The ’rules-based international order’ is cracking
One British observer sees the writing on the wall.
In a wide-ranging interview on The Winston Marshall Show, released March 28, 2026, science writer and House of Lords member Matt Ridley delivered a sobering diagnosis: The post-1945 “rules-based international order” is unraveling. Institutions like the U.N., the WHO, the IMF, and the sprawling climate bureaucracy, built in the aftermath of World War II to promote security, stability, health, and cooperation, have instead become self-serving, corrupt, ideologically captured, and detached from empirical reality. Recent U.S. actions under President Trump, including withdrawals from or defunding elements of the WHO and Paris Agreement signal the visible dismantling of a top-down technocratic system that no longer delivers results.
Ridley, author of The Evolution of Everything and a longtime advocate of bottom-up innovation, contrasts two ways societies solve problems. According to Ridley, order in markets, language, culture, and technological progress emerges from decentralized trial and error and spontaneous coordination. Top-down control, by contrast, concentrates power in experts and bureaucracies that inevitably prioritize self-preservation, funding, and narrative control over truth and effectiveness.
Crisis of Expertise and Institutional Capture
Nowhere is this clearer than in the handling of COVID-19. Ridley highlights the strong likelihood of a lab leak origin in Wuhan, pointing to early cover-ups, politicized emails among scientists, and the WHO’s initial deference to China, even admitting that sometimes science must defer to politics. The organization’s flawed investigations and reluctance to challenge official narratives damaged public trust.
Similar patterns appear in climate science, where exaggerated models, suppressed dissent, and funding incentives reward alarmism. He noted that climate scientists are quick to attack anyone who questions the dogma or conclusions of climate scientists, but rarely critique hyperbolic alarmists who exaggerate predictions and promise impending doom. Ridley describes himself as a “lukewarmer,” acknowledging human influence on warming but rejecting catastrophic forecasts, criticizing groupthink, the “hockey stick” controversies, and the treatment of reasonable skepticism as heresy.
These failures and resulting extremism are not sporadic, but endemic. Institutions designed for cooperation have morphed into vehicles for bureaucratic expansion and ideological enforcement. They protect their budgets and reputations when evidence contradicts their preferred narratives.
Energy Policy and Economic Stagnation
Ridley draws a sharp contrast between the United States and Europe, particularly Britain. The U.K.’s heavy subsidies for renewables, combined with overregulation, have produced electricity prices substantially higher than in the U.S., contributing to flat per-capita GDP growth and stagnant productivity for more than 15 years. In contrast, America’s shale revolution and emerging nuclear innovations demonstrate the power of market-driven energy abundance. Deregulation and technological breakthroughs, not centralized planning, have made the U.S. the world’s top oil and gas producer while keeping energy affordable.
Europe’s self-inflicted energy woes illustrate the broader danger: When ideology overrides evidence and incentives, nations pay in lost prosperity and diminished competitiveness. The post-war consensus that favored ever-greater supranational coordination and compelled consensus is colliding with reality.
The Collapse of the Post-War Consensus
Ridley sees recent American actions, such as defunding or exiting elements of the WHO, reconsidering Paris Agreement commitments, and prioritizing national sovereignty and self-interest, as evidence that the old system is fracturing. These actions signal American rejection of dysfunctional multilateral structures that demand resources and compliance while delivering poor accountability and results.
He remains optimistic about technological progress, especially in the U.S., where bottom-up innovation continues to advance energy, medicine, and other fields. He warns that Britain and much of Europe risk being left behind without radical reform: lower taxes, deregulation, and a return to evidence-based policy over ideological commitments.
The Significance for America: Humanity over Bureaucracy
Ridley’s analysis echoes a deeper truth articulated by economist Julian Simon in The Ultimate Resource (1981/1996). Simon’s thesis holds that human beings — our ingenuity, creativity, and problem-solving capacity — are the ultimate resource. In free-market economies, potential scarcity triggers innovation, experimentation, substitution, and efficiency gains through rising prices. Population growth, when paired with economic freedom, becomes a net blessing rather than a curse.
This was a direct rebuttal to the doomsayer predictions of international bodies (such as the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth reports) and self-interested disciplines in academia, NGOs, environmental bureaucracies, and U.N. agencies. Those static, top-down models assumed fixed resource stocks and underestimated human adaptability, often while serving institutional incentives like grants, influence, and regulatory expansion. Simon demonstrated through long-term price and abundance trends that such pessimistic forecasts repeatedly failed.
Corrupt institutions with the power to elevate consensus over truth-seeking sacrifice the ultimate resource and its benefits. As the old system fractures, an opportunity emerges to refocus on what works: secure borders, affordable energy, scientific integrity, and policies that empower citizens and entrepreneurs rather than insulate bureaucracies from consequences.
Matt Ridley’s conversation with Winston Marshall is a timely reminder that institutions exist to serve people, not the other way around. When they fail that test, honest reform or replacement is imperative.
