🚨⚖️ Leaders of Canada and Germany Announce that International Law and Rules are Effectively Over. This is the most important email I’ve sent to you in a very long time.

Ramadan begins soon, and I’ve been thinking about hunger, mercy, and what it means to be human when the world is trying to teach you to be numb.

Then I read a line in The New York Times that hit me like a cold slap.

Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, said there has been a permanent “rupture” in the world order. And then, almost like an echo, Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the international rules-based order “no longer exists.”

That’s not a blogger talking. That’s not an activist. That’s not someone on the margins.

That’s Canada and Germany—two pillars of the Western establishment—saying the quiet part out loud:

What they are not saying is what matters most. They are naming the collapse without naming the cause. They are describing the funeral without pointing to the body.

So I’m going to say it plainly.

The international order did not die in theory. It died in Gaza.
And it was killed—effectively, intentionally, and in broad daylight—by Israel and the United States.

And the reason I need you to understand this is not because it’s a clever geopolitical take. It’s because it changes everything about the next decade of our lives.

It changes what war looks like. It changes what diplomacy means. It changes what it costs to be a small country. It changes how quickly violence spreads. It changes whether any law exists that powerful nations feel pressured to obey.

And if you miss this moment—if you don’t understand what just happened—you’ll be trying to make sense of the new era with the dead language of the old one.

For decades, Western leaders sold us an idea: a “rules-based order.” The phrase was always a little slippery, always a little self-serving, but it had a basic meaning.

The idea was: after the worst horrors of the 20th century, the world built guardrails. Nations agreed—at least on paper—that conquest was illegitimate, civilians were protected, humanitarian workers were not targets, and there were institutions that could restrain the powerful.

Not perfect institutions. Not pure institutions. But institutions.

The United Nations. The Security Council. International humanitarian law. Courts like the International Court of Justice. The very concept that “war crimes” are real—and not just what losers get accused of after the smoke clears.

It was never evenly applied. It was never consistently enforced. But it existed as an ideal, and sometimes—even if imperfectly—it acted like a brake.

Then Gaza happened.

And I don’t mean “Gaza” as a headline, or a debate topic, or a political identity.

I mean Gaza as a test.

A real-time, world-historic test of whether the post-war international order had any teeth left.

And Gaza showed us the answer: it doesn’t.

People have known for a long time that international law is applied unevenly. That’s not new. What’s new is how openly and aggressively the enforcement mechanism has been crushed.

Because the old order was never just “rules.” It was rules plus consequences. It was rules plus reputational cost. It was rules plus the fear—however slight—that if you go too far, the world will move against you.

What happened in Gaza is that Israel and the United States demonstrated something with terrifying clarity:

If you are powerful enough, consequences are optional.

And not only optional—ridicule-able. Laughable. Something you can brush off and keep moving.

That changes the global calculation for everyone.

I want to speak in plain language here.

International courts only matter if powerful nations feel pressure to respect them. That pressure can come from sanctions, arrests, diplomatic isolation, economic consequences, political shame, travel restrictions, alliances refusing to cooperate—any number of real-world costs.

But in Gaza, the world watched as the very idea of accountability got turned into a punchline.

You can believe whatever you believe about Israel’s leadership. You can argue about legal definitions. You can debate policy.

But what you cannot deny is the lesson sent to the world: international accountability cannot touch certain people.

And when the world learns that lesson, it doesn’t just apply it to Gaza.

It applies it everywhere.

It tells every strongman, every expansionist leader, every military regime, every nuclear power: you just need enough power and enough friends, and the “law” becomes paper.

The United Nations was already weak. We all knew that. The Security Council can be paralyzed by vetoes, and the system often protects the powerful.

But Gaza didn’t just expose weakness. It demonstrated irrelevance.

The world watched as UN warnings, UN statements, and UN pleas failed to stop anything. The world watched the most basic humanitarian principles—protect civilians, protect aid workers, protect hospitals—get treated like suggestions.

And then the world watched as the institutions themselves were attacked politically, publicly, and relentlessly.

When you see major powers treat the UN like background noise, smaller countries notice.

When you see the UN unable to protect its own credibility, its own workers, its own mechanisms, and its own core mission, the rest of the world takes note.

And the lesson is chilling: the UN cannot enforce peace when the powerful are committed to war.

