The eulogies are starting to wear thin. The lamented passing of the rules and law-based order only makes sense to those who believed that such rules and laws existed in the first place. How easy it is to forget that the spanning hegemon of each age always presumes that its laws and norms are objective universal features, putative and significant enough to be revered and inked for eternity. That most irritating term “rules-based order” is more a stress on the order backed by might rather than the rules themselves, a figment of legal draughtsmanship. Without a degree of might, there are no rules. If there are those who refuse to abide by those rules, might will be brought to bear upon the recalcitrant and the disobedient.
This discomforting reality has either been shielded from the United States’ allies or deliberately avoided. Whether it is security guarantees, defence pacts, trade deals, or mutual undertakings, the notion of an international order objectively existing and binding on all has been most attractive to the beneficiaries, who have preferred to see less a brutish hegemon than a benign, nuclear-armed caretaker.
Canada’s sense of sorrow at the demise of the international system as understood was conveyed through Prime Minister Mark Carney in his January 22 speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He reacted like one newly born to bald realities, making a few mild concessions that the previous state of things had been something of a convenient sham. He acknowledged, for instance, that the rules-based order “was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigour, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.” Carney’s grievance was that the order, as understood, had turned back to bite with feral ferocity. “You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
On February 13, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz did much the same thing at the annual Munich Security Conference, explaining why the grumpy motto of the gathering was “under destruction”. The order in question, one of rights and rules, was “currently being destroyed.” Imperfect as it was, “even in its heyday [it] no longer exists.” Making sure not to attack the United States for being a smash and grab culprit in this process, he referred with predictable consistency to “Russia’s violent revisionism” and war in Ukraine, and China’s “strategic patience” that might, in due course, well put it “on an equal footing with the United States in military terms.”
With a heavy note of resignation, the Chancellor seemed to mourn the challenge to, and possible dethronement of, US leadership, a time that had been good for Europe’s lotus-eaters. The world had since altered, and the Americans had adapted. As should Europe and Germany. The latter, in particular, had haughtily “criticised violations of the international order all over the world” without having “the means to solve the problem.” What was needed was a “mental transformation”, one focused not on “hegemonial fantasies” but on “leadership and partnership”. To do so, Merz proposed a foggy four-pillar “freedom agenda”: strengthening Germany and Europe “militarily, politically, economically and technologically”; creating a sovereign Europe; reiterating, despite the bruising challenges, the continuing importance of the transatlantic relationship; and pursuing a global network of collaborative states. “Europe and the transatlantic relationship remain central, but they are no longer enough on their own.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for his part, told the same conference that the term rules-based global order was “overused”. In any case, it had, with ghastly effect, replaced the national interest, prized “a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade”, seen the outsourcing of “our sovereignty to international institutions” while selfish states feathered their welfare systems “at the cost of maintaining the ability to defend themselves” and diminished the significance of national borders (those naughty migrants again).
The remarks by Carney and Merz about an upended world that was never up to begin with exaggerate the collapse of an order that was only relevant because it had been promulgated by US power and the promise of a Pax Americana. Give Washington access to your military real estate, and its armies and nuclear weapons would defend you, much like a protection racket, against invisible threats. The term “joint operation” would alleviate local concerns about the loss of sovereignty.
Given the recent shocks inflicted by the Trump administration in terms of rhetoric and conduct on the very basis of international rules, politicians in allied and satellite states must reassure their voters about their feigned anger and synthetic outrage. The truculent orange monster in the White House must be abominated but remain un-ostracised: he retains the keys to the castle. Whatever is said in Washington about the reliability of its allies, a number of European countries, Canada, and Australia have systems of interoperable dependence with the US imperium when it comes to military deployments. Ambitious chatter about an independent European deterrent against fictional hordes of Russians readying to march across the continent remains a gurgling fantasy.
Since an enforceable legal system of rules assumes the presence of violence exercisable by some authority (that’s one for the legal positivists), its application has always been artificially constrained through the UN Security Council. This gave the comforting illusion that force could be regulated even as bullying powers could wage surrogate wars in distant theatres, crushing aspiring revolutions and social experiments while overthrowing elected governments.
Seeing as countries – and the US in particular – have openly torn off the mask of hypocrisy in observing international restraints, there is much to commend the crude fact that the rule of the gangster will be applied when self-interest demands it. Throw in sufficient arms and personnel, and one is sitting pretty. Ending the pantomime of the rules-based order does not spell an end to the system of power that continues to exist. It simply never went away.