At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January 2026, governments jostled with each other over their vision for a “new world order”. Canada’s Prime Minister called time of death on the so-called international rules based order and encouraged others to seek economic and military partnerships outside of the United States. Two days later, the US President unveiled his new “Board of Peace”—or more accurately, Board of War Criminals—a coalition led mostly by authoritarian governments and their financial backers. The group has set its imperial sights on Gaza in the short term, and world domination in the long term.

While these positions were regarded at Davos as polar opposites, the visions they contain are not competing, but complimentary. All anyone at this forum had to offer was extraction for capitalist profit, militarism for the myth of security, and inequality and violence to survive a “rupture” in global politics—a rupture of their own collective making. A truly different approach that foregrounds human rights, justice, equality, and demilitarisation is imperative.

Board of War Criminals

The so-called Board of Peace, which Progressive International describes as “an initiative underpinned by the raw power of the United States and the whims of Donald J. Trump, unconstrained by enforceable rules or international law,” was ostensibly established to “govern Gaza” in the aftermath of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians. Primarily, it seems like a profit-making sceme for corporate interets to “rebuild” the Gaza Strip in the image of Las Vegas, and surveil and repress any Palestinians who continue to live there under an AI panopticon. The 25 billion USD plan is a war profiteer’s dream, and a nightmare for Palestinians.

Scholar Sara Roy described the project as a property deal built on the graves of Palestinians. “The whole redevelopment process has reached its logical and final conclusion—and that is the total destruction of the economy of productive capacity in Gaza, and the ability of Palestinians to exercise their agency in any meaningful way,” she warned. Similarly, Sharif Abdel Kouddous, editor at Drop Site News, noted that the “communities” to be built under this plan “are not only governance labs to test ultimate control and subjugation, but they’re also the reincarnation of refugee camps.” He outlined the economic, housing, security, and surveillance arrangements, all of which are about establishing total control over Palestinians and maximum extraction of Palestinian wealth for Israel and the Board of Peace benefactors.

So far, political leaders from 28 countries have joined the Board, including Israel.[1] The Executive Board is compromised of seven members: former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner; US Secretary of State Marco Rubio; the US special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff; Marc Rowan, the CEO of Apollo Global Management; World Bank Group President Ajay Banga; and Robert Gabriel, a US deputy national security adviser. Trump appointed himself “Chairman for Life”. In this role, he has “sweeping authority to shape membership, control subsidiary bodies, and exercise decisive influence over strategic policy and implementation.”

The “Board of Peace” also set up a Gaza Executive Board, aimed at supporting the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), a 15-member body chaired by Ali Shaath, a Palestinian civil engineer and former deputy minister of planning and international cooperation. Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka arguesthat, “While presented as a neutral technocratic governing structure, the NCAG is more likely to function as a managerial apparatus that stabilizes conditions that enable genocide rather than challenging them.” It warns that under the NCAG, “Palestinians have been excluded from any meaningful decision-making, effectively stripping Gaza’s population of political agency and once again subordinating them to external colonial control.”

But the Board of War Criminal’s ambitions stretch far beyond Gaza. In fact, it’s charter doesn’t mention Gaza at all. The Board’s mandate challenges “existing diplomatic fameworks, advocating a move away from established international institutions on the premise that they have failed to maintain global peace.” Instead, the body claims to be working to “restore dependable and lawful governance and secure enduring peace in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” The charter stresses that its ambition is to be a “more nimble and effective international peace building body.”

As Progressive International warns, “With opaque governance and Trump’s suggestion that it might replace institutions such as the United Nations, the project signals an effort to remake world politics in the image of unilateral dominance.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned that “global problems will not be solved by one power calling the shots,” nor by two powers “carving the world into rival spheres of influence.”

False alternatives

The Trump regime’s attempt to establish a new international order in his image, along with his brazen attempts to “take over” Greenland, is what inspired Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to focus his Davos speech on the “rupture” in global politics and set out a vision for a new path ahead.

