The ‘rules-based order’ has failed in its mission – helping the West do whatever it wants

When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had to come up with a speech for EU ambassadors, she tried on a punk rock routine similar to the one that scored former central banker and current Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney a standing ovation at Davos. But one key difference made it a tone-deaf flop: she forgot to bring her mirror.

Carney’s critical point was a confession – that it’s the people running Western democracy who are the problem. The same ones the US has been successfully cuckolding for years through their own complicity. “We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality,” Carney said.

Queen Ursula instead tried to pawn off blame entirely on the system itself – saying that the “rules-based system that we helped to build with our allies” could no longer be counted on to defend EU interests. And that they all need to consider “whether our doctrine, our institutions, and our decision making – all designed in a postwar world of stability and multilateralism – have kept pace with the speed of change around us” or if it’s “a hindrance to our credibility as a geopolitical actor.”

Suddenly, the old rules are no good anymore because they can no longer defend the interests of this establishment amid this new war in the Middle East – but that’s mostly because the rules haven’t kept up with the level of institutional corruption that these people have been practicing.

Within hours, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that the problem is disorder, not the rules that the EU has again selectively refused to enforce amid the latest Israeli-American Middle Eastern bombing campaign.

Ursula reacted to the backlash by paying lip service to her “unwavering commitment to the pursuit of peace… and to international law.” Great, so when can we expect the sanctions package against Israel and the US?