Ignore the headlines. The global order isn’t dead, it’s being reset.

Published in The Australian Financial Review, 13 March 2026.

Spend five minutes scrolling the headlines, and you would be forgiven for concluding the world is falling apart.

The Middle East is on fire. Shipping lanes are disrupted, pushing up oil and gas prices and feeding inflation already straining households. The war grinds on in Ukraine at terrible human cost, as it does in Sudan. Trade tensions are rising. Alliances appear frayed. Sharp words are exchanged between partners who once spoke with greater certainty about a shared purpose.

At the same time, China’s growing power casts a longer shadow across the Indo-Pacific, global markets and international institutions. Critical minerals, rare earths and advanced technologies are being used as leverage. Supply chains are being weaponised. Space is becoming contested terrain.

Beneath all of this, deeper structural shifts in demography, technology and capital markets are reshaping the global economy at a pace not seen in decades.

It is easy to look at this picture and conclude the international order is collapsing, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued on his recent visit.

That conclusion is understandable, but it is incomplete.

The dominant narrative today is one of chaos. Yet, much of what we are seeing is not disorder, but disruption with purpose. Outside the long-term forces reshaping the global economy, much of the turbulence of the past year has been driven by deliberate strategic choices, particularly by the Trump administration. Not every decision has been elegant, but disruption is not the same as incoherence.

What we are witnessing looks less like collapse and more like reset.

For too long, the rules-based order drifted away from the conditions that made it successful. Illiberal states grew more assertive. International institutions became less anchored to the values and mission upon which they were founded. Western economies hollowed out parts of their industrial base. Defence spending declined. Supply chains became fragile. Strategic risks were discounted.

A correction was inevitable. What we are seeing now is that correction happening in real time.

Part of that reset has been a renewed focus by Washington on vulnerabilities closer to home. Issues such as border security, organised crime, illicit finance, hostile influence and energy resilience are now treated as core national security concerns, not peripheral ones. The United States has also taken a harder view of its northern and Atlantic approaches via the Arctic,

In Europe, the change has been equally confronting. For decades, Washington has pressed NATO partners to lift their spending, rebuild capability and take primary responsibility for security on their own continent. The tone has often been abrasive, but the effect has been real.

Nowhere, however, is the logic of the reset clearer than in the Middle East.

For almost half a century, the Iranian revolutionary regime has built influence and tormented the region through proxies, missile forces, maritime disruption and nuclear ambition. Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and other networks allowed Tehran to project power while avoiding direct confrontation. The result was persistent instability that threatened governments, disrupted shipping, drove up energy prices and injected volatility into the global economy.

The campaign led by the United States and Israel is being fought to break that pattern.

While the disruption has been, and will continue to be, significant in the short term, the long-term goal of a stable region free of Iranian hegemony is far more conducive to what Condoleezza Rice used to describe as a world order that favours freedom, than what we had a year ago.

Destruction, degradation, and denial of much of Iran’s capabilities – including nuclear weapons, conventional naval strength, ballistic missile launch, production and interception capability and weakening of their ability to support their proxy networks – already represent big wins. They have secured air superiority for the US and Israel to strike deep into Iran at will.

This will make Iran a far more manageable force in the region than they have been at any time in their modern revolutionary history. Regime change would be better, but at the cost of escalating into another “forever war” and rendering short-term economic effects more enduring, this would be counterproductive and off-strategy.

That central strategic challenge lies in the Indo-Pacific.

China’s economic rise has funded the largest peacetime military build-up in modern history. Its ambitions in the South China Sea, across the Taiwan Strait and throughout the wider region are clear. The contest now under way is not simply about territory, but about the future balance of power and the character of the international system itself.

Deterring conflict in the Indo-Pacific requires strong alliances, credible capability and sustained resolve. It requires countries in the region to work more closely together on defence, intelligence, technology and supply chains. It requires investment in critical minerals, secure infrastructure, maritime domain awareness and emerging domains such as cyber and space.

This is where the Quad matters.

The Quad was revived when I was prime minister. A year ago, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio sensibly refocused the Quad agenda. I am pleased that included critical minerals cooperation, which I first highlighted at the first in-person Quad meeting in Washington in 2021. This work must continue.

However, the reset also needs to happen at the leader level, to lift the tempo and provide greater opportunity for unscripted engagement to review and set priorities and candidly address current issues within the region. This should include China’s increasing presence in the Indian Ocean and India’s neighbouring states in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. I trust the next meeting in India will be scheduled soon and bring a greater “Indo” focus to the Quad’s Indo-Pacific dialogue

We are living through a period of disruption, but disruption does not equal decline. The United States is not withdrawing from the world. It is repositioning itself within it. It is rebuilding industrial strength, demanding more from allies, confronting adversaries more directly and concentrating its strategic focus where long-term competition will be decided.

That is not the end of the rules-based order but an attempt to preserve it under more contested conditions.

The chaos narrative makes for compelling headlines, but it misses the structural shift now underway. The international system is not collapsing. It is being reset.