If the system is so fragile, then they need to present a damn good case to the American public as to why it must be maintained and also make sure the American public gets something concrete out of it.
I‘ll be waiting for when they do.
It's not that it's fragile, but rather about a measure of power and interdependence.
The World Order was created as a military alliance to contain the Russians. The larger the alliance though, the more conflicts of interest. The more conflicts of interest, the weaker the alliance. And we needed a large alliance to contain Russia, because Russia had become so big that it could reach across the World-Island. And it only needed to succeed in one region with a warm water port to effectively become a super power that could project a navy as great as the US.
So what the US did was focus control on the rim; to prevent a warm water port. To ensure that the US's allies all stayed on the same side, the US essentially opened its markets and allowed the EU to export their way back to affluence. That alliance expanded to effectively cover the planet. That in turn allowed us to lock down Russia. With Russia locked down and constantly overspending on their military (not to mention destroying their own economy through communism), the Russian state eventually collapsed in upon itself.
The one major flaw (or rather, cost) that the US encountered with the system was that it could not avoid combat. If a region rebelled against the order, then the US had to step in and kick it back into place. Otherwise its word would mean nothing and the alliance would disintegrate overnight. To assure everyone that the US would protect their economic interest, the US could never deny battle. That means meeting Chinese challenges in Asia. It meant invading the Middle East to keep power flows into all major nations.
Now atop of these military costs in both blood and money, the US had also allowed its own companies to enter 3rd world countries, because American labor is more expensive compared to most of the rest of the world. Politicians promised that new jobs would come along. Americans would need a higher education for these jobs. To do this, they turned to colleges, who were happy to remold the American youth into their image of proper citizens and provide them with the means of competing in the new market.
Except most people don't want to spend thousands to tens of thousands on classes they don't like. And as a rule, humans take the past of least resistance. Especially youths. Most especially youths who want sex and parties and don't want to study too hard. Without parent oversight. And so lots and lots of people got useless degrees at useless universities inbetween their parties and social clubs. And therefore, you have an entire generation of Americans who were highly educated, but have no marketable skills outside of taking your order and spitting in your food.
And all of these Millennials grew up with Liberals and Communists telling them how bad the wars in the Middle East were. Interestingly, few of these Millennials learned WHY they were bad from the Liberal viewpoint. The natural conclusion that most of us reached was that the US should not be policing the world. And that works with US culture; we rebelled against an empire. It is the anti-thesis of American culture to then produce an empire and yet an empire we effectively have. As a population, the US has already decided that it does not want an empire and that this must end. What we disagree upon is the method and rationale for that. SJWs think it's about white supremacy, the left think we're imperialists and shouldn't be that, the right thinks that globalists within the US have been paid off to sell away our wealth and power, and the white nationalists think it's a Jew conspiracy.
This is all in opposition to what the establishment wants. And so the US is in a massive three-way fight between the right's view of isolationism, the left's view of isolationism, and the globalists who are trying to grift off both movements while retaining the reigns of power. This internal instability in the fundamental attitude of the world order, which is entirely dependent upon American commitment, has put the global order in doubt.
To make matters worse, powers like Russia and China imagine that they ultimately benefit from the fall of the US's world order. Russia imagines that without it, the European nations will look after themselves and be unwilling to commit to the protection of Eastern Europe. Iran imagines that it will bring back the Persian Empire. The Chinese dream of being the new world Super Power and supplanting the US. The EU at one point thought itself the European equivalent to the United States.
And so each of these powers have done what they can to chip away at American power.
The Europeans sought to supplant our dollar with the Euro, therefore transferring some of our means of global control over to them. Or at least produce a competing system. Even though that failed horribly thanks impart to internal EU dynamics, it was enough to insult Americans and make them think twice about the Europeans.
The Chinese stole our manufacturing base and took our money to produce a military juggernaut to rival our own, then began pushing for claims into the South China sea to break our hold on the First Island Chain. In essence; they took our money and then started using our own money to challenge the very military that allowed them to flourish. And they imagined that they could slowly boil the frog; strengthen themselves at our expense until they could supplant us. Only too late as China learned that they are simply not capable and only those within Xi's inner circle really understand this. Xi and his party, having spent decades as a rising power, have fostered an image of a great and powerful nation coming into its own and most, even within the party believe that China's place as the new super power is only a decade away. Americans are not only upset at what the Chinese have done, but we feel threatened by it.
The Russians have focused on making our engagement in the Middle East as painful and protracted as possible, both to wear down our tolerance for the region, but to also distract us from other moves, such as in Ukraine. So too, have they helped to drive wedges between the US and the EU and between EU states. In turn, half of the US views the Russians as a deadly foe, while the other half simply does not view them as a threat to America, but rather a local problem for the locals to deal with.
Finally, Iran has used its terrorist networks to combat both the US and the Saudis. Exhausting US tolerance with constant terrorist attacks and the spawning of ISIS itself (correction, it was the Saudis who funded ISIS). Without the US interest in the region though, it may just leave and not come back--or it may just leave and blow Iranian crude production to hell, effectively bankrupting the Iranians.
It has taken I would say, a good 20 years for this whole system to break down. It was dying from a thousand cuts before Trump got into office. What Trump is doing now is simply putting this thing out of our misery. For these technocrats and intelligence agents, this is the US giving in to the oversea moves of rival powers. From an internal US perspective, it is the US disengaging from a globalist system that neither likes nor appreciates them. And is unnecessary and actively hurtful for the US.
