Abstract

The years between 2016 and 2020 seemed to mark a global retreat from treaties as underpinning international order, not just by the United States under the Trump Administration but across the world, from Brexit Britain to Hong Kong’s relations with China. This article assesses the accuracy of that assumption and places it in a wider historical perspective, going back to the sixteenth century, and reviewing earlier arguments as to the durability of treaties and concerns over the fragility of the international order.