Last week at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney referred to the rules-based international order as a “pleasant fiction” from which “the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.” He was right. Political scientists have been saying this for years, pointing out that while the American-led postwar order was no doubt more liberal than what came before it, it nonetheless rested on the arbitrary exercise of U.S. power.
What has changed in recent months is not American power. Indeed, the United States is still an almost uniquely powerful country in its ability and willingness to project military and financial strength around the world. Carney’s notion that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited” would come as little surprise to people living under U.S. sanctions in Iran, Venezuela, or Russia.
Last week at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney referred to the rules-based international order as a “pleasant fiction” from which “the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.” He was right. Political scientists have been saying this for years, pointing out that while the American-led postwar order was no doubt more liberal than what came before it, it nonetheless rested on the arbitrary exercise of U.S. power.
What has changed in recent months is not American power. Indeed, the United States is still an almost uniquely powerful country in its ability and willingness to project military and financial strength around the world. Carney’s notion that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited” would come as little surprise to people living under U.S. sanctions in Iran, Venezuela, or Russia.
Nor has the United States suddenly discovered a willingness to make exceptions to the rules for itself. U.S. presidents have always been willing to buck the rules of the “liberal order” when they felt it was in U.S. interests to do so. That very willingness to ignore the rules when convenient has often proved useful to Russia and China, who are happy to highlight American hypocrisy, from Kosovo to Iraq and Gaza.
Rather, the “rupture in the world order” Carney describes has come about because the targets of American power have changed. It is not a rupture of some universal liberal order, but instead a rupture between America and its allies—who have become the potential victims of the U.S. willingness to break the so-called rules of the international system. Carney’s call for “middle powers” to assert themselves and act together is a call for traditional U.S. partners and allies to think for themselves in this new world.
They have strong reasons to do so. Canada under Carney’s leadership has been the target of 35 percent tariffs from the Trump administration, along with needling from the president on Truth Social about making Canada the 51st state or bolstering separatists in the province of Alberta. There have also been major trade spats with the European Union, cooperation with Europe’s far-right parties, and—most recently—the Greenland imbroglio.
Though the U.S. and its allies have had many disagreements before, it’s hard to think of another example of such blatant coercive behavior from the United States as that displayed over the last year. It is, after all, much harder for Europe to ignore a presidential threat to invade Greenland than America’s willingness to bomb some far-off Middle Eastern country.
U.S. allies—particularly those in the Euro-Atlantic region—are uniquely vulnerable to coercion by the United States. They are closely tied to the U.S. economy, buy American weapons, and often rely on American troops to guard their borders. If they respond to Trump’s saber-rattling and coercion forcefully, they risk losing their primary security partner. As we saw last year, fears of U.S. military withdrawal from NATO prompted European capitals to softball their response to Trump’s tariff threats.
Navigating these threats is the biggest contemporary challenge for U.S. allies. In practice, though much was made of Trump’s desire to push allies to pick up their own defense burdens prior to the 2024 election, the U.S. defense posture has changed little since Trump came into office. There has been no clear sign of imminent, widespread drawdowns of U.S. troops in Europe, other than a rumored withdrawal of troops from Romania late last year. The hotly anticipated Pentagon Force Posture Review has not been published. Instead, the Trump administration appears happy to coerce allies on military spending at the same time as it plays hardball on trade, politics, and other areas.
In many ways, U.S. allies are worse off than the middle powers who are less aligned with the United States. India, for all its growing connections to the United States in recent years, has retained its trade ties with other states, its membership within the BRICS organization, and still buys oil and weapons from Russia; purchases of Russian oil have slowed, but not stopped since U.S. tariff pressure began to bite in November. Brazil, meanwhile, has been able to negotiate a lowering of tariffs with the Trump White House, even as President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has criticized U.S. actions in Venezuela and elsewhere.
In short, Carney is right to point out that middle powers have options, but he and his compatriots in Europe are starting from a pronounced disadvantage when compared to other middle powers around the globe. These states must cultivate alternatives while managing a transition from their position of reliance on the United States.
But there are nonetheless signs that the belligerence and unpredictability of the Trump administration might finally be pushing U.S. allies to do so. Carney himself spent several days before his Davos speech in Beijing, signing a deal to bring Chinese electric vehicles and other goods to Canada. He was preceded by French President Emmanuel Macron, and followed by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer both of whom are seeking greater trade ties with China. Meanwhile, an India-European Union free-trade pact has been reached after years of failures to do so.
If the direction of travel continues, it will likely accelerate the shift away from a unipolar world of U.S. dominance toward a markedly more multipolar one, where middle powers possess more independent capabilities and wield more flexibility in their foreign policy. This may sound alarming, but it would not necessarily be a bad thing for the United States. Today, the United States is burdened with a network of highly dependent allies—middle powers that have the economic, demographic, or technological basis for military power, but whose military capabilities have been suppressed over time by their reliance on the United States.
If these allies were to decide to develop more of their own capabilities—in effect, buttressing themselves against the bullying of the Trump administration—a new administration might enter office in 2028 or later to find a much more capable set of friendly countries than exists today. Even with increased autonomy, it is unlikely these states will pose any threat to the United States; they are mostly advanced, industrialized democracies that share a general tendency toward liberal values with the United States.
Of course, it’s also entirely possible that these U.S. allies could fail in their efforts to develop independent capabilities and reduce their vulnerability to the United States. The Trump administration has threatened Canada with massive tariffs if it follows through on the China trade deal. Though Ottawa seems willing to bear some costs to buck Trump’s pressure, the United States possesses hefty economic leverage against Canada.
European states, meanwhile, have been less than eager to challenge Washington, even on an issue as problematic as the territorial dispute over Greenland. European leaders have largely appeased the man in the White House in hopes of sustaining the American defense commitment to NATO. Would they really choose to blow up the alliance entirely over Greenland, trade, or other American slights?
If U.S. allies do decide that life as a vassal is manageable, however, they may well come to regret it. As Carney told the delegates at Davos, “the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The price of failing to hedge against the United States now is accepting future coercion.
