If you’re wondering why the so-called “rules-based international order” crumbled, I’d suggest asking yourself who it benefitted the most (apart from smaller nations who obviously lacked the ability to enforce it). Liberal rhetoric will tell you it’s the U.S., but I’ve never been persuaded by that—at least the calculus wasn’t obvious.

Europe, otoh, was/is a massively wealthy region in economic and demographic decline, which had hugely outsized voice in the “rules-based order” because of the structure it inherited from two world wars. Once the primary benefactor of a system no longer had any material capacity to support it, of course it collapsed very quickly.

(And btw, China of course remains a primary beneficiary of the preexisting global trade system, which is a separate system from the public international law structure that “rules-based international order” usually refers to. Unlike the Europeans, however, it actually has some of the clout needed to preserve it against American aggression—at least in the form of rare earth bottlenecks and other forms of hard bargaining power.)