I’m surprised it’s not obvious to more people that a “rules based international order” that was itself based on theft/manipulation, would fail spectacularly.
More surprising for me though ar...
The rules-based order assumed the constraint was self-enforcing once accepted. It wasn't. Bretton Woods had gold convertibility as the actual enforcement mechanism — a hard floor on dollar issuance. When Nixon closed the window in 1971, the rules became preferences. The behavior since is what you'd expect from a system where the rule-setter controls the measurement layer.