The Collapse of the Transatlantic Order: The End of the Western Hegemonic Bargain

By Elijah J. Magnier –

At the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Western leaders delivered speeches that, taken together, mark a historic rupture in the transatlantic order. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking within hours of each other, articulated what amounts to an implicit declaration of post-hegemonic repositioning. Their messages differed in style and national emphasis, but converged on a single diagnosis: the rules-based order is no longer functional, the Western bargain has collapsed, and the United States now treats even its allies as objects of coercion rather than partners of reciprocity. The West is finally realising that when the United States invites them to the table, they are not partners but the menu.

It may sound unreal, but some European leaders are now displaying a level of strategic disconnection that borders on institutional denial. In response to Donald Trump’s explicit threat to seize Greenland by force, Friedrich Merz, the Federal Chancellor of Germany, told the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2026 in Davos: “At any cost, Germany will defend Greenland from the threat posed by Russia.” 

There is no slip of the tongue here, no transcription error, no ambiguity. Merz did not say the United States. He said Russia. At the very moment when the head of the US executive branch is openly floating a military move against Danish territory, the German chancellor publicly reframes the threat as coming from Moscow. This is not merely rhetorical confusion. It is a revealing act of cognitive dissonance that exposes how deeply parts of the European political class remain trapped in a Cold War mental map, even when confronted with a direct and unprecedented challenge from their own supposed ally.

However, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke in Davos of “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality,” a reality in which geopolitics is no longer constrained by limits or rules. Yet the deeper truth is that there has never been a genuine world order. There has only ever been a Western coalition calling its own preferred mode of domination a “world order.” The “harsh reality” Carney refers to is not the collapse of rules, but the collapse of asymmetry. The West never subjected itself to limits or constraints when its interests or those of its allies were at stake.