At the World Economic Forum, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave voice to the quiet parts of what many refer to as the world’s rules-based order, which is, or has already, collapsed.
In the past few weeks, the United States, whose military and financial might underpin much of its command, has invaded Venezuela, threatened to invade the European territory of Greenland, and promised to impose tariffs on Western allies that might oppose it.
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Moreover, instead of the United Nations, an organization aimed at shaping the modern world order, US President Donald Trump is pushing for a “peace commission,” which he has signaled could be its successor.
Speaking in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, Mr. Carney acknowledged that the rules-based order is essentially over, given the actions of the United States, which has recently pushed to seize Greenland.
Instead, he said, an era of great-power rivalry had arrived, and the comfortable “fiction” of the past withered in the merciless light of day.
“The power of this system comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to act as if it were true, and its vulnerability comes from the same source,” he told world leaders. “When even one person stops playing…the illusion begins to crumble.”
“We took part in the ritual, but largely avoided pointing out the gap between rhetoric and reality,” Carney added. “This deal no longer works. Let me put it bluntly: We are in the middle of a disconnect, not a transition.”
In President Trump’s speech in Davos the next day, the US president made it clear that times have changed. He gave a nod to Venezuela, where its troops carried out a raid earlier this month that abducted the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro. He criticized Europe and called the countries there weak.
And he constantly referred to his desire to occupy Greenland, regardless of what Greenlanders or their country, Denmark, thought.
“We want ice to protect the world, and they won’t give it to us,” Trump said. “So they have a choice. If you say yes, we’ll be very grateful. Or if you say no, we’ll remember.”
President Trump has made it clear that he has no interest in the old ways. After World War II, concepts of rules-based order such as sovereignty and negotiated conflict resolution were no longer relevant.
He’s not an ally, he’s a predator.
The actions of President Trump and his administration are forcing European and Western lawmakers to confront their dependence on the United States and reflect on the challenges of confronting the world’s most important superpower. Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former deputy commander for the alliance in Europe, said Tuesday that the superpower has gone from being an “ally” to a “predator.”
Limited European attempts to counter U.S. ambitions in Greenland sent a small number of troops to the island, only to be exposed to U.S. outrage and the threat of impending tariffs.
“The rules-based order is over, and the outcome reflects a decades-old misconception that European and American values and security interests were the same,” said Jeffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer and former lead prosecutor in the war crimes trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.
The United States has long had immunity from numerous international treaties, including the International Criminal Court. The International Criminal Court was actively sought by former US President Joe Biden for its warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite Washington refusing to accept the court’s own jurisdiction.
Similarly, when the International Court of Justice ruled against the United States in a 1986 case concerning Washington’s support for Nicaraguan rebels, the United States simply overruled the ruling. Other international obligations are similarly ignored, including climate change obligations and a promise to Iran to ease sanctions in exchange for greater transparency about its nuclear program.
“The reality is that the United States has repeatedly put its own interests and its own sovereignty first. Going back to the Nuremberg trials, the United States’ interest in international law has always been ad hoc rather than treaty-based,” Nice told Al Jazeera, referring to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II. “What makes the situation even worse is that for more than 80 years Europe and other countries have been convinced that this is not the case.”
hypocritical command
Long-standing criticisms of the so-called rules-based order have become increasingly prominent in recent decades.
Perhaps most notable for many is that Western countries continued to support Israel despite the genocidal war in Gaza that has killed more than 71,550 Palestinians over the past two years. Western leaders have largely ignored the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, raising questions about whether international law matters to some but not others.
“The idea of adhering to an idiosyncratic, and often highly hypocritical, rules-based order, to the extent that it actually existed, is over,” said HA Hellyer of the Royal Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London.
“The perception of that reality by Canadians and Europeans is becoming very different around the world. Like in Europe and Canada, for some it feels like a shocking collapse,” Hellyer said. “For others, this is simply a moment when a system that never protected black and brown people, or the ‘Global South,’ is finally named after what it was then.”
“It tells us that the supposed breaking point for the rules-based order is actually the threat to Greenland, not the devastation in Gaza or other examples in the past,” Hellyer added. “These cases are not the same, so I don’t mean to equate them, but it’s hard to argue that talk of annexation violates international norms any more than the destruction of entire peoples and territories. But in the case of Israel, the main assumer of the rules-based order, the United States, not only sought to avoid any responsibility for violations of international law, but actively encouraged and empowered those violations.”
Karim Emir Bitar, a professor of international relations at St. Joseph’s University in Beirut, said it is nothing new for Western commentators to claim that events under their own doorstep will determine the world situation, regardless of the situation elsewhere.
“This is why there is such a stark contrast between the West’s attitude towards Gaza and its attitude when the blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian woman arrived as a refugee,” he said.
“When regions that are part of the ‘European Union’ are threatened, they completely reverse course and are no longer willing to use the usual deceptive justifications that have been used for decades.”
The collapse of the rules-based order means little for small states and many in the Global South, who have had to rely on alliances rather than rules for decades. For people in the Global North and for delegates at Davos, this means a seismic shift.
