Governments can rebuild budgets and reopen institutions. Rebuilding trust is far more difficult. This article explores how the dismantling of diplomacy, development cooperation, and other instruments of soft power creates an accountability vacuum, eroding relationships, institutional memory, and influence that have taken decades to build.
A reflection on how the erosion of international institutions removes the friction that once restrained escalation and made catastrophic war harder to initiate. What happens when the systems built after 1945 to slow conflict are steadily dismantled, leaving threats to operate without constraint?
