The West's 'Rules' Are For Others
When German CDU leader Friedrich Merz recently declared the Western rules-based order 'no longer exists,' he inadvertently highlighted a persistent double standard. His lament for a lost era of global stability, reportedly due to challenges from China and Russia, positions the 'order' as a benign, universally applied standard that has somehow eroded. Yet, for decades, this so-called 'order' was
observably absent when it suited Western interests. The 1953 CIA-orchestrated coup in Iran, overthrowing a democratically elected government, or the 2003 invasion of Iraq without UN approval, demonstrate a clear pattern. These actions, justified by shifting rationales, were never framed as violations of an existing order by mainstream Western media, especially when compared to the universal
condemnation applied to comparable actions by non-Western states, like Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, called an egregious breach of international law. Merz’s call for further European military build-up, to contend with a looming 'great-power struggle,' further reveals the true nature of this 'order' — a framework for maintaining a specific power hierarchy, not a system of equitable law. The
rules were always selectively enforced, their application contingent on alignment with Western geopolitical objectives. The 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia without a UN Security Council resolution, framed as a humanitarian intervention, contrasts sharply with the outcry over any similar military maneuver by nations outside the Western bloc. What Merz and others mourn is not the collapse of a fair