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What many call the world’s rules-based order was either crumbling or had already collapsed, according to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum.

The United States has invaded Venezuela in recent weeks, threatened to invade Greenland, and pledged to impose tariffs on any of its Western allies who might oppose it. This is due to the country’s military and financial resources.

Additionally, US President Donald Trump is pushing what he has suggested might be the “Board of Peace” in place of the United Nations, the organization intended to embodie the modern world order.

In a speech on Tuesday in Davos, Switzerland, Carney stated that the rules-based order was essentially over in light of the behavior of the US, most recently in its push to seize Greenland.

The upcoming era of great power rivalry, he claimed, would take its place, where the stale “fiction” of the past rotted in the unforgiving light of day.

According to him, “The system’s strength comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to act as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source.” The trick begins to crumble when even one person stops acting.

We participated in the rituals, Carney continued, “but we largely avoided blatantly bridging the gap between rhetoric and reality.” This offer is no longer valid. Be direct with me. Not a transition, but a rupture is occurring right now.

The US president made it clear that times had changed in Donald Trump’s speech from Davos the following day. He nodded to Venezuela, where his forces earlier this month staged a raid to kidnap Nicolas Maduro’s government. He criticized Europe, calling its nations “weak.”

And he made a constant mention of his desire to abandon Greenland, regardless of what Greenlanders or Denmark, the nation they are a part of, think.

For world protection, we require a piece of ice. And they refuse to give it, Trump asserted. They now have a choice, they say. We will be very grateful if you say yes. Or you can decline and we will remember.

Trump has made it clear that he is uninterested by the traditional method of business. It was no longer relevant to resolve disputes through negotiations and post-World War II rules-based order concepts of sovereignty.

Not a friend, but a predator

lawmakers from across Europe and the West have been confronted by Trump’s and his administration’s reliance on the US, and Richard Shirreff, NATO’s former deputy allied commander for Europe, described on Tuesday as having “turned from an ally” to a “predator” due to the challenges of confronting the world’s most significant superpower.

A small number of troops have been dispatched to the island in response to limited efforts by Europe to stop the US from trying to influence its intentions in Greenland, only to be met by American fury and the immediate threat of tariffs.

The rule-based order’s conclusion refutes the decades-old myth that both the US and European values and security interests were the same, according to Geoffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer and former prosecutor in Slobodan Milosevic’s war crimes trial.

Despite Washington’s refusal to accept the court’s own jurisdiction, the US has since withdrawn from numerous international treaties, including the International Criminal Court, whose former US President Joe Biden has been actively prosecuting the warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Similar to how the US simply refrained from pleading guilty to the US in a 1986 case involving Washington’s support for rebels in Nicaragua. Other international obligations, such as those relating to the environment or commitments to Iran to impose sanctions in exchange for greater transparency of its nuclear program, have also been negated.

“The reality is that the US consistently prioritized its own interests and sovereignty.” According to Nice, the United States’ interest in international law, which dates back to the Nuremberg, has always been ad hoc rather than a treaty-based. The fact that Europe and other countries have deceived themselves into believing this is not the case has compounded this.

a contradictory belief system

Over the past few decades, the so-called rules-based order’s reputation has become more undone.

Despite Israel’s genocidal war against Gaza, which has resulted in more than 71 Palestinian deaths over the past two years, the Western support for it is perhaps most notable for many. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest warrant has been largely ignored by Western leaders, which raises questions about whether international law is relevant to some people but not for others.

The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London, in the words of HA Hellyer, said, “The idea of holding to a singular — and frequently deeply hypocritical — rules-based order is finished, to the extent that it ever truly existed.”

“The Canadians and Europeans recognize that reality in very different ways,” says one researcher. It “seems to be a shocking collapse” for some, much like Europe and Canada, Hellyer said. It’s simply the moment when a system that never protected Black and brown populations, or the “Global South,” is being given its current name.

“It’s telling that the supposed breaking point of the rules-based order is actually the threat to Greenland, not the destruction of Gaza, or other examples before,” Hellyer continued. Although the cases are different, and I’m not comparing them, it’s difficult to argue that talking about annexation is more offensive to international standards than the destruction of an entire population and territory. However, the US, the primary underwriter of the rules-based order, did not only work to prevent the violation of international law from being fully accountable, but also actively encouraged and encouraged those violations.

According to Karim Emile Bitar, a professor of international relations at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut, there is nothing new about Western commentators who assert that events that occur on their own doorstep define the state of the world regardless of circumstances elsewhere.

When a blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian lady arrives as a refugee, he said, “We see such a stark contrast between Western attitudes toward Gaza as opposed to Western attitudes.”

When a territory that belongs to the “European Union” is in danger, they completely change their course and no longer resort to the ostensible justifications that have been employed for decades and decades.