Ilonna Chen | Originally Published: 1 November 2026
The victors of World War II took home more than moral superiority: veto power, nuclear weapons, and shaping the creation of institutions governing the international order placed the world within their reach. Among these great powers, Russia dominates the world’s nuclear arsenal, the United States (U.S.) dominates military power, and China dominates the crucial exporting economy (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons 2023). For decades, these three powers upheld the economic, maritime, and nuclear balance of the rules-based international order—appearing to leave imperialist tendencies of historical great powers in history.
Two decades into the 21st century, the three major powers have, on numerous unprovoked occasions, violated the very international order they control. This essay argues that the decay of rules-based international order is a result of mutual non-interference between Russia, the United States, and China: each power expects and receives impunity for aggression in its own sphere of geographical interest, and maintains relative neutrality facing violations committed in a distant power’s domain.
Russian Annexation of Crimea, 2014
In the closing days of the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Russia broke the Olympic truce. After the pro-Russian former Ukrainian president Yanukovych fled the country amidst the Euromaidan protests, Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms seized Crimea’s government and military sites, marking the first forcible annexation of European territory since World War II (BBC News 2014; Shevchenko 2014). This act violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of any state, as well as the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, the explicit agreement that relinquished Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal in exchange for the recognition of Ukrainian sovereignty (United Nations 2020; United Nations 1994). The U.S. and NATO, as the primary opposition to Russian military threats, condemned the act, removed Russia from the G8, and imposed other financial sanctions (The White House 2014; NATO 2025). China abstained from the matter.
Washington’s moderate response depicts the conditionality of U.S. imposed consequences on infringements of international law. Despite Obama’s condemnation of the Crimean annexation as a “clear violation of Ukrainian constitutions and international law,” he later acknowledged that Ukraine was not a “core interest” for the U.S. and stated that Ukraine would always be “vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do (The White House 2014; Goldberg 2016).” This shows that Washington did not act against Russia’s unambiguous violation of international law because it recognised Ukraine as a Russian domain and chose not to challenge another global power. Thus, Russia faced minimal consequences after annexing Crimea, showing that the international order cannot constrain the powers tasked with upholding it.
Within two weeks of the invasion, a referendum was held under Russian military occupation, and there were no independent observers; in this referendum, the Crimean parliament reported 97% support for Russian annexation (Kim 2022). The lack of independent observers raises questions surrounding the credibility of this statistic, yet Obama relied on this referendum to justify the Russian military invasion in Crimea (Robertson 2023). He asserted that it had taken place with the alleged consent of the people of Crimea—“because Crimea was full of a lot of Russian speakers, and there was some sympathy to the views that Russia was representing” (Robertson 2023). Washington’s permissiveness based on this alleged “consent” damaged the universal idea that sovereignty is non-disputable under any circumstance of the rules-based international order. This permissiveness was used to further excuse international order breaches by great powers with aggressive agendas for neighbouring states. The lack of U.S., China, and other major alliances’ actions set a dangerous precedent for future invasive agendas; international law can be broken with brute force if the occupied are portrayed as consenting.
End of “One Country, Two Systems”— Hong Kong, 2019
A bill to extradite Hong Kong fugitives to the PRC threatened Hong Kong’s judicial independence, guaranteed by the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration of “one country, two systems,” a binding international treaty registered with the UN. From there, an estimated two million Hong Kongers marched on the streets, facing police who violently dispersed and arrested protesters throughout 2019 (Amnesty International, 2019). By June 2020, the National Security Law effectively nullified Hong Kong’s judicial independence. Bypassing Hong Kong’s legislature, Beijing imposed broad categories for criminal penalties—secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces—dismantling all pro-Hong Kong opposition (Fong 2026).
In response, the U.S., under the Trump administration, signed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act in November 2019, which is a domestic law requiring annual reviews of the democratic status of Hong Kong (U.S. Congress 2019). Yet, Trump has expressed disinterest towards China’s treaty breach and, on occasion, favourable remarks about Beijing (Swanson and Crowley 2019). Trump dismissed Chinese forces’ human rights violations by positioning them as China’s domestic matters. He claimed that the situation was “between Hong Kong [and] China, because Hong Kong is a part of China (Sciutto et al. 2019).” Reportedly, Trump also promised Beijing the silence of U.S. officials regarding Hong Kong’s protests (Sciutto et al. 2019). Other powers, specifically the United Kingdom, condemned the breach of international law, but refrained from concrete legal or military responses (Brooke-Holland 2019). Russia, itself a disruptor of international order, unsurprisingly abstained from the matter.
