New Delhi, April 8 -- The turmoil of the last year-and-a half- tariff wars and physical wars (Iran, Gaza, Lebanon, Ukraine), the abduction of a head of state and assassination of another, territorial ambitions and tattered alliances-has led to claims that the Pax Americana of stable global institutions managing commerce and conflict has ended.

If that is true, what comes next? This uncertainty has fostered many forecasts of the future of global politics by policy pundits.

Consider the analysis of Hal Brands, a historian at Johns Hopkins University and the American Enterprise Institute. Brands is a well-known neoconservative with strong ties to the Republican Party's security and foreign policy establishment. He has been called a "war in...