The rulesbased world order is in retreat and violence is on the rise, forcing countries to rethink their relationships Is a third world war upon us?

After a fortnight in which former allies in a redividing globe separately commemorated the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe, the sense of a runaway descent towards a third world war draws ever closer.

- Patrick Wintour

The implosion of Pax Americana, the interconnectedness of conflicts, the new willingness to resort to unbridled state-sponsored violence and the irrelevance of the institutions of the rules-based order have all been on brutal display. From Kashmir to Khan Younis, Hodeidah, Port Sudan and Kursk, the only sound is of explosions, and the only lesson is that the old rules no longer apply.

Indeed Fiona Hill, the policy analyst and adviser to the UK government on its imminent strategic defence review, argues the third world war has already started, if only we would recognise it.

The fear of a world in which no one, due to science or globalisation, is any longer in control is hardly new: the concept was the title of two Reith lectures, one in 1967 by the social anthropologist Edmund Leach and another in 1999 by the political philosopher Anthony Giddens. But rarely has it been so clear that the rules-based world order created in 1945 is in headlong retreat.

The former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband put it well last week at Chatham House, saying: "I know that people always say the world is changing, but this feels like a moment of genuine geopolitical flux, at least as significant as 1989-90 when the world transitioned from the cold war to a unipolar moment, and for me the Trump administration is both symptom and cause of the changes under way.

"The problem is that it's much more clear what we are inflecting from -a world in which the US was the anchor of the global system - but it's not clear what we're inflecting to. I know there's a lot of talk about the idea of a multipolar world reflecting a redistribution of the balance of power, but I find that concept conveying too much stability, too much security."