Larry Johnson (@NewSonof): Rubio said the quiet part out loud. Washington will not put the international order above itself. Russia and China watched Washington walk away from the ABM and INF treaties and abandon the commitments that held the old arms-control system together. The Iran MOU was not an exception. They will build something new. Paper that Washington wipes with is not a world order. SCO and BRICS are what you get when the signatures are gone. Rubio: “We will always act in the national interest of our country, not in the interest of the international order. We will never put the international order above the interest of the United States. Okay?” Johnson: “This is Machiavelli on steroids. To my fellow citizens: we need to look in the mirror, folks. We’re the ones that are taking the international agreements and international orders and frankly wiping our ass with it and saying it means nothing. Both Russia and China are willing to—they’re going to create something new. Whether we’re going to be a part of it or not remains in question. We’re witnessing the dissolution of an international order that is, let’s call it, geoeconomic. It’s political, it’s economic, it’s military, and it all emerged out of World War II. The two countries that really had a commitment to this concept of international law, it turns out, were both Russia—the Soviet Union—and China, because they suffered 70 to 75 percent of all the casualties in World War II. You have to think about that. It is such an enormous number. It’s tough to comprehend. And so they put a lot of stock in, okay, we’re going to have these rules, and it’s going to keep us from killing one another. Even the United Nations Security Council was viewed as a vehicle for resolving conflict without having to go to war. Now what they’re seeing under Donald Trump is a complete rejection of law across the board. During the time with the Soviets, we signed multiple important arms-control limitation treaties—SALT I, SALT II. Then we had the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. The Russians put a lot of stock in that. And who’s walked away from it? It was George W. Bush who blew up the anti-ballistic missile agreement. And then it’s been Trump who’s walked away from INF and START. He just said, no, we’re not following those. So no longer do agreements, handshakes, or something written on paper count. What he did with the MOU with Iran has not been an aberration. It’s a continuation of a pattern. This is leading Russia and China to sit back and really reconsider what kind of international organization they are going to be part of and work with and use going forward. The United Nations is becoming increasingly irrelevant. We’re going to see organizations like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—the SCO—or BRICS become more important.”