India, April 19 -- It has become fashionable to criticise the US for its recent conduct toward Iran. This is not an attempt to defend or rationalise the US's actions. Rather, it seeks to inject perspective into an increasingly ahistorical debate. What is often missing is institutional memory: An understanding of how the present international order was constructed and the conditions under which it emerged.

The "rules-based order" was forged in the aftermath of two catastrophic wars. Earlier efforts had faltered. Woodrow Wilson's proposal for a League of Nations after World War I was rejected by the US Senate. Yet, it introduced a lasting premise: International order could be consciously designed, not left solely to shifting power balances...