When the Mask Slips
The world we were sold ran on a comforting idea: a “rules-based international order.” Countries traded, disputes were managed through institutions, and the strong were supposedly restrained by law, norms, and mutual interest.
That story was never fully true. But it mattered because it created a kind of predictability. When leaders have to justify themselves in the language of rules, they pay a price for naked coercion.
While they powerful states can still bend the system but they can’t do it as casually, as openly, or as often. The public story acts like a guardrail.
That guardrail is collapsing.
Mark Carney, a central banker turned politician, a symbol of the old global order, says we’re in a “rupture, not a transition.” Decades of crises exposed the fragility of extreme global integration, and now great powers are using the world’s economic wiring as a weapon: tariffs as leverage, financial plumbing as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to exploit.
The old promise of mutual benefit through integration, doesn’t hold when integration becomes the path to subordination.
Carney is right about the shape of the moment. Where people will argue is what, exactly, is new?!
Power never left. The international system was never a neutral referee. It was a hierarchy with paperwork. The strongest actor supplied real public goods, be it security guarantees, open sea lanes, a stable financial backbone, but in return it set the terms.
The “rules” applied, but selectively, and everyone knew it.
Many countries accepted the bargain because it produced stability and prosperity compared to the alternatives.
So what’s the rupture?
Coercion didn’t suddenly appeared, but that the pretense is gone. The part where leaders pretend the rules bind them too.
When the mask slips, the infrastructure that once looked like neutral cooperation becomes openly transactional: access is conditional, finance is a pressure point, trade is a threat.
The obsession with tariffs and economic retaliation is more than a policy debate. When leaders use economic tools as a first resort, and when they do it unpredictably, they force everyone else from countries, to companies, and even families to plan for worst-case scenarios. And that has a price.
Markets call it “risk premium.” Regular people call it “my life got more expensive.”
When policy becomes volatile, lenders and investors demand more compensation to take risk. That pressure shows up in bond markets which feed directly into mortgage rates and business borrowing costs.
You don’t have to wait for one headline to cause a tick up in rates to see how unpredictable governance makes long-term money more expensive. The geopolitical drama stops being a cable-news storyline when it becomes felt in rent, housing, and hiring.
A society can survive a lot of things, but it cannot survive a ruling class indefinitely governing by shock while staying insulated from the fallout.
Throughout all the side stories an underlying theme is becoming obvious : dismissive talk about allies, casual language about households “adjusting,” fine-print carve-outs that protect asset holders while preaching sacrifice to everyone else.
Even when a policy is branded as “populist,” the giveaways often flow upward. The public gets lectures; the well-connected get exceptions.
When ordinary people watch leaders treat their lives like a spreadsheet, while protecting the wealth and power of insiders, trust collapses, and politics becomes combustible. That’s the domestic fuel for the international rupture.
Almost everyone, regardless of ideology believes “the system isn’t working.”
The irony is those who helped manage the old order now warn us that the order is failing. The elites want us to trust them again without changing the incentives and structures that created the failure.
On the other side, insurgent leaders promise to smash the system, but often offer a replacement built on coercion, spectacle, and exemption rather than accountability.
You get two factions arguing about management style while the public is asking a much simpler question: who is this for?
Ray Dalio’s may sound dramatic when he says “the monetary order is breaking down,” but the underlying point is straightforward: financial trust is a pillar of power, and trust erodes when policy looks impulsive.
If the world sees the U.S. as unstable or politically erratic, the “safe asset” status of U.S. debt becomes less safe at the margins. Countries diversify. Central banks buy more gold.
Even a gradual increase in distrust causing payment routes and settlement agreements shift from the dollar can raise borrowing costs and weaken the cushion that has long protected U.S. consumers.
Put it all together and the picture is clear.
The old world ran on selective rules plus stabilizing pretense. The new world is sliding toward selective rules plus open coercion.
Interdependence, once sold as a mutual win, is being repurposed as leverage.
Domestic legitimacy is collapsing because too many people feel the system distributes pain downward and protection upward.
Markets translate institutional behavior into household costs.
And in that pressure, politics becomes even more extreme, feeding the cycle.
Many are presenting the choice as globalization versus nationalism. But that matters less than whether power will be constrained and accountable, or openly transactional and exempt. But if leaders want public confidence, they need to stop governing by surprise and carve-out.
The world needs predictable policy reducing household exposure to volatility, trade and industrial policy coherent enough to build capacity, without turning the economy into a permanent battlefield.
Upcoming leaders, civic organizations, and communities must insist on:
Predictability. What are the rules of the game? Under what conditions will tariffs, sanctions, or financial restrictions be used, and what oversight exists to prevent abuse?
No carve-outs. If the policy is meant to protect workers and households, why do the exceptions consistently protect wealth and concentrated ownership?
Accountability. Who benefits, who pays, and what happens to decision-makers when their shocks blow back onto housing, wages, and stability?
If the public can’t ask those questions and get clear answers, we don’t have governance. We have theater.
And theater is a luxury societies can’t afford in a world where the mask is coming off.
Sources:
Read Mark Carney’s full speech on middle powers navigating a rapidly changing world | CBC News
Canada’s Carney says world order ‘in the midst of a rupture’
Davos 2026: Special address by Mark Carney, PM of Canada | World Economic Forum
The Canadian PM’s Davos Speech Is Unmissable in a Time of “Rupture” – Mother Jones
Billionaire Ray Dalio warns banks are losing confidence in fiat
‘Warhammer The Old World’: Five Rules You Might Be Getting Wrong - Bell of Lost Souls
Carney’s World Economic Forum Speech Warns of Global Breakdown - The New York Times
Carney says the old world order ‘is not coming back’ in Davos speech
 | A guest post by
|