The US was the world police. It was often joked about, but it had some legitimacy. Particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, their unquestioned military hegemony kept the awful parts of the world cowed into Pax Americana. Every time the US shows weakness, dictators and warlords and terrorists become bolder. Putin’s seizure of Crimea and the Donbas and Trump’s Afghanistan withdrawal all made America look very weak, and they started preparing their own plans.

Now, with Trump dismantling the US from within, in ways that are probably irreparable in most of our lifetimes, the age of Pax Americana is certainly dead. The world will return to widespread conflict until somebody else steps up with enough military power to police the world to some approximation of their standards (maybe Europe, maybe China), or until it fractures into relatively stable rival groups at cold war with each other (Putin’s much desired “multi-polar world”) or until conflict becomes so violent and/or widespread it is simply the new normal which we’ll probably call World War 3, or some combination of these possibilities.