If Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at the 2026 annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which convened on January 19-23 in the Swiss Alpine town of Davos, could be interpreted as the eulogy for an international order that is gone, I would call U.S. President Donald Trump’s speech at the WEF the manifesto for a new international order that has just arrived.  

Henry Kissinger used to call historic moments like this, the time from one equilibrium in international relations to another, as a transition. Carney pointedly refuted. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he declared. A rupture merely means a sudden, explosive and probably even violent transition.  

“We knew the story of the international 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 varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim,” Carney added. 

There is some consensus among experts that the current global system is collapsing. The current system is falling apart partially due to its loss of credibility as a result of hypocrisy and partially due to the rise of the countries in the Global South like China, India and Brazil.  

The Trump administration’s foreign policy, then, seems to be reminiscent of a famous statement in the history of antitrust by Dwayne Andreas, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland, a large U.S. multinational agribusiness and food processing company. “Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are the enemy,” he once said. Apparently President Trump is not so much interested in fighting and containing Russia and China; both two countries are not even mentioned as adversaries or existential threats in the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy document released last year, as they were customarily done in the Joe Biden administration. The Trump administration seems to be more interested in coercing a windfall from U.S. allies, such as Greenland, as opposed to competing with and fighting against Russia and China.  

We understand the old system is gone. But what is the new system we are heading toward? Trump’s WEF speech provides plenty of clues. This new order is characterized by great power politics, which is not so much based on competition among great powers, but on modus vivendi among great powers. However, this coexistence will still unfold within an inherited framework of international institutions and norms, which, while weakened, continue to set boundaries and provide venues for dialogue.  

Trump is not shy about declaring the beginning of his era in terms of the U.S.’ role in the international order. And the actions so far--including his trade war on the whole world, “the law enforcement action assisted by U.S. military” against a sovereign country’s president, his Greenland gambit, all of these things illustrate the growing dysfunction, if not the outright demise, of the current rules-based international order. Moving forward, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and other international institutions will still function, but their authority and efficacy will be increasingly tested. Washington flexes its muscles to pursue its priorities, yet it cannot operate in a complete vacuum—alliances, economic interdependence, and global public opinion will impose certain limits. As for China, we have to wait for Trump’s April trip to Beijing to see what he will have to say.  

The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Beijing Review. 

The author is a professor at the Beijing-based University of International Business and Economics.   

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