The World After Legitimacy: Power, Oil, and the Collapse of Global Order

By Christopher Louissaint | commentary

What the world is witnessing today is not a collection of unrelated crises, but the visible unraveling of an international system that no longer commands respect, deterrence, or moral authority. The expansion of BRICS, the erosion of multilateral institutions, and the return of open resource-driven intervention mark a decisive shift away from rule-based global governance toward a raw politics of leverage.

BRICS is not moving ideologically; it is moving strategically. Its partnerships are built around oil, gas, rare earth minerals, food security, and trade corridors. This is precisely why Washington now finds its hands tied. The United States no longer dictates the terms of global alignment—it negotiates from a position of declining structural advantage. That context explains why former President Donald Trump pursued unilateral actions without congressional approval and why those policies continue to reverberate today. Institutional consent was bypassed because institutions themselves have lost their constraining power.

The consequences of this shift are visible across every major conflict zone.

In Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda remain locked in a conflict that is less about borders than about minerals. Eastern Congo is one of the most resource-rich regions on earth, and instability there is not accidental. It allows global actors to negotiate access without accountability. The African Union has proven unable to enforce meaningful deterrence, and the result is a prolonged, managed instability that benefits external supply chains while devastating local populations.

In Eastern Europe, the war between Ukraine and Russia is no longer treated as a crisis to be resolved but as a condition to be managed. The likely outcome is not victory or defeat, but normalization of territorial fragmentation. This signals a broader truth: military aggression no longer carries the same diplomatic or economic consequences it once did. The authority of the United Nations to uphold sovereignty has been hollowed out by selective enforcement and geopolitical vetoes.

In East Asia, China’s approach to Taiwan reflects the new logic of power. Rather than invasion, Beijing is pursuing strategic suffocation—economic pressure, maritime encirclement, and diplomatic isolation. The goal is reunification by attrition, not conquest. U.S. deterrence remains rhetorically strong but materially cautious, shaped by the recognition that a direct confrontation would destabilize global trade and semiconductor supply chains beyond repair.

On the Korean Peninsula, escalation has become routine. North Korea tests missiles not to provoke war, but to maintain relevance and extract concessions. South Korea, meanwhile, quietly hedges—maintaining U.S. alignment while preparing for a future in which American security guarantees may be conditional rather than absolute.

All of these dynamics converge most starkly in Venezuela.

The declaration that “we’re in the oil business,” coupled with assertions that the United States would oversee Venezuela until a “proper transition” takes place, represents a dangerous precedent. Whether Venezuelans welcome regime change in the short term is not the central issue. The issue is the normalization of resource-based intervention without regard for international conventions, regional consensus, or long-term institutional development.

History is unambiguous on this point. Repeated regime manipulation without state-building produces dependency, fragmentation, and long-term poverty. Haiti stands as the most painful example. Multiple interventions, imposed transitions, and external governance experiments did not produce stability; they dismantled sovereignty and hollowed out national capacity. The fear expressed by observers today—that Venezuela may follow the same trajectory in 10 or 20 years—is not speculation. It is pattern recognition.

The message sent to the world is unmistakable: power no longer needs legitimacy. If a state has leverage—military, economic, or resource-based—it can act first and justify later. This is why confidence in global institutions has collapsed. The European Union debates, the CARICOM issues statements, the Organization of American States convenes meetings—but outcomes rarely follow. For many states, diplomacy has become theater.

As a result, countries are rethinking everything. They are rearming quietly, diversifying alliances, bypassing institutions, and preparing for a world where rules are optional and enforcement is selective. This is not chaos; it is a post-legitimacy order. Power is no longer disguised as principle. It is openly transactional.

The world is watching closely—not to condemn, but to learn what is now permissible.

And what it has learned is that the age of enforcement without consent has returned, stripped of its moral language and justified by energy, security, and survival.

The question is no longer whether the global order will change. It already has. The question is who will pay the price for its collapse—and who will profit from writing the next rules in its absence