[Wang Son-taek] Disruption is not collapse

US President Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric and conduct on the international stage have increasingly unsettled observers across the world. From Venezuela to Greenland and Iran, he has repeatedly conveyed a troubling message: that international norms are negotiable, and that pressure, threats, and coercion can be mobilized as routine instruments of statecraft.

Naturally, reactions vary. Unease is reasonable. Alarm is understandable. But some reactions move too quickly from anxiety to surrender: “The age of rules and norms is over,” “international law no longer matters,” “the world has entered an era of lawlessness.” Concluding that the system has already collapsed is neither analytically correct nor strategically wise. In international affairs, the most damaging moment is often not the disturbance itself, but the moment when societies convince themselves that disturbance is destiny and abandon the will to respond.

Premature pessimism is hazardous. It reduces a complex reality to a single, sweeping verdict. If Trump’s disruption is instantly reclassified as “collapse,” policymakers begin to believe that there are no meaningful options left. Diplomacy and strategy are then crowded out by fatalism. Over time, the corrosive effect is not only the violation of norms, but the quiet normalization of violation as an acceptable default.

What we need now is neither hysteria nor resignation, but precision and composure. Above all, we must distinguish between disruption and collapse. Disruption occurs when rules and institutions still exist, yet a powerful actor weakens, bypasses, or selectively applies them, thereby increasing uncertainty. Collapse, by contrast, describes a world in which rules no longer function, common standards dissolve, and power alone decides outcomes. What we are witnessing today is a dangerous disruption, not a confirmed collapse. Disruption is not collapse.

It is also important to remember that the norms-based order itself was never a perfect world. The phrase can sometimes imply a degree of purity that international politics has never possessed. Norms have always been contested, imperfectly enforced, and subject to selective interpretation. Even in an era shaped by international law and institutions, military and economic power have remained central. Yet order has endured not because violations vanished, but because violations were constrained by costs. Diplomatic isolation, economic penalties, alliance friction, and domestic accountability increased the price of crossing certain lines. Norms survived not as abstract ideals, but as practical constraints rooted in incentives and consequences.

Trump’s approach is dangerous precisely because it threatens that cost structure. It normalizes the idea that rules can be discarded when they become inconvenient. Alliances begin to look like transactional arrangements rather than enduring security frameworks. International law begins to appear optional rather than foundational. Yet it still does not follow that a new international order has replaced the old one. If the global order had truly changed, a new set of rules would be emerging and gaining broad acceptance. What we see instead is damage and strain within the existing system, not a coherent replacement. Trump is disrupting the order, but he has not rewritten it.

This is why the most dangerous narrative may be the one that declares the end of norms altogether. To say that “rules are dead” may sound like realism, but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some countries will reason: “If the United States disregards the rules, why should we follow them?” Others will conclude: “If power alone governs outcomes, we must accelerate rearmament.” Middle powers, gripped by insecurity, may narrow their strategic choices. In the end, order is eroded not only by violations but also by language that convinces societies to abandon the very idea that rules and norms can and should be defended.

There is one further point that deserves emphasis: Trump’s approach is anachronistic. Human history, in terms of international order, can be meaningfully divided by the year 1945. Before that turning point, international relations were often decided by force, and war was widely treated as a legitimate tool of statecraft. Strong states pressured weaker ones as a familiar feature of global politics. After 1945, however, the world moved in a different direction — one in which the use of force was prohibited in principle, and great-power predation became increasingly delegitimized.

That shift was not accidental. World Wars I and II revealed the ultimate consequences of imperial rivalry. Tens of millions died, and civilizations were devastated. Humanity learned that war was not merely another policy option; it could become a catastrophe threatening collective survival. Out of that experience emerged a difficult but essential consensus: this cannot continue. The United Nations Charter captured those hard-won lessons. Sovereign equality, the prohibition on the use of force, and the principle of non-intervention became pillars of the postwar order. These principles have not always been perfectly honored, but their existence has mattered. They have provided a basis for condemnation, constraint, and legitimacy, and have helped preserve at least a minimum standard of restraint in international politics.

In this sense, the worldview Trump appears to promote resembles the international politics of the early 1900s, when President Theodore Roosevelt treated coercive diplomacy as an effective tool of great-power management. In that era, such practices were among several viable options. Today, they fall into a category of behavior that the international community has sought, in effect, to prohibit in the name of humanity itself. What may once have been a choice has become an unacceptable act.

The international order is indeed being tested. But being tested does not mean it has already failed. Trump’s actions disrupt the system, yet they have not replaced it. Our task is not to surrender to the belief that “everything is over,” but to restore the costs of violations and reinforce the credibility of norms through disciplined diplomacy and strategic coordination. We should talk about resilience, not surrender. The future will not be determined by Trump’s capacity for disruption alone, but by whether the international community can remain calm, principled, and committed to the post-1945 architecture it built at such a high price.

Wang Son-taek

Wang Son-taek is an adjunct professor at Sogang University. He is a former diplomatic correspondent at YTN and a former research associate at Yeosijae. The views expressed here are the writer’s own. — Ed.