A coming post-American era – “the world will be without any order at all”

Dramatic, sweeping change serves as the byword across the world as the summer of 2026 comes to an end. Shock after shock — across the globe, much of which increasingly points to a post-American time of worldwide turmoil.

One authoritative voice, writing in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, issues this solemn prediction:

“Leaders who fail to confront their new reality are failing their countries,” he warns. “It is time to acknowledge that the old order really has disappeared—and to plot a new approach to geopolitics” (emphasis added throughout)

“The world will be without any order at all”

A critical point to understand about the coming global short-term change? European expert Mark Leonard continues to spell it out in Foreign Affairs:  “This moment does not constitute a short interregnum between a U.S.-led order and a Chinese-led one.”

Here is his unsettling prediction of what is coming in a post-American world—please read this carefully and consider it deeply:

“For some time, the world will be without any order at all—swept by fragmentation, contagion, and strangulation or the temptation to weaponize a wide variety of geographic, economic, and technological chokepoints.”

With a weaponized American dollar weakening, a state of critical depletion of the U.S. arsenal worrying allies, and  most of all, a continuing arc of U.S. withdrawal of support all highlight key vulnerabilities that if not checked will – not might – produce systematic, chaotic change on the world stage.

This is sobering to consider. A year and a half ago, this blog warned of the dangers of a fracturing bond market, one that could strip the U.S. dollar of its capacity to support American foreign policy and the mischief of dictators. Such a collapse would knock sharply on the door of potential fiscal holocaust.

At the time in 2025, a rumbling bond market jerked federal administrators back into reality. Markets calmed and a surprisingly agile and versatile economy chugged.

Now it’s back. And it’s worse.

Many economic leaders question today whether Treasury Secretary Scott Bennett’s bond-boosting toolbox is up for the task.

And now the globe faces this.

“Economic D-day” for the world?

On Monday, August 24, the Trump administration boasted an effort – “Operation Economic Outcast” — to take on the world, as Bloomberg reported: “Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent threatened economic punishment against any country doing business with Iran as part of what he called an ‘economic D-Day’ campaign to isolate the country and end nearly six months of war.”

The threat appears to put the United States on a direct economic collision course with China, who buys most of Iran’s oil production. Analysts at Bloomberg openly asked whether President Trump would “risk its fragile trade truce with China.”

The move is expected to expand current secondary sanctions against the current trading partners of Iran. The Economist magazine reported the U.S. Treasury Secretary is targeting “digital assets, technology, gold, aviation and shipping.”

Much of this view of a future reduced role for America—especially including the recent see-sawing of the U.S. bond market–is fueled in part by an increasing corrosion of trust, including the real-time financial ability of the U.S. to counter alarming trends: “The issue is that you’ve got an erosion of confidence in institutions—including the central bank, including Congress, including the Treasury itself to some extent,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, of TD Securities in the Wall Street Journal.

Why? The recent news of an alarming benchmark of $40 Trillion triggered new fears, following the seeming inability of America to resolve a now months-long war in Iran, coupled with shock after economic oil-fueled shock.

$40 trillion of record debt – $11+ Trillion in the past 16 months

What’s on deck? Recent fears of a possible new Russian incursion into Europe, fresh unease over the aforementioned weakening bond market (and with it the power weaponized power of the American dollar) and new financial concerns all stimulate heightening anxiety. With America formally exiting its traditional leadership role in many sectors, open discussion focuses on what a post-America world now looks like.

All of this is fueled at least in part by an increasingly erosion of trust and assurance: “The issue is that you’ve got an erosion of confidence in institutions—including the central bank, including Congress, including the Treasury itself to some extent,” said Gennadiy Goldberg, head of U.S. rates strategy at TD Securities in recent Wall Street Journal coverage.

Want specifics? The Wall Street Journal further reported on August 22, “Investors remain anxious about stubbornly high inflation, mounting federal debt, a deluge of corporate borrowing to fund artificial-intelligence investments, and a new Federal Reserve chairman whose approach to setting interest rates remains enigmatic to many.”

All of this comes in late summer as a Canadian-America trade war heats up between what used to be a near-model commercial relationship, leading the Wall Street Journal to opine: “Trump’s decision to escalate a tariff brawl with Canada makes no economic or political sense.” (“The Dumbest Trade War Revisited”).

Will America step back from rupturing its closest trade relationship with its largest partner?

