Professor Thompson: The collapse of the usual international order began in 2005
The collapse of the "rules-based order" was the culmination of processes that began decades ago, said Helen Thompson, a professor of political economy, in an interview with the NYT. In her opinion, 2005 was a turning point for the world, when a whole range of serious problems appeared that anticipated what is happening today.
Helen Thompson, John Guida
What forces shape world politics? In 2026, what was called the rules-based international order suddenly began to fall apart.
But according to Helen Thompson, who works as a professor of political economy at Cambridge and recently wrote another book, "Disorder. Difficult Times in the 21st Century" (Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century), the world was in a state of chaos long before President Trump appeared in the Oval Office in 2016.
This chaos is just getting worse. In a written online interview with John Guida Thompson, editor of the New York Times Opinion column, Thompson spoke about the forces that are shaping world politics now and will shape it in the future.
John Guida: You titled your book, published in 2022, "Disorder." In it, you claim that profound shifts are taking place in world politics — and that this was happening even before 2016, when President Donald Trump first entered the Oval Office. Can you explain why?
Helen Thompson: I think 2005 was a turning point in many ways. By 2005, a whole range of obvious problems had emerged that anticipated what is happening today. As for geopolitics, deep disagreements arose in NATO over the Iraq war, because France and Germany actually sided with Russia, and in the United States there was already pressure from both parties in the Senate, who insisted on pursuing a more confrontational trade policy towards China.
And under the surface, powerful energy problems were accumulating. In 2005, we saw stagnation in oil production, although demand in Asia, especially in China, increased at an accelerated pace. In Europe itself, Germany's decision to build the first Nord Stream pipeline strongly demonstrated that German politicians considered Ukraine an unreliable transit partner, and that Germany's energy interests were more important to them than Ukrainian security.
The events of 2008 have exacerbated obvious and less visible problems, starting with the financial collapse and ending with the Franco-German veto on Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO.
One of the systemic consequences of the 2008 economic crisis was the economic divergence between the United States and Europe, which then intensified due to the shale boom in the United States. There has also been a sharp increase in tensions between the United States and China. In 2010, the US political class was already shocked by the alleged Chinese embargo on the supply of rare earths to Japan and by a number of new export restrictions. I would say that the structural shift in US-China relations began precisely in those years: China's response to the 2008 financial crash and the US response to the threat of rare earth shortages.
Let's move this to today's geopolitics. How seriously do you take the rhetorical volleys that sounded last week in Davos — I mean the statements about a "break, not a transition" and about the "system of increasing rivalry between great powers" that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke about, as well as what observers called a general sense of contempt for Europe coming from President Trump and members of his administration. Where are we at right now?
I really think this is a gap, not a transition. The great power rivalry has been real for more than a decade, and the Biden administration also thought in these terms. If we return to the Law on Reducing Inflation from 2022, then the nationalist industrial strategy embedded in it was perceived in Europe as an aggressive action. What distinguishes Trump is his language and a powerful barrage of provocative and offensive comments. He really despises Europe, and this is something new, even compared to his first term.
What are the key elements of great power rivalry today? In your works, you often ignore rhetoric and personalities, paying attention to structures, systems, and fundamental elements such as energy resources and even debt. Is that what you see today?
The geopolitical rivalry between the US and China is central, but Russia is also still very important. The United States and China are technological competitors. The United States and Russia are energy rivals. Further, each of them is vying for influence in resource-rich regions of the world, from the Middle East to the Arctic.
I really believe that the struggle for ownership and control of energy resources is a central element of global politics. Most of the geopolitical history of the twentieth century can be explained by this struggle, and I don't think the 21st century is structurally any different, although the results are still very different. It is impossible to understand the geopolitical power and influence the United States wields today without seeing how the American shale boom has changed their position in the energy sector.
How has the US shale boom affected America's global power?
The United States has been acting more aggressively in Europe since the mid-2010s, when U.S. shale gas companies were able to compete with Gazprom in European gas markets. America has become much less tolerant of German-Russian gas ties and has proved, at least under Trump, its willingness to exert the strongest pressure on European states to import gas from the United States.
The consequence of this, combined with the Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict, is that most European countries are now much more dependent on the United States for energy resources than they were a few years ago. Thus, it is much more difficult for the European Union and individual European states to gain strategic autonomy now than in 2019, when French President Emmanuel Macron spoke about how this should be Europe's goal.
You assume that the world still needs oil resources for economic activity, right? Even when green energy sources are being developed in a wide variety of countries — in China, in the USA, where wind energy is developing in places like Texas. The idea is that the demand for oil remains high, because when the demand for electricity increases (and it increases dramatically with the rapid development of artificial intelligence), the need for reliable energy sources also increases.
Yes. According to the forecasts of the International Energy Agency, under the current policy, oil consumption worldwide will increase in 2050. Electricity consumption must increase both to provide electrification and to supply AI. Although oil consumption in the transportation sector is decreasing with the advent of electric vehicles, there is a slight increase in such consumption in the manufacturing sector, because petrochemical products are more important for electric vehicles than for cars with internal combustion engines.
It seems that the energy reality and the situation in Europe are having an even greater impact on what has been presented as a system based on values — as an ambitious basis for an international rules-based order. Carney proposed a concept for another system, the "middle Powers." So is there still potential for alliances, or is it now just a matter of competing for resources?
