Very important context is that this policy is fits an openly stated shift by the current administration (no matter what you think of them) away from the post-WWII international order, based on the rule of law (the 'rules-based order') and to pre-WWII interstate geopolitical competition. IIRC the quote from Kelly or McMaster, 'Geopolitics is back with a vengence' (they embraced that idea), and I think most people are familiar with the America First policy. Early in the Trump administration, two top officials (McMaster and Mattis?) wrote an op-ed in the WSJ where they said, 'there is no community of nations'; it's everyone for themselves.<p>The postwar order was built by the victors of WWII, including Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, because they believed that nationalism and geopolitical competition led to wars - remember they had seen WWI, WWII, and the centuries of wars before that, which they saw as the worst scourge of humanity (I'm not sure of Stalin's thinking there). They also thought that, due to the technology of 1945, the next major war could devastate civilization, even without nuclear weapons - look at the devastation in Europe, as an example, from WWII. And IIRC 1/3 of European men (or British men?) died in WWI. Imagine what could be done with today's technology. Would civilization survive? ~200 people million died in WWII; how many would die today?<p>One effect of acting in this way (i.e., as described in the article) outside the postwar rules-based order is that, especially as the U.S. was the foundation of that order, it actively destroys the order and makes it difficult to return to it in the next administration. It creates anarchy, which undermines the authority of law. The success of that order was overwhelming; the greatest period of peace, liberty, and prosperity in history by orders of magnitude. One thing I don't understand is, who would want to dismantle it? For what ends? The only answer I've seen is that it's the Culture Wars taken too far - they've forgotten what they are fighting for.