#great-power-rivalry

#great-power-rivalry

Picture this: It's 1933. The League of Nations is struggling for legitimacy as Germany and Japan withdraw, driven by swelling imperial ambitions. The international order is fracturing, giving way to what Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio calls "the law of the jungle," where raw power, not diplomacy, determines global outcomes. Dalio predicts we're headed in that direction. The billionaire investor made an X (formerly Twitter) post Saturday titled "It's Official: The World Order Has Broken Down," pronouncing the modern global order dead.

"A rift has opened up between Europe and the United States. Vice President JD Vance said this very openly here in Munich a year ago," Merz said. "He was right. The culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours," Merz said, referring to US President Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan. "Freedom of speech ends here with us when that speech goes against human dignity and the constitution. We do not believe in tariffs and protectionism, but in free trade."

"A rift has opened up between Europe and the United States. Vice President JD Vance said this very openly here in Munich a year ago," Merz said.

During his recent delegation to Beijing-the first by a Canadian prime minister since relations between the two countries became strained in 2018-Mark Carney agreed to allow 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles into the Canadian market at a reduced tariff rate. The move was presented as a pragmatic reset that could draw joint-venture capital back into Canada's auto corridor and offer relief to an industry squeezed by United States president Donald Trump's trade war.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source, he told world leaders. When even one person stops performing the illusion begins to crack. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality, Carney added. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, by the way, Trump said. They should be grateful also, but they're not. I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful, but they should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.

Perhaps most sensitive to Denmark - a NATO and European Union member country, and a U.S. ally - is growing competition between those great powers in the Arctic. U.S. President Donald Trump has expressed a desire to see Greenland, a semiautonomous and mineral-rich territory of Denmark, become part of the United States, a move opposed by Russia and much of Europe.