The so-called rules-based order that the West has prided itself on developing and operating under since the end of the second world war showed itself barely fit for purpose this week. For decades, the assumption and promise has been that if the taxpayers of the free democratic nations finance a vast bureaucratic machine that included equal numbers of members from non-democratic nations, then inevitably peace and prosperity would be maintained, with the authoritarian despots behaving themselves in order to remain part of ‘the club’.