{"id":9446,"date":"2026-01-21T21:57:47","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=9446"},"modified":"2026-01-21T21:57:47","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T21:57:47","slug":"the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it-is-the-rules-based-order-finished-israel-palestine-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/?p=9446","title":{"rendered":"\u2018The end of the world as we know it\u2019: Is the rules-based order finished? | Israel-Palestine conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the quiet part out loud at the World Economic Forum: what many call the global rules-based order was either collapsing or had collapsed already.<\/p>\n

In the last few weeks, the United States, whose military and financial heft underpinned much of that order, has invaded Venezuela, has threatened to invade the European territory of Greenland, and has promised to levy tariffs on any of its Western allies that might oppose it.<\/p>\n

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Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n

list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n

Moreover, in place of the United Nations, the organisation intended to embody the modern world order, US President Donald Trump is pushing what he has hinted may be its successor, the \u201cBoard of Peace\u201c.<\/p>\n

Speaking in the Swiss town of Davos on Tuesday, Carney accepted that, in light of the behaviour of the US \u2013 most recently in its push to take Greenland \u2013 the rules-based order was essentially over.<\/p>\n

In its place, he said, was the coming era of great power rivalry, where the comfortable \u201cfiction\u201d of the past withered in the unforgiving light of day.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe system\u2019s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone\u2019s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source,\u201d he told world leaders. \u201cWhen even one person stops performing \u2026 the illusion begins to crack.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality,\u201d Carney added. \u201cThis bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Trump\u2019s speech in Davos the following day, the US president made clear that times had changed. He nodded to Venezuela, where his forces conducted a raid to abduct<\/a> the country\u2019s President Nicolas Maduro earlier this month. He criticised Europe, calling the countries there weak.<\/p>\n

And he constantly referenced his desire to take Greenland, no matter what Greenlanders, or Denmark \u2013 the country they are part of \u2013 think.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want a piece of ice for world protection. And they won\u2019t give it,\u201d Trump said. \u201cSo they have a choice. You can say yes, and we will be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has made clear that the old way of doing things does not interest him. The post-World War II rules-based order concepts of sovereignty, and the resolution of disputes through negotiations, no longer mattered.<\/p>\n

Not an ally but a predator<\/h2>\n

The actions of Trump and his administration have forced lawmakers across Europe and the West to confront their reliance upon the US and weigh the difficulties of confronting the world\u2019s most significant superpower, which NATO\u2019s former deputy allied commander for Europe, Richard Shirreff, described on Tuesday as having turned from \u201cally\u201d to \u201cpredator\u201d.<\/p>\n

Limited attempts on the part of Europe to counter US ambitions in Greenland have seen the deployment of a token number of troops to the island, only to be met by American fury and the immediate threat of tariffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe rules-based order is over, and its ending reflects the decades-old fallacy that European and US values and security interests were the same,\u201d said Geoffrey Nice, a human rights lawyer and former lead prosecutor in the war crimes trial of Serbia\u2019s former president, Slobodan Milosevic.<\/p>\n

Over the years, the US has exempted itself from numerous international treaties, such as the International Criminal Court, whose warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin was actively pursued by former US President Joe Biden, despite Washington\u2019s refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the court itself.<\/p>\n

Similarly, when the International Court of Justice ruled against the US in a 1986 case on Washington\u2019s support for rebels in Nicaragua, the US simply dismissed the ruling. Other international obligations, such as those on climate, or commitments to Iran to ease sanctions in return for greater transparency of its nuclear programme, have been similarly shrugged off.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality has been that, time and again, the US has placed its own interests and its own sovereignty first. The United States\u2019 interest in international law, going back to the Nuremberg, has always been ad hoc rather than treaty based,\u201d Nice told Al Jazeera, referring to the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II. \u201cWhat\u2019s compounded this is that, for over 80 years, Europe and others have deluded themselves that this isn\u2019t the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Protesters
Protesters take part in a march in front of the US Consulate, under the slogan, \u2018Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people\u2019, in Nuuk, Greenland, March 15, 2025 [Christian Klindt Soelbeck\/Ritzau Scanpix\/via Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Hypocritical order<\/h2>\n

Longstanding criticisms of the so-called rules-based order have grown increasingly marked over the last few decades.<\/p>\n

Perhaps most notable for many was continued Western support for Israel despite its genocidal war on Gaza, in which it has killed more than 71,550 Palestinians in the last two years. Western leaders have largely ignored the International Criminal Court\u2019s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, raising questions about whether international law matters for some, but not for others.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of holding to a singular \u2014 and often deeply hypocritical \u2014 rules-based order is finished, to the extent it ever truly existed,\u201d said HA Hellyer of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies in London.<\/p>\n

\"The
Critics say the hypocrisy of the global rules-based order has been exposed during Israel\u2019s war on Gaza [Abdel Kareem Hana\/AP Photo]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe recognition of that reality by the Canadians and Europeans is landing very differently across the world. For some, similar to Europe and Canada, it feels like a shocking collapse,\u201d Hellyer said. \u201cFor others, it\u2019s simply the moment when a system that never protected Black and brown populations, or the \u2018Global South\u2019, is finally being named for what it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s telling that the supposed breaking point for the rules-based order is really the threat to Greenland, not the devastation of Gaza, or other examples before now,\u201d Hellyer added. \u201cThe cases are not identical, and I\u2019m not equating them \u2014 but it\u2019s difficult to argue that talk of annexation is more offensive to international norms than the destruction of an entire people and territory. But in the case of Israel, the main underwriter of the rules-based order \u2013 i.e., the US \u2013 did not only work to ensure no accountability for the violation of international law, but actively emboldened and empowered those violations.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is nothing new about Western commentators claiming that events on their own doorstep define the state of the world, regardless of conditions elsewhere, said Karim Emile Bitar, a professor of international relations at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why we see such a stark contrast between Western attitudes toward Gaza as opposed to Western attitudes when a blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian lady arrives as a refugee,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a territory that is part of the \u2018European Union\u2019 is under threat, they completely shift course and no longer try to use the usual mendacious justifications that were used for decades and decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

For smaller countries that have been forced to rely upon alliances rather than rules for decades, or much of the Global South, the collapse of the rules-based order will mean little. For those in the Global North and their representatives at Davos, it represents a seismic shift.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the quiet part out loud at the World Economic Forum: what many call the global rules-based order was either collapsing or had collapsed already. In the last few weeks, the United States, whose military and financial heft underpinned much of that order, has invaded Venezuela, has threatened to invade […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9446"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9446\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}