Thanks to Trump, the gloves are off. There may be no new global order

Andrew Sheng is a former central banker and financial regulator, currently distinguished fellow at the Asia Global Institute, University of Hong Kong.The old order is dead. We just don’t know what will replace it. As Henry Kissinger reminded us in his 2014 book World Order, “no truly global order has ever existed”. After US President Donald Trump’s erratic actions, the gloves are off. American comedians and Iranian Lego cartoons tell us all we need to know about the demise of the old order.If the unipolar order is not viable, and America is abandoning the multilateral order and the rules of the game it created after World War II, what are the alternatives?Given the United States’ perfidy as an ally, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is pushing for a coalition of middle powers, what I call “midi-lateralism”, whereby the likes of Canada, Australia and the European Union, those with significant economic clout but not superpower status, unite to find a third path of autonomy, pushing back against great powers’ might-is-right bullying.