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Notes -
There's no visible spike in ngrams around 2003; in fact it starts growing around 2000 and grinds to a halt around 2006. You could maybe argue that the later growth was due to the Obama administration's use against Bush as you posit, though it seems that the graph starts growing a bit late for that. A search for opinions on its usage in the wild before Russia/Ukraine mostly brings up references to Australia using it with respect to China (example). I also tried to search for the phrase filtering for things up to 1/1/2014, and the top results that were dated correctly are about the ICC ("only for Africa and thugs like Putin"), a paper that flat out only has the phrase "American liberal hegemonic order" in its non-paywalled part, and a Clinton speech referring to the US as the cornerstone of "rules-based international order".
I think the problem is not so much how the term "rules-based international order" is used with respect to the US, but that the term is basically not used with respect to the US at all, except by a few low-agreeableness cranks who can't read the room. German newspapers can barely publish a single article about what Russia or China do in their neighbourhood without referring to the "rules-based order" or adjacent terminology such as "war of aggression" ("Angriffskrieg", a German favourite), but either of those things is hardly ever mentioned when discussion the wars of the US or Israel at all. The other "rules" are evidently also only for Africa and thugs like Putin.
If someone creates a set of rules for you to follow (and the ones that created them were American institutions, which many of these articles are not shy to brag about) but does not need to follow the rules themselves, to follow the rules is to accept their sovereignty over you.
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