Since Joe Biden became president, you can barely navigate his administration’s rhetoric or media coverage of it without tripping over the phrase “rules-based international order.” It’s constantly invoked in speeches and major documents. The president is explicitly committed to rebuilding and upholding it, by persuading countries to buy into and abide by this global order. Meanwhile, the United States has pointed the finger at adversaries, like Iran, China, and Russia, that it charges with threatening or undermining it. It’s why the United States is so deeply involved in the war In Ukraine. It’s why it’s ratcheting up tensions with China over Taiwan.

All of that has gone out of the window with Biden’s virtually unconditional support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza over the past two weeks.

Critics of US foreign policy have often taken a dim view of Biden, his officials, and his underlings’ use of this phrase. They ask what the “rules-based” order actually is, and charge that those “rules” were written by Washington to let the United States do whatever it wants. They question what, if any, relationship these “rules” have with the system of international law largely established after World War II that’s meant to govern states’ behavior, especially since the US government has often been the most serial violator of that system. And they conclude that it’s a vague and deliberately vapid concept that is constantly invoked precisely because it can mean, or not mean, anything.