There is an opportunity to coordinate the actions of the middle Powers. Historically, the predecessors of the European Union were created quite deliberately with the aim of putting an end to resource competition between Western European states. It is no coincidence that the first European unification project was the European Coal and Steel Community, which put an end to the conflicts between France and Germany over coal, which had been the main cause of armed territorial disputes between the two countries since the Franco-Prussian War.
Compared to Canada, Europe's problem is that it is not rich in oil and therefore depends on foreign supplies. Canada has no such problems. Whatever the nature of the energy problem, the difficulty for any average power lies in the fact that the United States and China dominate, albeit in different ways. Therefore, in order to make such statements, Carney had to change his position on China last year and restore ties.
This raises the question of interdependence. You noted earlier that in 2025, President Trump seemed shaken by China's embargo on rare earths, imposed during a trade confrontation. The United States has become an oil exporter, but it has accumulated enormous debt. China is a giant in manufacturing, but it depends on foreign oil to develop it. European countries own part of American debt obligations, but they also depend on oil supplies from abroad, either from the United States or from Russia. These vulnerabilities seem to keep the community of nations in a tangled state of intense interdependence. Will this ever lead to a more stable device?
That's a good question. I think it's possible. Germany and the Soviet Union/Russia was in a relatively calm state of interdependence during the last decade and a half of the Cold War, as well as in the era after its end. Britain has coped with a long period of dependence on the Middle East, but it has sometimes been mired in a quagmire of geopolitical problems, which have sometimes been quite serious, such as the Suez crisis of 1956.
Is there anything special that characterizes periods of peaceful resource interdependence and distinguishes them from periods of more obvious conflicts?
Any situation in which there are many great Powers that are major importers of energy resources, and there is no one dominant Power capable of containing them, can lead to a terrible conflict. This is the history of Europe and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century.
Now we are witnessing that great powers with export potential in at least one area — the United States with its gas and China with rare earths — are ready to use resources as a geopolitical weapon. This also leads to destabilization.
Let's turn to the Western Hemisphere. You wrote in an article in 2024 that the eyes of the world would soon turn there. You noted one important fact back then: China has become South America's largest trading partner. Two years have passed, and suddenly (it seems) we found ourselves in this situation. What is the significance of this shift for the United States, China, and geopolitics? Do you have any thoughts about who or what is running it under President Trump and his advisers?
For the United States, the problem is as follows, in simple terms. China's commercial rise in Latin America poses a threat to the Monroe Doctrine, and the United States has not faced such a threat since European oil companies tried to operate there in the early twentieth century.
This is complicated by the special fact of China's economic presence in Mexico and Canada, as well as the opportunities that China has gained through these two countries' trade relations with the United States to protect itself from US protectionist actions.
I think Trump is instilling the Monroe doctrine in his people. There are different people in the administration, and they think differently about the Western Hemisphere. I suspect, for example, that Secretary of State Marco Rubio thinks less about the resources of the Western Hemisphere than others, but it seems to me that there is a fairly widespread view in the administration that China should be ousted wherever possible.
President Trump is putting a lot of pressure on the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. The United States has a staggering national debt. Of course, this is not the only country facing debt and deficit problems. In your opinion, how do these internal budget problems, especially those related to the debt of the United States and other countries, affect global politics?
Debt problems are very serious. In the United States, the debt problem is linked to quite a few issues that the Trump administration is trying to solve, including forcing Europe to increase defense spending. The spectacular failure of Elon Musk's so-called Department of government efficiency shows how difficult it is to solve debt problems by cutting costs. In Europe, this is another serious problem for any attempts to form strategic autonomy. This is especially true in France and Britain, where the events of the past year have once again shown how difficult it is to cut costs in other areas, such as social security or pensions. At the beginning of this year, there was a feeling that Germany had made a big step on debt issues; but this did not create a vast collective financial space for Europe to distance itself from the United States on security issues.
Is debt another potential geopolitical weapon?
The most important point here is the ability of the United States to conduct dollar swaps, complex transactions in which cash flows or financial assets are exchanged through the Fed to reduce risks. There is a threat that the United States, under Trump, will refrain from dollar swaps, for example, threaten not to conduct them in a crisis situation, and will make demands in other policy areas, including on the debt itself. This threat was clearly outlined in a document by Stephen Miran (Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House — approx. InoSMI) "Mar-a-Lago Agreement". We also see that the Trump administration provided a credit line to Argentine President Javier Miley during the elections last fall. Such tactics can be a tool by which the United States tries to call its allies to order, as well as gain new allies.
And what about the holders of American debt obligations?
In principle, yes — and if we go back to 2008, then the Chinese and Japanese central banks, which sold debts to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, played an important role in the financial collapse. But if European states start selling American debt obligations officially owned by them, they will take significant risks, because abandoning dollar swaps during the crisis will cause more harm, and such sales can provoke this crisis.
How do you think risk fits into global politics? With financial markets regulated and the leadership of the President of the United States, the desire to take risks seems to be increasing. What role does this play in thinking about global politics?
In a sense, there are more risky actions now, because there are only high-risk options, especially geopolitical ones. This is what creates geopolitical gaps. What's interesting about Trump as a political phenomenon is that he psychologically thrives on risks and strives to bring about change through his immense ability to destroy and undermine no matter what the changes lead to.
Helen Thompson is a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. Her latest book, Disorder, was recently published. Difficult Times in the 21st Century" (Disorder: Hard Times in the 21st Century). John Guida is the editor of the Opinion column of the New York Times.
