Decentralized Despotism and the Illusion of International Anarchy

Somewhere between the collapse of America’s two-decade long failed experiment exporting democracyDemocracy by force to AfghanistanAfghanistan in 2021, and the collapse of Russia’sRussia offensive momentum during the initial stage of its now protracted and robustly contested experiment in imperial restoration in UkraineUkraine a year later, there has emerged with great urgency a renewed need in the strategic, policy and theoretical communities to re-examine the Westphalian presumptions about the foundational building blocks of world orderWorld order, and to refocus our attention on understanding the interplay and interconnectedness of indigeneity and exogeneity at the interface of tribe and state in the many fractious corners of our world where the anarchical states system is, at best, wishful thinking—and at worst a global recipe for what Thomas E. Ricks described (in specific reference to America’s 2003 IraqIraq invasionInvasion) as nothing short of an ongoing fiasco.