By Brahma Chellaney, The Hill

The “rules-based international order” was never a set of neutral rules. It was a story the U.S. told — about itself, its power and its right to bend norms when convenient.

In January, that story finally collapsed when Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called that order what many governments have long known it to be: a useful “fiction,” sustained less by universal law than by American power and selective enforcement.

For decades, when U.S. officials invoked a “rules-based international order,” they were not describing universal principles, but defending a flexible set of rules largely devised in Washington and adjusted whenever American interests required it. Now, as President Trump openly revives territorial expansion and economic coercion as tools of U.S. statecraft, that phrase no longer commands belief, even among America’s closest allies.

Carney, speaking in Davos, did what no major Western leader had previously dared to do: He called the bluff. The “rules-based order,” Carney said, was a convenient illusion — one the West itself knew was only partially true, tolerated for as long as U.S. hegemony delivered enough public goods to make the hypocrisy worthwhile. That bargain, he concluded, no longer works.

Carney’s candor marks a watershed. By naming the fiction out loud, he validated a critique long voiced by the Global South and quietly acknowledged across Western capitals. More importantly, he signaled that the era of polite silence surrounding American exceptionalism has ended.

Any international order must, by definition, rest on rules. Modern global life — trade, finance, aviation, maritime navigation — cannot function without shared norms and procedures. The real question has never been whether rules matter, but which rules matter most, and to whom they apply.

For many Western governments, the core norm underpinning the international order is the prohibition on territorial conquest. That is why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was framed as a civilizational rupture. As then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken put it, the war challenged the principle that borders cannot be changed by force.

International law is indeed clear on this point: the U.N. Charter prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity of states, and the Geneva Conventions forbid the demographic transformation of occupied territories.

Yet the selective invocation of this norm has gradually eroded its credibility. The U.S. has repeatedly violated the territorial integrity of other states — not by annexing land, but by overthrowing governments and installing new ones that remain formally sovereign while substantively dependent on Washington. This maneuver allows Washington to deny conquest while achieving many of its effects.

Nor is Ukraine’s defense best understood as a pure defense of the norm against conquest. Great powers rarely act primarily to uphold norms. They intervene to prevent adverse shifts in the balance of power. The rallying of NATO behind Ukraine may have aligned with international law, but it was driven at least as much by strategic calculation as by legal fidelity.

The fiction of moral clarity was further strained by the rhetoric that cast the conflict as a battle between democracy and autocracy. Under Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine has lurched toward authoritarianism. As in past U.S. interventions, “fighting for freedom” has remained a narrative convenience rather than a consistent standard.

If the Biden administration strained the fiction, Trump has shattered it. Trump has openly re-embraced territorial expansion as a legitimate tool of statecraft. His second term has featured military intervention in Venezuela, renewed demands for U.S. control over Greenland and the Panama Canal, and an unapologetic revival of “Manifest Destiny.” Unlike his predecessors, Trump does not bother cloaking ambition in the language of universalism. He says the quiet part out loud.

Trump is not unique in expanding American power; because of his predecessors’ global expansion, there are about 750 U.S. military bases today in at least 80 countries. What is new is the abandonment of euphemism. By openly praising 19th-century imperial precedents and refusing to rule out coercion even against allies, Trump has made it impossible to pretend that the U.S. is merely the custodian of a rules-based order.

Norms survive not on consistency alone but on credibility. When enforcement is asymmetric, rules become tools rather than constraints. The same applies to the norm of non-interference, which has never prevented cyber operations, sanctions, covert actions or targeted killings. No major power — whether the U.S., Russia or China — fully abides by it. What differs is how honestly that reality is acknowledged.

Carney’s comments matter precisely because they strip away the last vestiges of moral theater. By admitting that Western allies knowingly participated in a ritualized fiction, he reframed the present moment not as a transition, but as a “rupture.” The old bargain — accept U.S. primacy in exchange for stability and public goods — is unraveling. What replaces it will be messier and more transactional.

The “rules-based order” endured not because it was universally respected, but because it was useful — and because American power made it impolite to ask questions. With that politeness gone, what remains is not the collapse of order, but the collapse of pretense. This may allow for a more honest reckoning with power, interest and responsibility.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including the award-winning “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”