Afrasianet - Kemal Ozturk - Turkish writer and journalist - "New world order" was a term coined by U.S. President George H.W. Bush in 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and spoken of with great confidence and pride.

 

The world is no longer bipolar as it was during the Cold War, but, according to the United States, unipolar under its leadership, and the world was supposed to become more beautiful, more stable, and more peaceful.

But that didn't go the way. As usual, developing countries have paid the price for major contradictions and excessive imagination in America's improvised and far-reaching plans.

Bush Sr. occupied Iraq under the banner of the "New World Order," killing a million people and displacing millions, while Washington claimed to bring democracy and prosperity to the region. But it has brought nothing but national rupture, the resurgence of terrorism, widespread misery and poverty.

The repercussions of this US intervention were not limited to Iraq, but also reached Georgia, Chechnya, and Ukraine, that is, deep into Russia's vital space, where new wars and turmoil broke out. Instead of breaking out of bipolarity, we are experiencing its pain on both sides.

A system that turns allies into enemies

Perhaps the most bizarre and striking aspect of the New World Order is that the United States later became an enemy of the countries it once allies. It supported Afghanistan against Soviet occupation, and then again occupied it. It supported Iraq in its war against Iran, and then invaded it. Its interventions in Kosovo, Bosnia, Ukraine, Libya and Somalia have brought no stability or peace to these countries.

George W. Bush, followed by Presidents Obama and Biden, used the same term and talked a lot about peace and prosperity, but the result of their interventions was more tears and suffering.

Donald Trump has come up with shocking and illogical policies, claiming that he will make the world a better place. But a year later, however, the results of his remarks began to go in the exact opposite direction. 

Since his election campaign in which he promised to end wars, the world has seen new conflicts erupt. He entered the Iran-Israel war by himself, the Russian-Ukrainian war escalated, and conflicts in the Middle East expanded.

In just one year, five countries in the region were bombed with U.S. weapons, aircraft and missiles. Israel, as the German chancellor previously stated, has begun to perform security and military tasks that Western countries avoid directly undertaking, under the cover of American protection.

Why is the new world order collapsing?

In fact, all these displays of power, these "fanciful" developments, as Trump calls them, are nothing but a reflection of an excessive panic of impending collapse. The "New World Order," whose slogan the United States bore is in the process of collapsing, and we may not notice it very well because we live at its core.

The reason for this chaos is that the world order that America sought to establish could not actually impose itself, or that it satisfied only the US itself. Since Bush Sr. entered the Middle East with the elephant – the Republican Party's slogan – the region has not been reassured, and things have only gotten worse.

Iraq fragmented into three parts, and groups such as al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) emerged from its troubled territory, rendering the region unviable. Subsequent presidents came to protest these organizations and re-enter the region, with the result that Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen were made into unbearable arenas of ruin.

The United States made a historic mistake when it excluded Palestine from the Abraham Accords – launched under the pretext of promoting peace and strengthening Israel's allies – and today we are experiencing the results of a massive perversion and a continuous massacre. If you ask Trump, he would have replied that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize for  his "imaginary achievements"!

But the reality is that the world is getting worse, more chaotic, and more insecure. Why? Because:

1.    American capitalism is greedy and insatiable.
2.    The U.S. administration is overconfident to the point of being poisoned by force.
3.    America's intellectual elite no longer produces human or moral values.

When Europe is humiliated by America

It is not only the Middle East that is paying the price; Europe also faces the same fate because of the war between Russia and Ukraine. The problem lies not only in the "Russian threat," as Europe claims, but in the vision of Trump and his team for the world, where they see that "old Europe" no longer has a place in the equation and must retire and get out of the scene.

This was evident in insulting remarks by US Vice President J.D. Vance during the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, which triggered a hidden crisis that has not yet subsided between Washington and the European Union.

The threat to withdraw from NATO and impose tariffs was an extension of this American superiority over Europe. Instead of trying to rise, Europe chose to humiliate itself even more, through its unequivocal support for Israel's brutal wars and Trump's adulation at the recent NATO summit, which made it deserve this contempt in the eyes of Americans themselves. 

America no longer knows what to do

The United States has become a country that loses control of everything it touches, wreaking havoc and destruction. She really doesn't know what to do. Whenever she realizes that she is losing influence, she panicks and presses all the buttons at once, hoping to save herself, but only drowning.

As it retreats in front of China day by day, it turns to its last asset: the "cowboy weapon." It sends its devastating bombs, missiles, and aircraft carriers to the corners of the world, believing that with this intimidation it will return to its "happy days." But it only reaps the exhaustion of its economy, the loss of its allies, and the deepening of global hatred towards it. Then she returns to ask the people: "Why do you hate us?" , and mistreat them more.

In short, the more America seeks to impose a world order, the greater the imbalance and the collapse of stability. The American-led world order is collapsing, and these bombs we hear, the chaos we see, the turmoil we are experiencing, are just a manifestation of this collapse.

The Gordion knot can only be solved by the sword

It is natural that we do not fully understand what is happening, because we are still at the heart of this collapse. We don't know where things are going, nor how the results will be, but it is almost certain that humanity will not survive war, chaos, and suffering.

The United States is incapable of establishing a true world order, and it does not realize that it has brought the world nothing but war, exploitation, and destruction. Although there are American intellectuals and academics who observe this decline and see the "American dream" as coming to an end, the Trump administration, which views think tanks with suspicion at think tanks and academia, has cut funding to universities one by one.

America's major research institutions and universities can no longer produce solutions to America's deep crisis. Even if these solutions were produced, they would not be listened to in the state apparatus.

But it should not be forgotten that America has forged relations so complex with the countries of the world, and with the global financial system, that these entanglements have turned into a "Gordeon complex" (a historical knot in Greek mythology that was known to be impossible to solve), and it seems that it will be solved only if a new Alexander comes and cuts it with his sword.

In short, the new world order has begun to crack 35 years after its birth. I don't know when it will collapse completely, or what will come next, but I am sure it is only a matter of time.