Christopher Nolan's latest film The Odyssey arrives as more than a visually stunning retelling of Homer's ancient epic. Beneath its spectacle and narrative complexity lies a penetrating metaphor for understanding contemporary geopolitics—one that raises uncomfortable questions about the foundations of the international system that has governed state behaviour for nearly eight decades. The film's treatment of the mysterious Sea Peoples, portrayed throughout as marauding invaders threatening Mediterranean civilisation, eventually reveals them to be Greek forces themselves, returning from Troy with violence and devastation in their wake. This narrative inversion offers an unsettling mirror to current global dynamics, particularly regarding America's evolving stance toward the rules-based international order it once championed and now increasingly circumvents.

The post-war liberal international order represented an unprecedented experiment in constraining great-power behaviour through institutional frameworks rather than military conquest. Following the devastation of the Second World War, the United States constructed and defended a system anchored in the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Agreement, open trading mechanisms, and collective security arrangements. The philosophical foundation rested on a revolutionary premise: that international law and multilateral institutions could replace the historical pattern of unchecked power politics. American policymakers understood that sustainable dominance required not merely military or economic superiority, but the voluntary acceptance of rules by other states. In this sense, Washington's greatest achievement was not the exercise of power, but the creation of legitimacy around a framework within which power itself would be constrained.

For most of the Cold War and the subsequent decades of American unipolarity, this order functioned with sufficient coherence to prevent another great-power conflict. Smaller nations accepted constraints on their sovereignty because the alternative—a return to anarchic competition—appeared even costlier. Even when the United States violated particular rules, the system itself retained enough credibility to absorb such transgressions. American hegemony and the liberal order were understood, by most observers, as complementary rather than contradictory. The global economy expanded, institutions proliferated, and despite persistent inequalities and injustices, the framework appeared stable enough to justify continued adherence.

Yet the trajectory of recent American foreign policy suggests a fundamental shift in this relationship. Faced with intensifying strategic competition from China and Russia, the United States has progressively abandoned the pretence that it remains bound by the same rules it insists others follow. Economic instruments—tariffs, sanctions, and restrictions on technology transfer—now serve as weapons of first resort, deployed without the multilateral consensus that once characterised collective action. Bilateral military interventions proceed without clear Security Council authorisation. Withdrawal from international agreements, from trade accords to climate frameworks to arms control treaties, has become routine rather than exceptional. The weaponisation of supply chains and financial systems, particularly the dollar-denominated payments infrastructure, transforms institutions designed for mutual benefit into tools of coercion.

What makes this trajectory particularly significant for Southeast Asian observers is the foundational assumption underlying these shifts: that national interest supersedes the rules themselves. When American policymakers frame tariffs as necessary for national security, or sanctions as justified by strategic imperatives, they are essentially asserting that the principles animating the liberal order—reciprocal restraint, transparent rule-making, and the subordination of power to law—apply only conditionally. This represents not merely a change in policy emphasis, but a challenge to the philosophical legitimacy of the entire post-war architecture. If the architect of a rules-based system now treats those rules as inconveniences to be navigated rather than constraints to be respected, other rising powers face a rational incentive to behave similarly.

The resonance with Nolan's narrative of the Sea Peoples becomes apparent when examining how American actions are perceived beyond its borders. Just as the inhabitants of Ithaca feared faceless raiders approaching from distant seas, many nations increasingly view American interventionism—military, economic, or technological—with apprehension about the destabilising consequences. Yet the United States, like those Greek sailors returning home, often understands its own actions as defensive or stabilising. The gap between self-perception and external observation creates a dangerous paradox at the heart of current international politics. American policymakers believe they are protecting a rules-based order from threats posed by revisionist powers. Meanwhile, other states observe an established power increasingly willing to rewrite those rules when they prove inconvenient.

This paradox has particular implications for middle powers in the Indo-Pacific region. Malaysia, along with Vietnam, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian nations, have constructed their own foreign policies around the assumption that a functioning rules-based order offers superior alternatives to alignment with competing great powers. This preference reflects not ideological commitment to liberalism, but pragmatic calculation: smaller states benefit from transparent institutions and predictable constraints on the behaviour of the strong. As American commitment to these institutions becomes visibly conditional, middle powers face deteriorating incentives to maintain loyalty to that order. The calculations that made non-alignment or strategic autonomy costly now appear increasingly attractive.

The deeper warning embedded in The Odyssey's narrative concerns not external threats, but internal transformation. The greatest danger to an established order rarely emanates from those outside its gates; it emerges when those entrusted with defending the system gradually come to resemble the forces they once condemned. When the architect of a rules-based order begins to behave like a revisionist power, it delegitimises not merely American leadership but the entire framework of international governance. Other states observe this transformation and adjust their behaviour accordingly, initiating a cascade of defections from multilateral institutions and norms that have governed international behaviour for generations.

The implications for Southeast Asia extend beyond abstract geopolitical theory. The region's stability depends significantly on the credibility of rules-based mechanisms for managing disputes, from maritime boundaries to trade flows to investment protections. As faith in these mechanisms erodes, states increasingly resort to bilateral negotiations weighted toward the stronger party, or attempt to hedge their commitments by developing alternative institutional frameworks. The proliferation of competing regional arrangements—not as supplements to a functioning global order, but as substitutes for it—signals the progressive fragmentation of the post-war system. This fragmentation creates precisely the conditions that rules-based orders were designed to prevent: uncertainty about which agreements will be honoured, which institutions will retain authority, and which standards will apply in specific disputes.

The challenge facing American policymakers, though they rarely frame it this way, mirrors Odysseus's own journey: the difficulty of returning home without destroying the very civilisation one seeks to defend. If the United States continues on its current trajectory—progressively abandoning the constraints it once championed—it risks vindicating the very perspective it seeks to discredit. China and other rising powers can point to American conduct as justification for their own selective adherence to international law. Smaller nations can observe that the cost of accepting external constraints is permanent vulnerability, while the rewards accrue disproportionately to the powerful. In this scenario, the liberal international order does not collapse from external assault, but rather unravels from within as its beneficiaries cease to accept its legitimacy.

What distinguishes Nolan's adaptation from earlier treatments of Homer's epic is precisely this focus on perspective and perception. The Sea Peoples are not inherently evil marauders or honourable liberators; they are warriors whose actions take on different moral meanings depending on the observer's vantage point. The same principle applies to great powers navigating international relations. American strategists believe they are defending civilisation; adversaries perceive an aggressive force resistant to constraint. Neither perception is entirely false; both emerge from genuine differences in perspective rooted in material interests and historical experience. The tragedy is not that one side is right and the other wrong, but that the mutual recognition necessary for shared institutions to function has become increasingly elusive.

For Malaysia and other Southeast Asian nations, the implications demand careful attention. The liberal international order, despite its many flaws and inconsistent application, has provided concrete benefits to smaller states that might otherwise be overwhelmed by great-power competition. As this order unravels, the region faces a choice between attempting to reconstruct shared frameworks of governance or accepting a return to spheres of influence and bilateral hierarchies. The former path requires reinvigorating multilateral institutions and rebuilding consensus around universal principles; the latter implies resignation to a world in which the strong increasingly dominate the weak through mechanisms unconstrained by shared rules. The Odyssey's final irony may be that by abandoning its commitment to constraining power, the defender of the liberal order hastens its destruction—and in doing so, hastens the emergence of a far more dangerous international environment.