Mark Carney, Canada: Confessions at Davos – “rules-based international order” was a sham

Canadian Prime Minister in Davos confesses: We knew the rules-based order was a sham, but it suited us

In a confession at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney admitted what many leaders of the Global South have denounced for years: Western powers knew that the “rules-based international order” was a sham. He acknowledged that “the strongest exempted themselves when it suited them”, that the rules are applied asymmetrically, and that international law is used with “double standards” depending on who is accused.

“This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea routes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks to resolve disputes. We put the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we avoided pointing out the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” he stated. Now, according to Carney, “that pact no longer works”, because the great powers, in clear allusion to the US, began to use economic integration as a weapon: tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as pressure points.

The confession is a belated recognition of the structural hypocrisy that for decades justified interventions, unilateral sanctions, and wars of all kinds against countries like Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, Syria, while shielding allies. Today, when some in the West see that they too can be victims of the same arbitrariness, they admit the sham and want to exit the game.