Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn’t believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

The shopkeeper does this because there’s a cost to calling out the lie. Canada, and other “middle powers” participated in American hegemony partially because it got them sea lanes, and partially because being on the wrong side of the US was expensive. Being a Cuba or Venezuela would cost trade opportunities, risk covert destabilization, and basically put the government at chance of revolt.

There have been attempts to strengthen the rules based order. The UN, the International Criminal Court, the attempts to mitigate the climate crisis, and (to a degree) the EU seem like attempts to strengthen the dream.

I don’t want to wave our flag too much, but Canada participated in those, sometimes in good faith. Where we fell down was on the implementation.