The New World Order Is Here, And America Isn't Part Of It

History pivoted in Tokyo yesterday - though few Americans noticed. The foreign ministers of Japan, China, and South Korea gathered for the first time since 2023, posed for ceremonial photographs, and drafted plans for an Asian future where American preferences no longer command deference.

Less than three months. That's all it took for America to find itself on the outside, looking in at a new power distribution and the growing signs of a new world order.

Donald Trump's January inauguration kicked off an astonishing collapse of American influence across the Pacific. Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya said it best:

"Given the increasingly severe international situation, I believe we may truly be at a turning point in history."

It's not hyperbole. That turning point isn't an abstract future possibility. It's happening now, in the present tense, from Europe to Asia, as nations that positioned and aligned their foreign policies around American security guarantees frantically recalibrate to fill the void.

Trilateral meetings between South Korea, China and Japan are nothing new; and America's exclusion isn't unusual on its surface. But the signals and language of cooperation make one thing clear: These nations aren't waiting to see if American leadership will stabilize. They've already concluded it won't. The age of American centrality in Asian affairs is over.

Japan and South Korea—historically among America's most reliable allies—are now sitting across from Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, discussing "overcoming division and confrontation through dialogue and cooperation." This is a declaration of independence from an American-led order that is no longer sustainable.

Throughout the 20th century, American foreign policy experts assured the world that U.S. allies had no alternatives. They needed American military protection, market access, and diplomatic weight. Those allies are finding alternatives rather more quickly than the wonks imagined.

Wang Yi didn't miss his opportunity to drive home this new reality. By invoking the 80th anniversary of World War II's end and calling for all three countries to "face history honestly while looking toward the future," he offered a vision of regional cooperation with China at its center—a future where American clout becomes increasingly irrelevant.

Japan's willingness to host the first high-level economic dialogue with Beijing in six years speaks volumes. Japanese leadership has recognized that it cannot afford to maintain distance from Beijing at a time when American reliability has evaporated, and America is throwing its allies - from Canada to Ukraine - under the bus.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul's emphasis on the joint responsibility for peace and security in the Korean Peninsula is another subtle but significant shift. For decades, South Korea framed its security exclusively through the lens of its American alliance. Now, it's positioning itself within a regional security framework where the U.S. is just a factor - and an unpredictable one, at that.

The collapse of American influence isn't happening because the U.S. military is weaker or its economy smaller. It's happening because trust in American judgment, consistency, and commitment has plummeted. Former partners have concluded - with the speed of realpolitik pragmatism - that they cannot build their futures on the foundation of an emotionally unstable, shifting, petty, and small-minded American administration.

A year ago, this would have been unthinkable. Japan and South Korea coordinating with China on security issues without American involvement? Planning economic integration that doesn't center on American markets? Discussing North Korea without deferring to American strategy? It's a rupture in the post-WWII order.

Despite Trump's election victory, conventional wisdom held that America's institutional relationships in Asia were too deeply entrenched to unravel quickly. The thinking: Yes, there might be tensions, uncertainties, and adjustments, but the fundamental architecture of American leadership would remain intact, immutable, and unchanged.

That assumption now looks grotesque in its naiveté.

America's position in the global hierarchy isn't guaranteed.

It can be lost with stunning rapidity when an economically illiterate con artist and a cadre of ideologues are drunk at the wheel.

This is an acceleration of history. Shifts in global power that even the most pie-in-the-sky experts predicted would take decades are happening in weeks. The post-American international order is no longer theoretical - it's here.

China has waited patiently for this moment. For years, Beijing has invested in alternative institutions, economic relationships, and security arrangements - all designed to reduce American relevance in Asian affairs. What they couldn't have anticipated was how quickly their opportunity would arrive.

America's willful blindness to external reality is the defining symptom of a power in decline. Experience teaches us that empires don't recognize their fall until it's irreversible; by the time America finally peers beyond its borders, it will find a world that has moved on without it.

This isn't cyclical, temporary, or reversible through simple policy adjustments or a change in rhetoric. Even a new administration won't be able to claw back what Trump and his syndicate have thrown away.

The architecture of American power, built painstakingly over seventy-five years, has been abandoned. This will be remembered as the moment when America's Pacific century came to an end.