New on the global Bingo card – NVIDIA chips in Russian weapons

Even as economic drama plays out, the discovery of NVIDIA chips in a deadly AI-guided Russian drone signal new threats as Putin’s military relentlessly pounds civilian targets in Ukraine. During the same time,  U.S. intelligence directly links the July appearance of an explosive drone at a German airport to Russian origins.  This comes at a time when “U.S. stockpiles of long-range Precision Strike Missiles and Army Tactical Missile Systems, as well as short-range Stinger surface-to-air missiles, are severely depleted,” continues the WSJ.

Will Russian test the true resolve of NATO with a feigned maskirovka—an elaborate false flag—that “gives” Russian military forces the opportunity to deliberately cross the Polish border or transit the Suwałki Gap Such an incursion would likely result in Poland invoking Article Five of the NATO treaty, calling for European allies to join forces and expel Russian troops.

Is Putin calculating such a move, daring the NATO forces to react? In the absence any reaction and the backing down of any allied response (especially if the United States declined to support such a response), would that prove NATO to be a paper tiger?

A squandered opportunity

The crumbling of the prior stability lead by the United States started years ago. Well before the second Trump administration, the United States squandered the brief opportunity it held, as the nation ascended to the rank of the world’s sole Superpower during the first Bush administration. Internal abandonment of key principles and forays into self-indulgent and self-serving policies opened the door for Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and other nations to slip through widening cracks.

Speaking of a maskirovka, Russian President Vladimir Putin openly defied the U.S.-led NATO order with the invasion of the “little green men” in 2014 to seize strategic Crimea land, later doubling down with the brazen attempt to “liberate” Ukraine via invasion, openly grabbing industrial, mineral and other assets.

In response, America leveraged the vaunted power of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency to create a powerful chokepoint (see prior discussion here) on Russia’s economy, engaging  allies to shut off critical capital assets through the SWIFT global financial network.

Now we’re seeing it again, as “Operation Economic Outcast” apparently charts new levels of painful economic sanctions. Will the gamble by the Trump Administration work?

Those broad economic measures, coupled with both broad military weaponry and key intelligence support (and not a few U.S. taxpayer dollars), quickly strategically dented Russian capacity to advance beyond early gains. Will they work again without bringing the now-publicly quiet People’s Republic of China directly—and violently–into the fray?

Next up – a painful test for Europe?

The year 2026 has become a synonym for chaos. Leonard  makes this unsettling point in Foreign Affairs: “Gone is the notion that consistent rules ought to govern the global economy…the uncertainty that pervades this orderless age is driven by three forces upending the international system: fragmentation, contagion, and strangulation.”

“Fragmentation, contagion, and strangulation” – what does that mean for where you live?

World leaders “do not know what will come next”

“In dozens of private conversations I have had over the past year with leaders worldwide, the only thing they agree on is that they do not know what will come next. They are struggling to use history or theory to find their bearings,” warns Leonard.

Today, with fracturing discord splintering old alliances and fomenting uncertainty, we do have access to one source that tells the truth and offers a vision of surprising hope.

The Bible serves up remarkable insight – a careful read will show that the bulk of biblical prophecies simply represent the consequences of ignoring or breaking God’s law. When Jesus Christ – the prophesied Messiah – walked the earth 2,000 years ago, He instructed His disciples to pray that they come into and remain in alignment with the divine will of His Father.

In the model prayer, we are instructed to pray first that the coming Kingdom of God, a time of indescribable wonder, accelerate its advancement and be top of mind in each of us. But then we are instructed to pray to our Father: “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, English Standard Version). This commanded communication and personal surrender helps put us in alignment with God’s will.

“Far more abundantly than all that we ask or think”

Each day – especially as humanity swiftly moves toward a post-American time when “the world will be without any order at all” – it is critical that we hold fast to eternal principles that help us fashion an unbreakable relationship with both our Father and His Son, the Messiah Jesus Christ, of Whom are “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us” as disciples (Ephesians 3:20, ESV).

As the world abandons spiritual moorings and the United States moves from center stage, a vacuum will be created. Humanity will not long tolerate a time when “there is no order at all.”

At a point in the future, that vacuum will be filled unexpectedly by a new and malevolent force, a fearsome entity the Bible calls The Thērion. It will fill this vacuum from a central place in Europe, from which a new globe-girdling power will engulf the earth.

That time is coming, but it is not yet here. The daytime of world events  is still with us, when we can earnestly read and pray for understanding from the pages of the Bible.

It is also time for all of us to refresh and renew – or perhaps the first time begin to understand – what is being set before us in this before there is “no more order.”

The Bible, in the pages of Deuteronomy, makes it simple. God Himself declares today to you and me: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19, ESV).

Which will you choose?

By Michael A. Snyder