mean there is no common factual baseline for diplomacy, journalism or international law.
The biggest geopolitical divide in this new world will not be between East and West or democracies and autocracies, but between two approaches to survival, which I call “Architects” and “Artisans”.
The architects develop blueprints for order and try to mould the world to their designs. They tend to think about preserving order, developing universal norms, rules and anchoring security in institutions. Artisans lean into the changes that are taking place, adapt through trial and error, reuse old structures and work out how to survive themselves rather than relying on others.
The US and EU are archetypal architects. They prospered in the post-Second World War order but are having a hard time adjusting to the new reality. China is the archetype of the artisan and under Xi Jinping is developing an approach to changes in tech, economics, climate, capitalism and demography that challenges Western assumptions.
In the 19th century, China was so burdened by internal challenges that it was unable to respond to the world around it. It stuck to a rigid set of rules, protocols and customs about how the world should be ordered – while the West shot ahead. The danger now is that European leaders – from Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz to Donald Tusk and Keir Starmer – make the same mistake and that we begin our own “century of humiliation” while China shoots ahead.
A lot of what passes for strategy today is really grief management — leaders like Canada’s Mark Carney acknowledge the rupture in global order but act as if restoration is possible because the alternative (planning for permanent unorder) is overwhelming. It is time to accept that the old way is over – and to develop a European artisanship code which will allow us to keep thriving in open societies even as the world changes.
Rather than relying on global rules, Europeans should use their leverage to make it expensive to change borders with force or attack civilian infrastructure.
We also need to become more self-sufficient. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, China’s bullying over rare earths, the energy crisis following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the pandemic have all exposed the dangers of interdependence and over-reliance on single suppliers or chokepoints.
Above all, Europe must take responsibility for its own security, spending more on defence and strengthening societal resilience, rather than relying on Trump’s America. To truly survive the Age of Un-Order, Europe must be prepared to act alone.
Mark Leonard’s book Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics when the rules fail is out now, published by Polity Press. He is director of the European Council on Foreign Relations