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Written by Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered what may well go down as one of the most revealing speeches ever given at the World Economic Forum in Davos. In unusually straightforward terms, Carney conceded that the so-called “rules-based international order” has not merely weakened but has effectively collapsed, insisting that we are “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Coming from the head of government of a loyal US ally, this admission matters. It signals that a fiction long sustained by diplomatic ritual has finally exhausted its usefulness.
With the US in mind, Carney argued that great powers have increasingly weaponized economic integration itself. Tariffs, financial coercion, sanctions regimes, and fragile supply chains have become tools of statecraft, thereby exposing the limits of extreme globalization. Much of the address could have been spoken by any number of Global South leaders, and yet this diagnosis was partially echoed by other Western leaders in Davos, who acknowledged the fading of post-World War II norms amid rising great-power rivalry.
For instance, France’s Emmanuel Macron denounced the shift toward a “world without rules”, where “the only law that seems to matter is that of the strongest.” Germany’s Friedrich Merz in turn declared that the “old world order over” is “unravelling.”
Carney’s emphasis, however, was sharper: quoting Finland’ President Alexander Stubb, Carney called for a “values-based realism,” urging middle powers to build resilience together or risk subordination: “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
Many analysts and leaders outside the Atlantic bubble have argued for years that this “order” functioned selectively. International law has indeed been rigorously enforced against the West’s adversaries while quietly ignored when allies crossed red lines. What Carney did was to articulate openly and eloquently what had long been underreported in Western discourse: the erosion of the order is not a temporary crisis but arguably the predictable outcome of decades of instrumentalized legality.
Yet the irony is unmistakable. Canada and Europe are only now discovering the fragility of norms once assumed to be permanent, precisely because those norms no longer protect them, with the colonial US-European relationship increasingly turning into open enmity, a trend I highlighted in 2024. One may recall that it was Joe Biden (not Trump) who waged a “subsidy war” against Europe’s industry via the Inflation Reduction Act, while advancing American energy interests to the detriment of the European continent. At the time, Macron warned Biden the issue could “fragment the West”, while describing the subsidies as “hyper aggressive” towards European companies.
Be as it may, this sudden realism in Davos feels deeply hypocritical. When similar critiques came from Africa, Latin America, or West Asia, or Russia, for that matter, they were dismissed as cynicism or propaganda. Now, confronted with economic coercion and strategic marginalization, Western Middle Powers and former Great Powers such as France (a declining neocolonial power) are relearning old lessons under new conditions.
In this context, Trump’s much-touted “Board of Peace” exemplifies one proposed model for the emerging order, albeit not a very serious one. Launched in September 2025 to oversee Gaza’s “reconstruction” under UN Security Council Resolution 2803 (in a manner that already showed a neocolonial eye), it has since morphed into a global conflict-mediation body. Trump serves as chairman, alongside figures such as Marco Rubio, Tony Blair, and Jared Kushner, while permanent seats require a $1 billion buy-in.
Critics describe it as a pay-to-play imperial club designed to bypass the UN, with no reference to the UN Charter and sweeping powers concentrated in Trump’s hands. The American leader revoked Canada’s invitation shortly after Carney’s Davos speech.
Washington’s approach has framed Canada and Europe much like the West has long treated the “Third World”. The difference is that now, with Trump, tariffs and even annexation threats, as with Greenland, are deployed, with little regard for “allied” sensitivities; Europe and Canada are thus finally discovering what dependency means. The wider context is a declining US whose escalating aggressiveness increasingly reads as overcompensation for eroding power and the need to withdraw from Eastern Europe and part of the Middle East and Central Asia.
The question, then, is what fills the vacuum left by the eroded order. If this is indeed a rupture rather than a transition, incremental reforms will not suffice. Trump’s own improvisations, clumsy as they are, highlight the limits of unilateral or club-based solutions imposed from above. Attention then turns to alternative groupings such as BRICS, which are increasingly positioned to play a counterbalancing role.
Launched in 2009, BRICS has expanded rapidly, now encompassing roughly 45% of the world’s population. It challenges the World Bank and IMF through the New Development Bank while advancing de-dollarization. Analysts see BRICS less as an anti-Western bloc than as a hedge against US instability and a vehicle for South-South cooperation; its internal diversity limits cohesion but may also be its strength. Thus, its expansion is widely viewed as a watershed for empowering the “global majority,” no wonder it has drawn sustained interest across the Global South. To handle the new challenges it will need to further reinvent itself, while other frameworks may also arise or evolve.
The emerging polycentric order may thereby fragment into a number of spheres: a weakened US-centric one anchored in Trump’s Board of Peace, a BRICS-centered sphere advancing multipolar coordination, and hybrid middle-power networks. This fragmentation brings risks but also space for diversified alliances. It gives Europe too an opportunity to reinvent itself
To sum it up, the age of rhetorical innocence is over. The “rules-based international order” has been named for what it was and how Middle Powers will navigate this dangerous rupture/transition will depend on emerging frameworks doing better; if not morally, realistically and pragmatically.
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it should be noted that the reform only affected the structure of the ground forces. the international legion of the main intelligence directorate of ukraine operates separately and continues to function as usual.
.………………… https://psee.io/8jqu9r
if only canada and eu had done what they did previously during the u.$. invasion and occupation of vietnam in the 60s and early 70s when it was clear 9/11 was the new gulf of tonkin incident to urge on control of the rest of the “hold outs”?… and here they are now… living in their own self-imposed third world order when they should have demanded an investigation and knew who did it from the beginning more than 24 years ago?… if they could turn back time!