At the same time, increasing stresses from social inequalities and paranoia over terrorism, immigration and job losses have made the United States more inward-looking. The Trump administration has begun dismantling the neoliberal order of multilateral trade and finance shaping US foreign policy for decades. There is a raw open division within the US in outlook and values. The Democratic left believes in maintaining the old order of leadership on human rights, democracy and multilateral global stability, while the Republican right questions these beliefs.

Earlier this year, the Pentagon asked the Rand Corporation to conduct a review on “Alternative options for US policy toward the international order.” The key questions for the “new global order” are who sets the rules and how binding the rules are.

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The study breaks the future order into two camps of rule-makers – the US and its allies or a concert of great powers. Under this division, there are two conditions where rules are binding – one dominated by the US camp to enforce rules and the other where the great powers agree to a global constitutional order enforced by institutions. The other two conditions where rules are not binding involve a coalition of states aligned to counteract revisionism and a new concert of great powers.

The immediate problem with the Rand categorisation is that the existing liberal, rules-based order is challenged by the US itself, not others.

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Third, North Korea’s bid for nuclear power membership, despite being a small state, means that great powers may have to accommodate new players, like it or not.

Fourth, climate change in the form of hurricanes demonstrate that nature can impose large economic losses on nations and regions, requiring global public goods that the current order is neither willing to fund, nor able to agree on how to address.

The bottom line is that the current order has neither the resources nor the collective will to enforce rules when human population growth means increasing competition for scarce water, food and territorial spaces. Chaos arises from the breakdown of rules and borderlines.

In short, globalisation of trade, information and human migration means traditional borders in many regions are becoming unenforceable. Seen from the long lens of history, with the great powers being unwilling to put troops on the ground to enforce borders drawn up under the colonial era, these artificial borders are failing.

A hallmark of the times is that even the best of think tanks cannot map out how to navigate this era of disruptive technology, unpredictable climate and shifting alliances and interests. What history teaches us is that the fault lines will be at the borderlands, at the confluence of emerging forces and stresses.

We should therefore be prepared for not only disruption at the borderlands of physical space, but within the realms of cyberspace.

Andrew Sheng writes on global issues from an Asian perspective