CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts – In his historic speech at the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney argued that the international order is not undergoing a “transition” but a “rupture.” As the Sino-American rivalry escalates, he warned, the underlying architecture of the global economy — open markets governed by reasonably predictable rules, with the United States underwriting key “public goods” — is being replaced by a patchwork of transactional and coercive arrangements. Interdependence, once seen as a driver of shared prosperity, is increasingly recast as a vulnerability to be exploited.

Carney’s diagnosis resonated widely because governments and firms have already begun to price in a more volatile and politicized global economy. At a time when a hostile U.S. administration can shut off access to the world’s largest consumer market for overtly political reasons, and when critical supply chains are increasingly used as chokepoints, planning for a rules-based order is simply naive. Echoing former Czech President Vaclav Havel, Carney noted that governments and firms continue to behave as if the international order will snap back, even as the evidence mounts that it will not, since acting otherwise would be costly and disruptive.

But the term “rupture” implies that the global economy will move toward a new equilibrium. In game-theory terms, the dominant player has shifted to a strategy that better serves its interests and everyone else must adapt to a new set of incentives. If that is the case, the logical response is for middle powers to reduce their vulnerability by forming coalitions, diversifying trade partnerships and building autonomous supply chains, just as Carney proposed.