States like Canada have long known the current system of international rules-based order was a “fiction,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said.
DAVOS, Switzerland – In a strikingly candid address on Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that the global order is reaching a “rupture” point, fueled by the United States’ enduring influence and a growing trend toward authoritarianism under President Donald Trump. The atmosphere in the room was palpable as Carney laid out his assessment of a world on the brink.
The Illusion of Global Cooperation
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A decades-long pretense of a level playing field has masked a reality of power imbalances, according to Carney.
Carney directly challenged the notion of “American hegemony,” stating that nations like Canada have long understood the international rules-based order to be largely symbolic. Countries participated in what he termed “rituals,” outwardly supporting the system to gain access to vital resources, trade, and financial systems. For decades, states with moderate power levels, like Canada, “participated in the rituals, and largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” he explained. In return, the U.S. granted access to crucial systems.
“This bargain no longer works,” Carney told the World Economic Forum. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Economic Coercion as a Tool of Power
Over the past two decades, Carney argued, major powers, including the U.S., have increasingly weaponized economic integration. This trend is driving nations to prioritize self-reliance, leading to greater fragmentation and instability.
“Tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” he said. He observed that countries like Canada are now locked in a competition to appear most accommodating, a situation he characterized not as true sovereignty, but as “the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”
Carney advocated for a new path—greater international cooperation—to counter the influence of dominant powers. He emphasized the need to move beyond simply expressing support for global order and instead actively enforce principles enshrined in the UN charter.
“We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together,” he said. He urged nations to “stop invoking the ‘rules-based international order’ as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”
Echoes of Concern from Germany
Carney’s warning follows similar concerns voiced just weeks earlier by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who stated the U.S. is dismantling the existing world order, transforming the world “into a den of robbers, where the most unscrupulous take whatever they want” and treating nations as possessions of a few powerful states.
However, both Carney and Steinmeier’s critiques have been met with questions regarding their own nations’ roles in undermining international order. Concerns have been raised about Canada’s detention of a former UN human rights rapporteur traveling to a Palestine event, its response to the war in Gaza, and its support for Israel’s actions. Germany faces scrutiny for its contributions to global imperialism and increasingly restrictive asylum policies, among other issues.
Erosion of Principles Under Trump
Despite these complexities, many experts point to a significant erosion of international principles, particularly under the current U.S. administration. Amnesty International USA issued a report on Tuesday, marking the anniversary of President Trump’s inauguration, warning of a “human rights emergency.”
The report detailed how the administration is “cracking the pillars of a free society,” jeopardizing fundamental rights such as freedom of the press, expression, and peaceful protest, as well as due process, equality, and privacy. “When these rights are weakened, the harms do not stay contained — they spread,” the report concluded.
