Whither the rules-based order?

Top priority: The moral principle that we all should live peacefully on one planet should over-ride sovereign nations fighting over power and ego from turf to space, when humanity could be burned by climate warming or nuclear war. — AFP

EVERYDAY, we are told we must defend the rules-based order. But whose order? What rules? Why should we defend an order if we did not have a say in shaping?

All this is in the realm of politics and geo-politics. The biggest thinker who shaped the current neoliberal order was Austrian philosopher Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), whose ideas of classical liberalism of freedom, democracy and self-order of markets dominated global relations.