After America: Who Owns the World Order Now?

For eighty years, the world outsourced its order to one country. That contract has just been torn up.

On February 28, the United States and Israel struck Iran without UN authorization, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Two months earlier, US special forces abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from his Caracas residence and flew him to New York to face federal charges. In between, President Donald Trump withdrew the US from 66 international organizations—31 of them UN bodies—and floated a personal replacement he calls the Board of Peace.

These are not isolated provocations. They are a coherent signal: the architecture the United States built in 1945 no longer serves American interests as Washington now defines them. The question that follows is harder, and it belongs to everyone else.

Why America Is Walking Away

It would be too easy—and too wrong—to reduce this to Trump's personality. The structural argument behind the retreat has real weight.

In 1945, the US accounted for roughly half of global GDP. Building the UN, the Bretton Woods system, and NATO was an expression of overwhelming power meeting overwhelming need. The world was in ruins; America was not. The architecture served American interests precisely because American interests and global stability were, for a time, nearly identical.

The world of 2026 looks nothing like that. Europe rebuilt. China rose. South Korea, Japan, Canada, and the Gulf states grew wealthy. Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Vietnam are ascending. The threats that now dominate—climate change, pandemics, cyber warfare—were barely imaginable when the UN Charter was drafted.

American taxpayers fund roughly 22% of the UN's regular budget and a larger share of peacekeeping operations. It is not irrational for Americans to ask why a nation that represents about 4% of the world's population should carry a disproportionate share of the institutional burden for a system designed for a world that no longer exists.

The argument is uncomfortable. It is not entirely wrong.

The Uncomfortable Mirror

Here is where C. Justin Robinson, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, offers the sharpest diagnosis. Writing in the aftermath of these events, he turns the critique not just on Washington but on everyone who benefited from the old arrangement.

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European nations sheltered under American security guarantees while criticizing US foreign policy. Developing nations demanded institutional reform while relying on American funding. Small island states invoked international law as a shield while contributing little to enforce it. If multilateralism is genuinely valued, it must now be demonstrated with resources, not rhetoric.

The crises compounding this moment are not abstract. The US-Israeli strikes on Iran risk a wider regional conflagration that could disrupt global energy supplies and push fragile economies toward recession. Maduro's abduction has destabilised Latin America and set a precedent that no sovereign leader is beyond the reach of unilateral force. The wars in Gaza and Sudan continue. The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo remains engulfed in conflict. In each case, the UN Security Council has been paralyzed by the veto structure that privileges the powerful over the vulnerable.

The institution is not just underfunded. It is structurally incapable of responding to the emergencies it was created to address.

What Reform Could Actually Look Like

Robinson's proposals are specific enough to be taken seriously.

First, relocate UN headquarters out of New York. The symbolism matters: why should the world's primary multilateral body remain in a country actively withdrawing from multilateralism? Geneva and Vienna offer neutrality. Nairobi and Rio de Janeiro would center the organization in the Global South. Island nations—Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Jamaica, Mauritius—would signal that the institution now belongs to the vulnerable, not the powerful. If the world can mobilize trillions for wars and financial bailouts, it can fund a headquarters move.

Second, diversify the funding base. The EU, China, Japan, Gulf states, and emerging economies must contribute commensurate with their stake in a functioning international order. A broader funding base would not only ensure institutional survival—it would democratize global governance in ways long overdue.

Third, on climate: the window is narrow but open. American withdrawal from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change threatens the Green Climate Fund, the Adaptation Fund, and Loss and Damage mechanisms that are lifelines for Small Island Developing States. Europe must back its climate rhetoric with money. China, the world's largest emitter, has the capacity to become a major contributor—if it chooses to claim the moral leadership that would come with it.

The Door Stays Open, But the World Can't Wait

Robinson is careful not to cast the United States as an adversary. Americans who believe in multilateralism remain numerous and influential. The door to renewed American engagement should stay open.

But the rest of the world cannot wait indefinitely for US domestic politics to resolve itself. The task is to build institutions resilient enough to function with or without American participation—not out of hostility, but out of necessity.

For smaller states and emerging economies, this moment carries both a burden and an opportunity. The burden: they must now fund and sustain what they previously consumed. The opportunity: a reformed, broadly funded, genuinely representative international order would be more legitimate, less selectively moral, and more capable of acting in genuine emergencies than the one currently paralyzed by great-power vetoes.

In 1945, a war-weary America chose to build rather than retreat. That choice shaped the world we inherited. In 2026, a different America has made a different choice. The invitation—if it can be called that—is for the rest of the world to finally take ownership of the international order it claims to value.