The rules-based order is dead, and Australia knows it

Is there such a thing as an “international rules-based order” anymore? Liberal leader-in-waiting Andrew Hastie has more experience than anyone else in parliament in Western efforts to impose such an order on those who are less convinced of its benefits than ourselves. He says no. “The rules-based global order is dead and buried,” he said last week. Our recent Canadian visitor, Prime Minister Mark Carney, would agree, having famously referred in his Davos speech to the fact that the idea of an international rules-based order was a “pleasant fiction” and we now had to face a “harsh reality”.