Answer:
A combination of factors has sown concern about the condition of the postwar order: China’s resurgence, destabilizing Russian conduct, the ongoing disintegration of the Middle East, and the increasingly far-reaching effects of artificial intelligence, to name a few.
Perhaps the greatest anxiety, however, stems from the evolving attitude of the order’s principal architect, the United States. Under the leadership of Donald Trump, it is questioning the net strategic benefits of its participation as never before since the conclusion of World War II.
This judgment was a central theme among participants at the annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission, held last month in Singapore.
While those attending discussed Mr. Trump himself, they largely urged the adoption of a wider aperture: the president has tapped into a series of forces that had been converging well before his victory, and that will likely endure long after his time in office has concluded.
For starters, there is an increasingly marked disconnect between the issues that concern most Americans on a day-to-day basis and the way in which the foreign policy establishment discusses America’s role in the world. Washington Post national security correspondent Greg Jaffe remarked in mid-2017 that “sustaining the US-led, rules-based international order [is] an exhortation that, at best, [is] meaningless to most Americans
