The ‘rules-based international order’ is a crisis of the word and the world

What does Mark Carney make of the Israeli-American killing of the late Iranian head of state, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? The Canadian Prime Minister proclaimed at Davos on January 20, 2026 that the existing rules-based international order had been killed by the great powers, particularly the US, who had weaponized interdependence, using it as leverage to coerce less powerful states and undermine their sovereignty.

He has supported the war on Iran but with “regret”, claiming the “conflict is another example of the failure of international order.” In the Davos speech, Carney asked the middle powers to build a new rules-based international order. But less than two months later, he has supported actions that run contrary to the new order he hopes will come into existence.

And what about India? As we had written in 2024, India’s policy of supporting the rules-based international order was marked by inconsistency. That feature continues to hold. While India has not condemned the killing, it did send the country’s Foreign Secretary to condole Khamenei’s death. India has, in the past, added its weight to American support for a rules-based international order. Does it think that a head of state’s killing had dealt the rules-based international order its biggest blow yet?

Neither the Canadian prime minister nor New...

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