Four of Germany's leading conflict and peace research institutes have issued a stark warning: the international rules-based order is not just under pressure, it is actively disintegrating. Presenting their annual Peace Report on Monday, the institutes described a global environment in which a growing number of governments act like warlords, deploying military force as a routine instrument of political power rather than a last resort.
"Every year we come here in June and warn that the international order and its frameworks could collapse," said Ursula Schröder of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) at the report's presentation. "Today we stand here and it has come to pass. The collapse is in full swing, and the question now is: how do we slow it down?"
The report paints a sobering portrait of the current global order. According to the institutes, only seven percent of the world's population now lives in free democracies. The United Nations, they argue, is either "blocked" or bypassed entirely when it comes to conflict resolution. Defence spending is rising sharply across the board, while arms control mechanisms are weakening. Development cooperation and humanitarian aid budgets, crucial tools of preventive diplomacy, are being cut significantly.
The most alarming finding, according to the researchers, is the fundamental shift in how war itself is perceived and justified. For decades, military force was treated as the ultima ratio, the option of absolute last resort. That understanding, the institutes argue, is being abandoned.
A growing number of state actors now celebrate war as a "normal means" of exercising power, a "common, tried-and-tested tool" for achieving political goals. Those goals, the report notes, increasingly serve individual, personal, or commercial interests rather than national security or humanitarian objectives.
The research institutes name US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as explicit examples of this new breed of political actors. Beyond these three, the report identifies a broader trend: countries including Turkey, the Gulf states, Pakistan and Ethiopia are described as moving in the same direction.
The report is a joint publication of the IFSH, the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, the Institute for Development and Peace at the University of Duisburg-Essen, and the Leibniz Institute for Peace and Conflict Research.
To push back against these violent dynamics, the institutes call on Germany to commit firmly and consistently to international law. Berlin must use its weight within Europe to strengthen multilateral institutions and forge new alliances built around the rule of law. Domestically, the report demands that policymakers take every form of racism seriously and implement countermeasures.
The report is notably direct about the dangers of selective compliance. Germany must clearly and consistently name egregious violations of international law, whether committed by allies or adversaries.
When Germany tolerates breaches selectively, as it did, the report argues, in the cases of US interventions in Venezuela and Iran, it gambles away its credibility and promotes, whether intentionally or not, the continued erosion of the international order. Germany's recent failure to secure a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council should be treated as a "warning shot," the researchers say.
On security and defence policy, the institutes argue that Germany and the European Union must urgently reduce their strategic dependence on the United States. European autonomy, they say, is not just a matter of defence spending, it extends to high-tech areas including artificial intelligence, computing infrastructure, and access to critical raw materials.
Finally, the report pushes back on recent cuts to development cooperation funding. Such programmes, the institutes argue, represent a direct counterweight to the arbitrary behaviour of the new warlords, and should be restored rather than scaled back.
From breaking news to thought-provoking opinion pieces, our newsletter keeps you informed & engaged.
