The End of Sovereignty - How to Understand Geopolitics in 2026 - Charlie Said

For 70 years, our understanding of the world has been shaped by the “post-war consensus,” an understanding reached by the winners of WWII that would establish rules for the next century.  The UN, the idea of a “rules-based order”, and the paramount belief that territorial sovereignty was a right of all nations are all constructs of the post-war consensus.  Today, that consensus is on its last legs.

Replacing the international order of sovereignty is a realist, and at times brutal, self-interested calculus.  Nations will explicitly prioritize their own interests over those of the world, and view even allies as potential obstacles to these goals.  Hard military power will be the deciding factor in diplomatic decisions, while seats on UN committees will become laughably irrelevant.  The respect for traditional alliances will be called into question, and allies will be forced to justify their status with tangible benefits, not vague statements about being “stronger together.”

If this reminds you of a certain orange-tinted president, you would be correct.  Trump has done more to tear down the vestiges of the rules-based order than any other figure currently on the world stage.  However, Trump isn’t just a single brash actor or a bull in a china shop.  He’s the leader of a political movement who won the White House with a national mandate, clear victory in all swing states, and the popular vote (a rarity for modern Republican candidates).  His attitude of isolationism and dismissal towards global trade, the UN, and even NATO is shared by a large swath of America, and indeed, of the world.  Trump is, in other words, a symptom but not a root cause.  That root cause goes much deeper.

To appreciate the change that is about to occur in American foreign policy, we need to turn the clock back and examine the norms established after WWII.  The most obvious of those would be the UN, the ICJ, and the idea that the whole world was in the “community of nations.”  Isolationism was seen as a mistake that cost us dearly, and with the rise of modern transportation technology, globalism was the clear way of the future.  Another core pillar was the emphasis on human rights as universal goods.  The most significant element of the post-war consensus, however, was the idea that national sovereignty was paramount.  Aggression and invasion, by definition, made you the bad guy.  We adopted a logic similar to a child who tells his mother, “he started it!”  We decided that the borders drawn after the war would be the canonically correct borders, and attempts to change them would be morally condemned.  At the same time, the right of self-determination within those borders was emphasized.  A liberal democracy and a globally connected free market were prescribed as the correct system for every nation.  Lastly came the idea that it was the moral obligation and legal right of the “big brothers” of the world to ensure that human rights, democracy, and above all, national sovereignty, were upheld around the globe.

While incredibly disruptive, the Cold War generally operated within the post-war order.  The USSR sought to expand its borders primarily by politically assimilating vassal states.  They supported communist revolutions, but other than the invasion of Afghanistan, avoided traditional conquest as a means to grow their power.  America and NATO, meanwhile, invested massive political capital in emphasizing the rules-based order (especially the liberal democracy, human rights, and global free trade parts), as well as in trying to frame the Soviet Union as deviant from those ideals.  

When the USSR collapsed, it seemed to be a great victory for the post-war framework.  It was, in the words of American commentator Charles Krauthammer, a “unipolar moment”.  America was on top of the world, and her nearest potential rivals were in shambles.  The liberal democratic order had triumphed.  American political analyst Francis Fukuyama wrote a 1992 book titled “The End of History”, in which he argued that the rules-based order had triumphed and would set us on a course for peace and prosperity for centuries to come.  The state of strife and warfare that had beset humanity for all of recorded history was over, and the rules-based order, with the UN at its head, would rise to build a better world.

Of course, that didn’t happen.  The early 2000s saw the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia, aided by significant economic investment and trade volume with the West.  The theory was that after the collapse of communism, we could build these former empires back up and bring them into the fold of liberal democracy through trade.  We used to have debates (that now seem quite quaint) over if economic liberalization would cause democratization, or if democratization should come first and be used to economically liberalize.  Europe hollowed out its energy sector and bought increasing volumes of energy from Russia, while America’s manufacturing base was offshored to China.  But neither superpower showed signs of becoming less authoritarian or less anti-American.  Xi and Putin steered their countries on a path of dictatorship and control, explicitly seeking to recover the greatness and power they enjoyed in the century prior, all the while doing just enough to keep the West economically entwined.

The other great failure of the post-war consensus was the Global War on Terror.  American and allied forces conquered both Iraq and Afghanistan and set up what were, on paper, liberal democracies with constitutions, legal systems, and elections.  These nation-building projects, however, were not the shining success story that Washington had hoped they’d be.  Iraq’s new democracy was marked by corruption, ethnic-sectarian conflict, and steadily declining voter participation.  It struggled, even with American support, to maintain control of its territory.  The rise of ISIS presented a regional threat that the US was forced to step in and combat, or risk losing all its nation-building progress.  Afghanistan was an even worse embarrassment; after 20 years of barely-functional democracy, American forces withdrew in 2021.  The liberal government structure we had invested 2 decades and thousands of lives into collapsed, virtually overnight, as Taliban forces conquered the capital city.  Today, the Taliban controls Afghanistan and is transforming it into a repressive autocracy akin to Iran.

