Canada, explained.
Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, addresses the World Economic Forum in Davos, 20 January 2026 (Ciaran McCrickard/©2026 World Economic Forum)
Declaring the system a fiction ignores real achievements and only makes it easier for big powers to demand their way.
Subscribe to The Informer for monthly expert analysis, and to Events for advance notice of visiting world leaders and distinguished guests.
You may unsubscribe from Lowy Institute newsletters at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
Mark Carney is wrong about the rules-based orderMark Carney is wrong about the rules-based order
Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, is just the sort of thoughtful, experienced, well credentialed and strong leader which we need on the world stage at this dangerously messy moment in history.
Having had a ringside seat watching heads of government work with each other over many years, including prime ministers of Australia and Canada, I can attest that Carney is the kind of colleague others love to have alongside them.
His speech in Davos, which has attracted a lot of fans, was therefore a disappointment to me. Not the whole speech, just one aspect of it. Unfortunately, it is a central theme.
I refer to Carney’s declaration that the rules-based order is a “fiction”, an “illusion”, and that we “shouldn’t mourn” its passing.
These are two very big propositions, neither of them correct, and both pose significant dangers were they to take hold.
Far from being a fiction, the rules-based order is actually an impressive edifice. It extends from the management of the world’s oceans and its airspace to arms control and disarmament.
Even in important fields where the rules are notoriously breached or disregarded, for instance rules governing the application of tariffs and rules governing the use of force, the unacceptability of the conduct should not be confused with the undesirability of having any rules at all.
This is a classic case of whether the glass is half full or half empty.
Don’t be surprised if hegemons feel even more emboldened to treat the rules as a fiction if that is how you characterise them yourself.
Unless we want to go back to a world in which, say, we have no Exclusive Economic Zone out to 200 nautical miles around our continent and our offshore resources are up for grabs by whatever country or company has the military or financial muscle, then we might want to think twice before declaring the Law of the Sea to be a fiction.
If we were ever to lose this, or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or many others which one could name, we would indeed mourn its passing. There is some serious stuff in the half of a glass that’s full.
Not only is the rules-based order not fiction, the very effort to build it contributes to the kind of culture which we want to have in international relations. I’m not naïve. I would be as hardnosed as anyone in protecting my country’s interests and I can understand why other countries would feel the same. But it’s a question of mindset; we want a mindset in which our first thoughts when the world faces a new issue such as climate change is that maybe the best way of achieving our ends is constructive collaboration rather than disconnection, name calling or reaching for the guns.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on screen during the FIFA World Cup 2026 Official Draw in December at John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC (Hector Vivas/FIFA via Getty Images)
It’s no argument to say that great powers have used the shaping of the rules-based order as a way of deploying their power. Precisely. Would we – especially the small and middle powers – prefer they had employed a different method?
And it’s no argument to say that the rules-based order is well short of perfect. It always was going to be a work in progress and it always will be. We’ve been at it for no more than six or seven decades, not long in the sweep of human history, and certainly too early to say that the inspiration which drove those seeking a better functioning world after the Second World War should be given up as a lost cause.
The analogy in Carney’s speech is false. Unlike the shopkeepers displaying Communist dogma on their signs, we have genuinely believed in a rules-based order. And we shouldn’t take the signs down, because we still do.
Lest it be thought that I believe that rules-based order is some kind of mystical incantation which will solve all global problems, of course not. There is a lot more to international relations than that including bilateralism and the kind of constituency building on specific issues which Carney spoke about. And certainly, it includes exerting hard power, sometimes military power.
I get all that.
I also get why Carney’s speech was so quickly and enthusiastically welcomed.
He is rightly admired as somebody who is prepared to stand firm in the face of the stupidity and offensiveness coming out of Washington, including in relation to the sovereignty of his own country. The audience was preconditioned to applaud any pushback which he offered in a week dominated by US President Donald Trump’s sabre rattling on Greenland. Carney could have set out a vision of returning to a Flat Earth policy and he would have received a standing ovation.
I suspect it will be said that I am misunderstanding what Carney really meant. The “fracture” to which he refers is not one in which the rules-based order is left behind but rather one in which we leave behind our naivety about the extent to which the big powers are constrained by the rules and also our naivety about economic integration (one of the objectives of the rules-based order) not becoming a source of domination and coercion.
Fine. I agree with that. My problem is that that’s not what he said, or at least not only what he said. Nor, importantly, is it the way the speech has been generally reported. Carney’s calling the end of the rules-based order itself has been front and centre and what’s astonishing is how rapidly this seems to have been accepted as the new conventional wisdom.
I worry that it will make it harder for people like Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong to speak up for the rules-based order as an objective of Australian foreign policy without being taken to task for ignoring the self-evidently brilliant Carney doctrine.
Cutting a political leader slack for what they said on the grounds that they didn’t really mean it is a dangerous practice to get into.
But obviously, you may say, Carney is not suggesting that we should call an end to the Law of the Sea and other huge successes in the post-Second World War effort to establish international rules? “You don’t really think he needed to spell that out do you?”
Well, yes, I do, because words can have unintended consequences. Don’t be surprised if hegemons feel even more emboldened to treat the rules as a fiction if that is how you characterise them yourself.
And beware of the slippery slope which could end in a very nasty thud. A major focus of any serious treatment of the subject is precisely where and how the lines are to be drawn along the spectrum from rules which realism demands we now understand as merely aspirational or nice in theory, and those which we regard as black letter law and will defend accordingly.
Also, note well: cutting a political leader slack for what they said on the grounds that they didn’t really mean it is a dangerous practice to get into. It’s just what Trump’s supporters ask us to do when he says something so outrageous as to be indefensible (“You know Donald Trump, he just talks that way, he doesn’t really mean that”).
So here’s a thought experiment. Suppose we are running a design competition for the New Global Order. Various architectural practices put in proposals. You’re on the selection panel. Who would you favour?
None of the following would get my vote – the dusted off Might-is-Righters, the reborn Spheres-of-Influencers, or the RBO-Last Riters.
I’d be going for that much less exciting but far more reliable firm, Don’t-Throw-the-Baby-Out-With-the-Bathwater.
About the author
Sandy Hollway
Sandy Hollway is a former leading Australian public servant and diplomat.
The most-pressing world events explained by Lowy Institute experts and global contributors, in your inbox, every Thursday.
You may unsubscribe from The Interpreter at any time. For information on our privacy practices and how to unsubscribe, see our Privacy Policy.