“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false,” he said. “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.” He said this fiction was useful (he left out for whom—it was useful for imperialist countries like Canada), but that it no longer works. Instead of pretending the rules-based order functions as advertised, Carney urged states to “call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.” 

He announced that Canada will be pursuing “different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.” He specifically urged so-called middle power countries to band together, noting that “if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Most importantly, he said these states must act consistently, “applying the same standards to allies and rivals.”

As significant as this admission of fiction of equality and the calls for coalition building are, Carney fundamentally gave a pitch for countries to double down on more of the same—more capitalism, resource extraction, free trade, artificial intelligence, and militarism. He essentially called on Western states to fortify neoliberalism under the guise of countering fascism—even though these choices are what has led to the imperialist international order Carney is claiming to oppose.

Missing from the Prime Minister’s speech was an honest reflection of the contribution of Canada and other Western states to the destruction of international law, the violation of human rights, and global inequality. These “middle power” governments emboldened the United States to get where it is today, supporting and enabling it for so long because it suited their interests. Many “middle powers” also colonised other countries, extracted wealth, resources, and labour from the Global South, and overthrew democatically elected leaders in those countries in favour of those willing to serve the imperial core.

Now these same “middle powers” are finding out what it might mean to be on the other side of this equation. To be the ones under threat of having economic integration weaponised against them, of having tariffs imposed on them, of having their governments overthrown and their countries invaded and occupied. As Cesar Jaramillo of Security Alternatives for a New Era writes, “Coercion, selective law, instrumentalized humanitarianism, and disposable sovereignty have not arrived with Trump. What is new is not the behaviour itself, but the fact that it is now unsettling those who long assumed the order’s protections were meant for them.”

The “solutions” that Carney put forward to counter aggressive US imperialism will still harm people,will still rely on weapons and war for “security,” will still destroy ecology and exacerbate the climate crisis, will still maintain a rigid hierarchy in international relations that privileges some at the expense of others, and will still violate the human rights of activists, Indigenous Peoples, immigrants, and more. This is not standing up to a bully; this is being one yourself.

Carney is right that the world needs global coalitions to prevent the Trump regime from crushing everyone it decides it dislikes or wants to own. Carney is also right that countries need to “diversify” their allies. But we need to go much further than his capitalist, extractivist imagination allows.

Making real change

The “middle power” need to own up to their contributions to the destruction of international rules, norms, and law, and build coalitions with those they have harmed in the past. Not colonial relationships or patronizing, extractivist arrangements, not hierarchy and tiered systems, but real partnerships.

There is no more time for Western domination. The “middle powers” need to learn from the countries that have experience with being oppressed by bully states, including those who think of themselves as middle powers. These countries need to figure out how to form equitable, reciprocal economic and security relationships that don’t rely on extraction, imperialism, militarism, and violence. Relationships that prioritize the well-being of all people, not just those in the imperial core, and that ensure the survival and health of the planet.

If the “middle powers” are willing to admit that the rules-based order was a sham, they must not seek to replicate it, but to build real solidarity with the rest of the world. They need to disentable their countries from the US not just economically, but also militarily. They need to uphold the international law equally for everyone. And they must centre human rights, justice, equality, and demilitarisation over privilege, power, and profit. 

This requires dismantling and refusing global hierarchy, rather than seeking power consolidation around the same hirarchial system that still implies the bill will be paid by those who are left behind. This reorientation toward justice and equality also requires changing our language. We need to refuse terms like “great powers” and “middle powers” and the idea of “powers” at all. Power shouldn’t be about economic or military strength but about what people can do together in solidarity to better us all. Let this rupture be one that brings the world not to its knees at the boot of the violent bullies, but to build something that actually helps us all survive and thrive.

Notes

[1] Argentina, Albania, Armenia, Azerbaizhan, Bahrain, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Egypt, El Salvador, Hungary, Israel, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kuwait, Morocco, Mongolia, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, United States, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam