If you did not read my pronouncement about the death of the post-World War II global order in my last column in Al-Ahram Weekly, I suggest you read the one proclaimed from the podium of the World Economic Forum in Davos this year.
One of the most resounding obituaries was declared by my friend Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada. A seasoned economist, he drew on his experience to enumerate the benefits his country, an advanced economy, has gained from this now-departed order.
Canada and other affluent countries have prospered from the “rules-based international order,” he said, and they have participated in its multilateral institutions, supported its principles, and enjoyed the protection it has afforded to their political and economic interests.
Nevertheless, Carney acknowledged that the story of the outgoing order was partially false. As he put it, “we knew… that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
Despite this awareness, his and other countries went along with the order, if it can properly be called an “order,” flaws and all, chief among them American hegemony. Effectively, they entered a bargain designed to avert a “Kindleberger moment.”
The American economist Charles Kindleberger was one of the architects of the Marshall Plan for Europe’s post-World War II recovery. He held that the revival of the global economy required a leading power capable of ensuring security and stability. A “Kindleberger moment” arrives when the global hegemon fails to deliver on the public goods of the international order, namely, collective security, dispute resolution, secure trade routes, financial stability, and crisis management.
So, the bargain initially paid off as billed, but then it broke down as the order unravelled, due to a succession of shocks and disruptions, starting with the global financial crisis in 2008 and then the Covid-19 pandemic. Global geopolitical risks escalated, the climate deteriorated, trade protectionism returned, and the pathways for investment and monetary settlements became more complex after they were politicised and weaponised.
While the collapse of the old order may be mourned by its chief beneficiaries, like Canada, the disadvantaged countries and peoples will find little reason to grieve. How can they mourn a system that brought them declining living standards and caused their economies to drift ever further away from those harvesting the order’s benefits?
A glance at the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report reveals how far performance lags behind targets in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose end point is set for 2030. Since 2020, average growth rates have fallen to levels insufficient to reduce poverty or expand opportunities for job seekers. This is a far cry from the period of high growth that lifted nearly one billion people out of extreme poverty.
According to World Bank figures, over half the growth in per-capita income since the pandemic, a 10 per cent rise since 2019, is due to the performance of the richest countries. By the end of 2026, average per-capita income in the developing countries will be around $6,500, only about 12 per cent of that in the high-income countries. As for the least developed countries, their per-capita income of roughly $700 does not exceed one per cent of that in the advanced economies.
Undoubtedly, refrains from Arabic songs, like “he said it at last,” and “it’s too late,” will have run through the minds of many leaders of the Global South when they listened to Carney’s remarks in Davos.
Indeed, what needed to be said was at last said out loud not just by someone from the Global North, but by a member of the G7 group of countries. The old order collapsed because it was unjust and inefficient, Canada’s representative said. This does not come as news to the G77 group, which represents the developing countries.
The system’s lack of justice and efficiency have long been a key grievance of the world’s poorer countries. For decades, the Global South has complained of the dangers of double standards and the order’s structural asymmetries, only for the custodians of the old order to respond with triple and quadruple standards and even more hoops for the poorer nations to jump through.
In my view, the old order had already begun to topple after the 2008 global financial crisis and its political, economic and social repercussions that have buffeted the world ever since. So, US President Donald Trump has merely accelerated that end. He did not invent protectionism, old or “new.” His crude and disruptive style has simply laid US policy bare, stripping it of all the euphemisms and disguises used by his predecessors.
Venezuela is a case in point: he has made it explicit that the US objective is oil, not democracy, nation-building, or other catchwords that once cloaked the interventions and aggressions that wreaked unmitigated disasters in various parts of the world. Also, through his so-called deal-making approach, Trump often reveals more than he conceals. Take Greenland: he has neither occupied it nor imposed punitive tariffs on European countries appalled by his tactics, but he has achieved the dominance he sought.
The fall of the old order presents major opportunities, and not only for the middle powers. There are opportunities for the rising powers as well.
I discussed some of the opportunities for emergent powers in this column in March under the title “The Art of the Possible.” Many are grounded in a new regionalism modelled on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This organisation has brought together neighbouring states that had come to the realisation that they had no alternative but to stand together as a coherent bloc, committed to set standards, without exceptions, with regard to justice, security, transactions, and dispute settlement.
They also understood the need to act as one body within equitable frameworks of cooperation with worthy partners beyond the bloc. Such opportunities are contingent on mastering the art of the possible in consolidating the pillars of a strong state through resilient policies. In addition, no multinational grouping of this sort can endure unless development is localised for the benefit of the population as a whole. This is the starting point for a world undergoing profound change.
This article also appears in Arabic in Wednesday’s edition of Asharq Al-Awsat.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 29 January, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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