The lessons learned from the 2000s and early 2010s were these: you can’t make democracy and freedom happen in a country that doesn’t want it.  You can’t prevent conquest and wars by drawing lines on a map and telling everyone to stay on their side.  Most fatally for the post-war consensus, fundamental power struggles are part of human nature and impossible to avoid simply by making treaties, passing laws, or issuing strongly worded condemnations.  Of course, we learned these lessons the hard way.

In 1862, Otto von Bismarck declared that “Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided… but by iron and blood.”  Such a time has returned.  What does this mean going forward?  

First, international institutions are almost entirely irrelevant.  The UN is an excuse for our diplomats to say things to other people (something they could likely do absent the UN), but it serves no other serious function.  America is in the process of withdrawing from agencies such as the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, and is increasingly skeptical of the UN.  Even NATO has come under attack as being useless, expensive, and outdated.  The question being asked by America is, “What does this do for me?”, and institutions which can’t answer us are being abandoned.

Second, bilateral aid is ending.  Trump gutted USAID early on in his term, and while the State Department continues limited foreign aid, our total assistance apparatus is a shadow of its former self.  The admin is uninterested in giving money, resources, or opportunities to anyone who isn’t American.  Traditionally, aid was defended as an important instrument of foreign policy, shaping the economies and populations of current or future allies.  The response from the Trump movement seems to be 1.) aid has failed to achieve results, and 2.) we don’t need allies or trade partners anyway.  If the country isn’t stable and prosperous now, they aren’t worth investing in, and that money should be spent either at home or in countries with more certain returns on investment.  You may think this is unique to Trump and will end when Democrats return to power, but a large portion of the left, especially the young left who are struggling economically, is strongly opposed to helping others before we help ourselves.  Isolationism is a bipartisan movement, and it’s here to stay.

Third, we are rethinking the very concept of borders and national sovereignty.  A faction of the Republican Party is currently arguing that Russia actually should control the Donbas, because since Ukraine has shifted from a neutral nation in the 90s to a NATO-aligned, anti-Russia nation in the 2020s, there needs to be a buffer zone between Moscow and the functional frontline of Europe.  Trump recently called into question Greenland’s claim to sovereignty on the basis that they can’t defend themselves, so they don’t have the right to the territory.  Both the Biden and Trump admins seem hesitant to issue strong statements of support to Taiwan, for fear of angering China.  We violated many traditional political norms when we kidnapped Maduro in early January, but so far don’t seem to have faced serious consequences for that move.  In other words, we seem to be adopting a “might makes right” attitude.

What does this mean for Stoa Team Policy debate?  Aside from the obvious importance of understanding recent geopolitical history, there are some key changes that you should be aware of.

First, any impacts outside of America are weaker now than they ever have been.  In 2017, the Aff case that won NITOC was to fund tuberculosis treatments in Africa.  The pre-Covid metagame regarded all human life as equal.  Today, that case would be met with objections like “Why should we spend money to help Africa?” “Why not spend that money to help Americans instead?”, and “Why do we care what happens in Africa in the first place?”  This year, teams are impacting organized crime and violence in Central America to “increased illegal immigration”, whereas debaters of former eras would have considered the violence itself to be the final impact.  Whatever your opinions on this shift, it’s clear that helping people outside our borders has become much harder to justify.

Second, respect for political norms and national sovereignty is increasingly low.  The “we can just do things” attitude is pervasive, leading to cases that would strongarm other countries into supporting whatever program, policy, or trade deal we want.  It’s assumed that other countries would naturally cooperate on a deal, or that we could make them do so despite their wishes.

Third, the world stage is no longer center stage.  In 2021, arguments addressing the rise of Chinese influence around the world were dominant.  Today, teams are prepping generic “China Is Not a Threat” responses.  We are not concerned, and possibly not aware of, the rise of revisionist powers that threaten the rules-based global order.  What’s happening in Moscow, Beijing, or Tehran isn’t as important to us as it once was, and most debaters would just respond, “Oh, we’ll be fine because we’re very powerful and they’re very far away.”

Whatever you think of the shifts the league is experiencing, it’s undeniable that arguments that worked before Covid don’t work today.  It’s important to understand why that is happening and where the national zeitgeist may be headed, so you can ride this wave of change rather than be knocked over by it.

Leave a comment or question, we'd love to talk with you about what you've just read and how to apply it this season. 

Good luck and God bless. 

- Charlie Said