Similar to Crimea, the lack of interference in China’s breaches of international law and order stemmed from recognition of China’s regional dominance. Unlike Crimea, China’s control of Hong Kong shows that international treaties can be nullified without repercussions and replaced by new legislation based on a great power’s interests. The lack of consequences further legitimises Beijing’s expansionist ambitions in the South China Sea and Arctic, as Beijing uses legal ambiguity from Hong Kong’s template to erode previous international law commitments (Mastro n.d.).
The Donroe Doctrine — Venezuela, 2026
The United States has damaged the rules-based international order through the ‘illegitimate regime’ justification. In 2003, the Bush administration commanded “Operation Iraqi Freedom” on the claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and governed with terrorism, justifying U.S. action as bringing freedom to Iraq (Pritzker Military Museum & Library 2025). However, the U.S. failed to locate the alleged weapons, and Iraq remains under oppressive governance.
On January 3rd, 2026, the Trump administration launched an overnight operation in Venezuela, capturing leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife on claims of governmental drug trafficking (U.S. Congress, 2026). Unlike previous conflicts, however, the illegality of the invasion was uncontested: the U.S. had acted without seeking domestic congressional approval, breached Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, and broken numerous international human rights laws (Ebright 2026).
In response, the Russian representative to the UN criticised the U.S. for “giving new impetus to neocolonialism and imperialism,” and Russian Security Council Chairperson Medvedev used U.S. action to threaten Ukrainian president Zelensky and German Chancellor Merz (Hird 2026). However, there has been no escalation of military involvement in the Caribbean, despite Russia’s backing of Maduro’s leadership (The Guardian 2025). Eagerly succeeding the U.S. as Venezuela’s closest partner, China’s passive response further reflects its conservative foreign policy in another great power’s domain (Mardell 2026). Strategically, geographic proximity to the Panama Canal and instilling Latin American trade dependence are critical for China and Russia to break U.S. power in the area. Yet, facing concentrated U.S. military presence, the great powers are fast to concede trade and geopolitical power (Paredes 2025).
In an administration of erratic decisions and a shortage of strategies, the invasion of Venezuela without pushback from international law was taken as permission and confidence for further expansion of national interest with the justification of a faulty regime. The implications of the U.S. jeopardising the rules-based international order are disastrous compared to Russia and China. The U.S. is the only democracy among the three, and thereby it is expected to uphold freedoms and human rights. Russia and China, infamous for their human rights atrocities and abstentions from international humanitarian crises, misalign with peacekeeping values and democratic norms in the international order. If the U.S. continues abandoning acknowledgement of national sovereignty, human rights, and multilateralism, the peace guarantees of the post-war rules-based international order will be compromised.
Of course, the inaction of distant global powers may not be entirely attributed to fear of the regionally dominant power; fighting faraway wars with a geographically-advantaged power is naturally risky and expensive. Rather, the occurrence of a great power’s aggressive imperialist agenda with nearby states versus amiable foreign policy with distant states arises naturally from self-interest. As each of the global powers with their area of interest—Russia with Eastern Europe, China with the First Island Chain, and the U.S. with Latin America—refrains from enforcing action in another’s, the rules-based international order is discounted and cannot deliver promised consequences without a conflict of interest among the great powers.
Recommendations
Prime Minister Carney remarked in his World Economic Forum speech that “middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu” (World Economic Forum 2026). Great powers have damaged the international order, and institutions underpinning the order—such as NATO, the UN, and the G7—are powerless to effectively punish and deter aggression because great powers dictate decision-making (Bergmann 2025). Thus, middle and small states should form more regional alliances without strong states. ASEAN and the EU, for example, are regional alliances that cooperate on economy and defense, increasing interconnectedness between states that, on the international stage, are often perceived as one entity (ASEAN 2024). During Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the EU, as a major economic source for Russia, imposed swift sanctions, joint condemnations, and agreed upon collective military and economic support for Ukraine (European Council 2024). Such alliances allow for faster responses and stronger, decisive actions in the face of great powers’ breaches of international law.
Furthermore, geographically larger middle powers and regional alliances should act as hedges between smaller vulnerable states and great powers by offering security guarantees, trade alternatives, and diplomatic support that reduce smaller states’ dependence on strong aggressive nations. For example, the Philippines, with the support of ASEAN members, was able to defend its sovereignty against China in 2016 in the South China Sea, while Nordic countries are continuously cooperating to deter U.S. aggression on Greenland (Miller 2026). Without such coalitions, the rules-based international order will continue to lose legitimacy and function facing imperialist agendas of great powers—leaving sovereignty a privilege for those beyond the great powers’ reach.
Illona Chen is a second-year student at the University of Toronto, double-majoring in International Relations and Cognitive Science. She is an Editor for the 2026-2027 Commentary Division of The Attaché Journal of International Affairs.
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