#WTH Rules Based Order rubbish

The endless hypocrisy of the Davos crowd

Salon society does not like Donald Trump. People who think Davos is the apotheosis of intellectual globalism do not like Donald Trump. European elites (see above) do not like Donald Trump. And coastal American elites do not like Donald Trump.

One can, thus, understand easily why those who cannot abide the above four types of people do actually appreciate this President of the United States.

Take the cover of The Economist post-Davos last week:

In case you missed the heavy-handed simile, this is a doctored picture of Vladimir Putin. Get it? Trump is like Putin? Get it? Got it? Good.

Post-Davos, those of us who follow such things were inundated with hand-wringing, put-down-your-pinot-gris, pseudo-intellectual laments about The Rules Based Global Order. Trump, you see, is Threatening it. He is Endangering all that is good about the post-World War II world. Things were So Much Better PT (pre-Trump). America is At Risk. Russia Is Winning. Democracy is Done.

This is garbage, plain and simple. Here are a few facts:

• In 2014, only three NATO allies were honoring their pledge to spend two percent of GDP on their defense budget. Underinvestment in defense and overdependence on energy from Vladimir Putin’s Russia left Europe wide open to Russian predations. So, Europe ignored most of them.

• China, for long held up as the greatest success of the “rules based order” has systematically engaged in what the director of the FBI called "the greatest transfer of wealth in human history" — up to a trillion dollars of intellectual property theft. And has done so while all the while repressing its own people, running concentration camps for Muslim Uyghurs, illegally occupying vast swathes of the South China Sea, pumping fentanyl into the United States, and threatening U.S. ally Taiwan… with precious few consequences.

• During the four year Biden term, somewhere north of four million aliens entered the United States illegally, with more than 10 million “encounters,” and four million either released or unapprehended. Four MILLION people. That’s not a rules-based-order kind of number.

• Beginning in late 2010, and concluding only in December 2024, some half a million or more Syrians were murdered by the Assad regime, its Russian henchmen, Iranian forces, and Hezbollah. What did the democratic world — “rules based order” power, you know — do? Precisely nothing. Imposed sanctions. That’s it. The only powers that struck Syria — not decisively, but the only powers — were Israel and the United States during the first Trump term. Violations of the Chemical Weapons Convention? We love our rules-based-order treaties, you know… meh. Torture? Meh. Terrorism? Meh.

• In August of 2021, Joe Biden pulled the United States out of Afghanistan, against the advice of his generals and his senior aides, resulting in the death of 13 American servicemembers. He did so without informing our NATO allies, without planning for the aftermath, abandoning Afghanistan’s women and children to Taliban rule. Members of the rules-based-order normally frown upon the elimination of women’s rights. Note their cries of horror. (NB Biden likes to blame this withdrawal on Trump planning. Had he been re-elected, Trump may well have withdrawn from Afghanistan, an epically stupid idea, but we only have one president at a time, and Biden was hardly driven by Trump priorities in his other pursuits.)

• By the end of his term on January 20, 2025, President Biden had granted a total of 4,245 acts of clemency (80 pardons and 4,165 commutations), and circa 96% of these actions were granted between October 2024 and January 2025. In the final hours of his presidency, the President was no longer being consulted by his staff, who were using an autopen to sign pardons and acts of clemency. Rules, rules, rules.

• In 2014, Russia invaded, occupied, and subsequently annexed Ukrainian Crimea. The United States refused to provide lethal arms for Ukraine to defend its sovereign territory. Putin went back in again in 2022, and notwithstanding the pearl clutching and gasping, lovers of the rules-based-order inside and outside NATO slow rolled aid, and have yet to use Russia’s $300+ billion in sovereign assets to support Ukraine.

• In 2022, the Iranian people arose against their tyrants, outraged by the murder of Mahsa Amini. It was not a counter-revolution of the breadth of the one occurring today, but what exactly did lovers of the RBO do? Were bracelets involved? They were. Nice bracelets.

• Check this out as well. Here’s how well Europe is doing vs the United States, which is apparently being ruined by Trump:

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• And there’s more trouble in the RBO paradise: Over the last two decades, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, effectively the dictator of Turkey, has presided over a state that is collapsing economically, menacing its neighbors, godfathering Hamas terrorism… and it’s still part of NATO. What has anyone done about this? Precisely nothing.

How else are paragons of the rules-based-order doing? In England, Jewish bystanders at pro-terror demos are being arrested for being “visibly Jewish.” In Australia, terror supporters supporting “intifada” are skating while a man holding a sign which says “Blame Hamas” is arrested. In Canada, Mark Carney is polishing his virtue while the state is offering veterans euthanasia instead of support. (And it’s still going on.)

So yes, I agree entirely that Donald Trump has said some utterly appalling things, including denigrating our allies work in Afghanistan, threatening tariffs over Greenland, defending police state tactics against American citizens, and on and on. He is unfiltered, and frankly, often wrong on the facts. He talks too much, blusters too much, doesn’t follow through, and makes even his supporters cringe increasingly frequently. These are bad things and they deserve measured attention and condemnation.

But no one listens to condemnations of Donald Trump by the RBO crowd anymore, because when NATO was crumbling, Syrians and Iranians were dying, Brits were being arrested, Jews were being murdered, Afghans were being terrorized, and the Chinese were eating our lunch every single damn day, where were they to be found? Chilling wine in Davos? Stroking their salon buddies on the back?

And it gets worse. In order to slap back evil Trump, Canada is now pursuing deals with China (see: Uyghurs), and Europe is attempting same with India (see: Modi). So, is it really about democracy and decency? Or just about amour propre and Trump derangement? Why not just get a bracelet, rather than embracing tyrants and autocrats?

Indeed, if the crowd that now cares so deeply about the global rules based order had been just a tad more vigilant when Donald Trump wasn’t president, perhaps we would have more respect for their bleating today.