The Law of the Jungle

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, speaking at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, pronounced the death of the rules-based international order. Those sentiments have now been echoed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the Munich Security Summit 2026. Chancellor Merz has said that the rules-based order “no longer exists” and that Europe must recognize the “new reality”.

If these sentiments from two of the world’s leading powers are true then it would mean that in just over one year the policy prescriptions of the Trump Administration have dismantled an international rules-based system that has guided multilateral engagements since the Second World War.

Prime Minister Carney has urged countries to acknowledge this reality and to build new cooperative frameworks among nations that can better protect their interests in a world of great-power competition. In short he is calling for a coalition of the willing.

Canada and Germany are understanding that a new reality of global affairs is taking over where power, not rules, is to be preferred as the currency of international engagement. Some may argue that power has always been the currency of international engagement. Whilst that may be so, the established rules-based system acted as a check on the use and abuse of such power. Barring rules, we return to the law of the jungle where only the powerful survive and there are no protections for the weak and the vulnerable.

It is for this reason that our Caribbean region must be concerned at the lack of guidance emanating from regional leadership and from regional organizations such as the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) on what now seems like an undeniable shift away from the international rules-based order. The rules of international engagement are what have allowed small developing Nations in the Caribbean, the Pacific and around the world to have a voice in shaping international norms. Those rules allowed the opportunity, whether at the United Nations or elsewhere, to sound our voices and in so doing influence global change. I mention Climate Change as one such issue where the Caribbean leveraged its membership in every multilateral organization to force that issue to the forefront of the world’s consciousness. My question then is simple: what happens to the Caribbean if the rules are dismantled and multilateralism loses its place in the world? Indeed the question can well be expanded to what happens to small and developing nations globally if the established rules of engagement no longer exist?

CARICOM moves into its annual Heads Summit shortly in Basseterre, St. Kitts. By fate, both the leadership of CARICOM and the leadership of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) are held by St. Kitts and Nevis at this time. It is high time that we as a region concern ourselves with the new geopolitical realities that confront us.

If Canada and Germany are describing themselves as “Middle Powers” in a new world of “Great Power” competition then I ask the obvious question: what of the other category of Nations in which the Caribbean finds itself- “The presumed Powerless”? If the US, China and Russia are to be seen as the “Great Powers” and Canada and Europe as “Middle Powers” then it is my suggestion that the large number of others can constitute the “Power of the Collective” and must seek to do exactly as Prime Minister Carney has prescribed for Middle Powers. We must forge new relationships and develop new norms among ourselves even as we seek to develop new relationships and new norms with the Great and Middle Powers. We must accept that geopolitical realities are rapidly changing and fashion a regional strategy that looks inward with equal rigor as it looks outward. We must accelerate the regional integration movement to create a truly single Caribbean economic space. We must fashion regional policies to allow deeper engagement and investment by our large diasporic communities. We must hasten the harmonization of regional foreign policy and seek to deepen alliances with Latin America, Africa, India, the Pacific nations and the Middle East. We must not abandon long held cherished relations with the Great and Middle Powers but in this new paradigm we must construct new relationships and by so doing create greater options for our region. We as a region must use every lever we have and deploy every particle of intellectual capacity that we possess to confront our new reality and develop a regional strategy accordingly.

What we cannot and must not do is continue to wish the new norms of the global condition away. Nostalgia is not a plan. Hope is not a plan. The Caribbean needs a plan to confront this new world order lest we succumb to the brutality of the law of the jungle.

Honourable Mark Brantley

Premier of Nevis

Leader of the Opposition of St. Kitts and Nevis