So when leaders like Carney and Merz say “the order is over,” they’re not just talking about tariffs or NATO spending or the newest Trump headline. They’re talking about a deeper truth:

We no longer share a reality where rules are backed by the willingness to enforce them.

Here’s the part I need to emphasize because people are going to get this wrong.

Some people will say the old order died because Trump is erratic, because he threatens allies, because he talks like an empire.

Yes, that matters. It’s ugly. It’s dangerous.

But the international order didn’t collapse because Trump threatened Greenland.
It didn’t collapse because Trump kidnapped the President and First Lady of Venezuela.
It didn’t collapse because he mocked alliances.
It didn’t collapse because he said outrageous things.

Those are symptoms of a shift.

The collapse happened when the world watched Gaza burn—watched the law be violated day after day after day—and watched the most powerful government on Earth do more than tolerate it.

It defended it. It funded it. It covered for it. It shielded it from consequences.

And that is what ended the old order.

Because once the U.S. makes clear that international law is enforceable only against enemies and never against allies, the entire architecture becomes a stage prop.

A costume.

This is the part where I need you to look up and see the horizon.

We are moving into a world where:

• Military power becomes the primary language of diplomacy.

• Nuclear weapons become the ultimate insurance policy.

• Technology becomes the new battlefield—AI, drones, surveillance, cyberwarfare, disinformation.

• Territory becomes a prize again, not a taboo.

• Smaller countries are forced to choose patrons or become prey.

That’s not doomsaying. That’s where the incentives are headed when the rules have no enforcement.

And here is what scares me the most: when you remove enforcement, you don’t just get “more conflict.”

You get more cruelty, because cruelty becomes strategic again.

You get leaders calculating that shock and brutality will work—because the world will grieve, issue statements, move on, and do nothing.

You get the return of conquest dressed up as “security.”
You get ethnic cleansing dressed up as “counterterrorism.”
You get starvation dressed up as “pressure.”

You get Gaza—repeated—on new stages.

When Carney says there’s been a permanent rupture, and Merz says the rules-based order no longer exists, they’re missing three follow-up sentences:

Who ruptured it?
Who benefited from rupturing it?
Who is going to pay the price for it?

And the answer to that last one is the most painful.

The people who will pay are not the ones who broke it.
The people who will pay are the ones who never had protection to begin with.

Poor countries. Occupied people. Refugees. Minorities. Dissidents. Journalists. Humanitarian workers. Children.

And this is why I’m so insistent that Gaza is not “one issue.”

Gaza is the blueprint. Gaza is the precedent. Gaza is the “proof of concept” for the new era: if you can survive the PR, you can do anything.

Yes. That’s true. And I’ve said that for years.

But here’s the difference.

Hypocrisy means the rules exist and you violate them while pretending you didn’t.

What happened in Gaza is bigger: the powerful stopped pretending the rules matter at all.

That’s not hypocrisy. That’s abandonment.

And when the most powerful state treats the rulebook like optional reading, the rulebook stops being a rulebook. It becomes a museum artifact.

It means we have to stop speaking about international law as if it’s self-executing.

It means we have to stop assuming “the world” will intervene when something is clearly wrong.

It means we have to understand that the next phase of global politics won’t be governed by speeches. It will be governed by leverage.

Money. Arms. Energy. Chips. Satellites. Data. Alliances. Nukes.

And if that sounds cold, it’s because this era is cold.

But here is where I refuse to become cynical.

Because even if states are abandoning the rules, that doesn’t mean we have to abandon morality. It doesn’t mean we have to abandon truth. It doesn’t mean we have to abandon the idea that human life has value.

What it does mean is that the fight for justice becomes harder and more urgent.

It means we have to build pressure differently. Organize differently. Demand accountability differently. Make complicity more expensive. Make propaganda less effective. Refuse to let dehumanization become normal.

And it means we must recognize what Gaza has revealed:

The world is changing. And the people with power are betting on you being too distracted to notice.

I’m writing this because I don’t want you distracted. I want you informed. I want you clear-eyed. I want you prepared.

Because if Canada and Germany are publicly announcing that the “rules-based order” no longer exists, they are not just making an observation.

They’re issuing a warning.

And Gaza is the reason.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun