Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said The quiet parts are loud At the World Economic Forum: What many called the global rules-based order was either collapsing or had already collapsed.
In the past few weeks, the United States, whose military and economic weight underpins much of that order, has invaded Venezuela, threatened to invade the European territory of Greenland and vowed to levy tariffs on any Western allies who oppose it.
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Furthermore, US President Donald Trump is hinting that he could be the successor to the United Nations, aiming to embody the modern world order.Peace Council“
Speaking in the Swiss city of Davos on Tuesday, Carney acknowledged that the rules-based order is essentially over in light of US behavior – most recently in trying to take Greenland.
In its place, he said, was the coming era of great power rivalry, where the comfortable “fantasy” of the past faded into the unforgiving light of day.
“The power of a system does not come from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source,” he told world leaders. “When even one person stops performing … the illusion begins to shatter.”
“We participated in rituals and we largely avoided the gap between rhetoric and reality,” Carney added. “This deal is no longer working. Let me be direct. We are in the middle of a disintegration, not a transition.”
in Trump’s speech in Davos The next day, the US president made it clear that times have changed. He nods to Venezuela, where his army raids Kidnapping Earlier this month, the country’s President Nicolas Maduro. He criticized Europe by calling its countries weak.
And whether thinking of Greenland or Denmark – the country of which they are part – he constantly referred to his desire to take Greenland.
“We need an iceberg for global defense. And they won’t give it,” Trump said. “So they have a choice. You can say yes, and we’ll be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we’ll remember.”
Trump has made it clear that he is not interested in the old way. The concept of sovereignty based on post-World War II rules and the settlement of disputes through negotiation are no longer important.
Not friends but hunters
The actions of Trump and his administration have forced lawmakers across Europe and the West to confront their dependence on the United States and the difficulties of confronting the world’s most important superpower, which Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former deputy deputy commander for Europe, described on Tuesday as a “predator” from an “ally”.
Europe’s limited efforts to counter US ambitions in Greenland have seen a token number of troops stationed on the island, only to face American fury and the immediate threat of tariffs.
“The rules-based order is over, and its end reflects the decades-old illusion that European and US 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.
Over the years, the US has exempted itself from several international agreements, such as International Criminal Courtwhose warrant was active against Russian President Vladimir Putin followed up Former US President Joe Biden, despite Washington’s refusal to accept the court’s jurisdiction.
Similarly, when the International Court of Justice ruled against the United States in a 1986 case over Washington’s support for rebels in Nicaragua, the United States rejected the ruling. Other international obligations, as they are ongoing the weatherOr Commitment Iran has been similarly stymied, seeking to ease sanctions in exchange for greater transparency over its nuclear program.
“The reality is, the US has time and again put its own interests and its own sovereignty first. Going back to Nuremberg, the United States’ interest in international law, rather than based on the Treaty, has always been a hindrance,” Nice told Al Jazeera, referring to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II. “What complicates this is that, for more than 80 years, Europe and others have deluded themselves that this is not the case.”
hypocritical order
Longstanding criticism of the so-called rules-based order has grown increasingly strong over the past few decades.
Perhaps most notable to many is the continued Western support for Israel, despite the genocidal war on Gaza, in which more than 71,550 Palestinians have been killed in the past two years. An International Criminal Court arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been largely ignored by Western leaders, raising questions about whether international law matters to some but not others.
HA Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London said, “The idea of a singular – and often deeply hypocritical – rules-based order has ceased to exist, to the extent that it really existed.”
“That reality is being recognized very differently around the world by Canadians and Europeans. For some, like Europe and Canada, it feels like a shocking contraction,” Hellyer said. “For others, this is the moment that the black and brown population that has never been protected, or the ‘Global South,’ is finally being called what it was.”
“It’s telling that the expected breaking point for the rules-based order is really the threat to Greenland, not the devastation of Gaza or other examples from the past,” Hellyer added. “The cases are not identical, and I am not equating them – but it is difficult to argue that talk of annexation is more offensive to international norms than the destruction of entire peoples and territories. But in the case of Israel, the main underwriter of the rules-based order – namely, the US – has not only violated international law, but has not been actively held responsible for that violation, but actively authorized it.”
Karim Emil Bitar, professor of international relations at Beirut’s St. Joseph University, said the claim that events on one’s own doorstep define the state of the world, regardless of conditions elsewhere, is nothing new among Western commentators.
“That’s why we see such a stark contrast between Western attitudes toward Gaza versus Western attitudes when a blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian woman comes in as a refugee,” he said.
“When a region that is part of the ‘European Union’ is in danger, they completely change course and no longer try to use the usual vicious justifications that have been used for decades and decades.”
For small countries that have been forced to rely on alliances rather than rules for decades, or much of the Global South, the collapse of the rules-based order will mean little. For those in the Global North and their representatives at Davos, this represents a seismic shift.