Rules that held the peace are quietly eroding
By Gwynne Dyer
“When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your original goal was to drain the swamp.” It’s a not-very-old folk saying, but it fits the moment.
Eighty years ago, the goal was clear. After a war that killed more than 50 million people, flattened cities across the Northern Hemisphere and introduced nuclear weapons to the world, leaders made a deliberate choice: the objective would no longer be to win wars, but to prevent them.
This was not naive idealism. The people crafting the postwar order had lived through catastrophe. Between 1945 and 1948, they built a system grounded in hard calculation. Their central conclusion was blunt: most wars are rooted in disputes over territory. So they drew a line — borders must not be changed by force.
The principle was simple. Conquest would no longer be legitimate. Countries could negotiate borders, but they could not seize land through war and expect recognition. It was an imperfect rule, but it addressed the core driver of conflict between states.
For decades, it worked. Nuclear weapons have not been used in war since 1945. The major powers have avoided direct conflict since the early Cold War. Even as proxy wars continued, overall deaths from war declined steadily for generations.
Now that trend is reversing.
The problem is not that the rules failed. It is that belief in them is fading. The generation that created the system is gone. Even the diplomats who once defended the “international rule of law” have fallen silent. The framework still exists on paper, but its authority is weakening in practice.
Territorial conflicts remain at the centre of global instability. From Eastern Europe to the Middle East and South Asia, disputes over land continue to drive confrontation. The difference is that the restraint once imposed by shared rules is eroding.
The risk is not immediate collapse, but gradual drift. If enough countries decide that borders can again be changed by force, the logic that prevented large-scale war begins to unravel. And in a nuclear-armed world, that is a dangerous direction.
We set out to drain the swamp. We made real progress. But the alligators are back, and the original goal is no longer guiding decisions.