As China, Russia, and Trump challenge the old rules of global politics, G7 aims to shore them up

Editor's Note: This story was adapted from CNN's Meanwhile in America, the email about US politics for global readers. Click here to read past editions and subscribe.

The old rules of politics are being smashed all over the world.

In the United States, Donald Trump is mounting a political comeback, with an even greater disregard for democracy, accountability and propriety than he showed in his first term. The former president taps into supporters' disdain for "elites" in business, politics and the media, whom they believe maintain a system expressly designed to suppress them.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected international law and the concept of national sovereignty by marching into Ukraine. And China is successfully challenging the global system written by the West that has prevailed since the end of World War II, testing its capacity to defend international property rights and ruthless business practices while offering developing nations in the "Global South" an alternative political and economic model of authoritarian capitalism.

Lesser revolts have happened everywhere over the last decade. Britain's exit from the European Union was partly powered by voters who thought they were "taking back control" from distant institutions in Brussels. Strong showings by far-right leader Marine Le Pen in the last presidential elections may be a harbinger of a future reckoning for France's political consensus.

As the US-engineered ancien régime comes apart, President Joe Biden has rooted his presidency in an effort to repair structures that underpin US power: He's trying to save democracy at home from Trump's onslaught and to strengthen alliances fractured by the previous administration - including reinvigorating NATO to help Ukraine survive.

Biden was born in 1942, at a time when the US and its allies were beginning to think about the shape of a post-World War II order that has largely prevailed ever since. Now, his presidency may represent his generation's last chance to put a stamp on that fraying system and the world they leave behind.