The Post-American Order: Five Leaders Making It Happen. Monday’s Edition.

Building the system that comes next. Series 27 #1.

Trump and the Republicans have done in a year what Russia could not do in decades. They are removing the U.S. as the global hegemon and effectively ending the global order that the U.S. originally created.

But since neither nature nor politics will tolerate a vacuum, the post-American order is well underway.

New trade pacts are being signed, defense budgets are being passed, payment systems are being wired, and a new defense doctrine is being written. All of this bypasses the U.S., and most of it cannot be reversed by a U.S. election.

Five leaders are doing most of this work:

• Mark Carney in Canada

• Narendra Modi in India

• Emmanuel Macron in France

• Friedrich Merz in Germany

• Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil.

Each is operating from a different cultural perspective and building a different piece of the structure. Together, they are the architects of what comes next.

This week’s series explains what they’ve done, how they are changing the way the world operates, and why they may well create a better world.

The system they are building is multi-actor, in which no single nation sets the rules. It will overlap with and interact with China and BRICS, and that may be the defining difference: an international system focused on trade and cooperation that benefits everyone, rather than attempting to conquer and ‘influence’ nations for one nation’s benefit.

Mark Carney - Prime Minister of Canada

Carney has been pushing a new system since his first week in office. But it was his speech at Davos in 2026, where he told the world that the rules-based international order is over, that moved Canada from a middle power to a lead architect of the post-American order.

With the EU, Carney and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen included Canada in the New EU-Canada Strategic Partnership of the Future in June 2025, and in February 2026, began the process of bringing Canada into the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) program. This gives Canadian firms access to bid on European contracts and lets Canada draw EU loans. It ties Canada's future military modernization to Europe's defense-industrial system. Canada’s defense industrial base is shifting from American to European suppliers.

With the UK, Carney and Keir Starmer agreed to establish the Defense, Security, and Resilience Bank to finance allied supply chains and to push toward CPTPP (the 12-member free trade bloc covering Pacific Rim economies) and EU economic coordination. The Bank enables allied nations to arm themselves without using U.S. banks. The CPTPP–EU coordination, if completed, could create a free-trade zone for roughly one billion people that includes neither the U.S. nor China.

Carney has tied Canada to the airborne radar platform Europe is converging on: the Saab GlobalEye, a Swedish-Canadian system. Sweden and France have ordered it, and Germany, Denmark, Finland, and others are weighing it. In April 2026, NATO's procurement agency selected the GlobalEye to replace its 14 American-built E-3A Sentry planes, the first time since 1982 that NATO's primary early-warning aircraft will not be Boeing-built. In May 2026, Carney named the same aircraft Canada's preferred choice for its own fleet. This is moving NATO military purchases from the U.S. to Europe and Canada.

Effectively, this means a new allied network is forming with Carney taking a primary role. It’s a coalition of middle powers that essentially excludes the U.S. Trade rules are written in CPTPP nations and the EU. The defense industry's move to Europe, away from U.S. contractors. Allied defense financing moves through the new Defense, Security, and Resilience Bank, not U.S. banks. NATO airborne radar runs on Swedish and Canadian hardware, not American.

The old system was a hub-and-spoke. The U.S. was the hub, and the middle powers were the spokes. Now the hub is fading, and they deal directly, like a web.

Wednesday’s edition covers Modi and Lula.

Friday’s edition covers Macron and Merz.

The post-American order is already here. It is being built right now, by five leaders willing to take action in uncertain times.

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