{"id":100675,"date":"2026-03-05T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/?post_type=cu_story&p=100675"},"modified":"2026-03-16T10:40:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:40:20","slug":"canada-us-war-against-iran","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/canada-us-war-against-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Respecting International Law Depends on Who Breaks It: Why Canada Backed the War Against Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n\n \n \n \n \n
\n\n
<\/div>\n \n
\n
\n\n

\n Respecting International Law Depends on Who Breaks It: Why Canada Backed the War Against Iran\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos<\/a> that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” many saw this as a defence of international law and the multilateral order. It earned him global accolades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, Canada and Denmark were under pressure from the Donald Trump administration to surrender territory to the United States: Greenland from Denmark<\/a>, and either the entirety<\/a> or parts of Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump’s demands surprised western leaders who maintain a deeply optimistic interpretation of American intentions and the immutability of their relationships. It also caused significant alarm among U.S. allies in the West, who have spent decades under the American security umbrella.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s likely because western countries were in disarray and unable to push back forcefully against Trump’s bullying that Carney’s speech<\/a> was so well-received.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He appeared to put words into immediate action, rebuilding Canada’s fraught relationships with key Global South powers such as China and India while providing leadership on a major trade alliance among Canada, the European Union (EU) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership<\/a> states to mitigate the impact of Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many observers thought Canada was turning to a principled foreign policy, championing universal liberal values such as democracy, justice, human rights and the rule of law. It seemed as though Canada was coming to the defence of a rules-based order, and this was helping it regain significant international prestige.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it came as a shock<\/a> when Carney offered immediate support<\/a> to an illegal U.S.-Israel war<\/a> of aggression against Iran on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The liberal and rules-based orders<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Within days Carney was equivocating about the war and his initial statement of support. He seemed to be attempting to balance his stated support for international law with being an American ally. He has said that he supports the U.S. and Israeli war “with regret<\/a>” and that Canada will stand by its allies “when it makes sense<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What seems like hypocrisy by Carney is in fact consistent with contemporary Canadian foreign policy and its interpretation of international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can be understood by exploring Canada’s participation in two international systems<\/a> established by the U.S. after the Second World War: the liberal international order and the rules-based order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The liberal international order expresses some of the highest principles of liberal internationalism: anti-racism, democracy and the right to self-governance, free trade and economic interdependence, multilateral co-operation and respect for international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the rules-based order draws on the liberal international order’s rules and norms, it selectively interprets them for U.S. and western interests. Whereas international law is a set of rules that govern relations between states<\/a> and are enforced by institutions such as the International Court of Justice, the rules-based order is a deliberately opaque concept. Its rules are vague and ill-defined, and it is unclear who has the right to define or generate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crucially, the post-war international order was meant to prohibit or restrict war, as laid out in the United Nations Charter. Article 2, paragraph 4, of the charter<\/a> has been a cornerstone of international law and the liberal international order, which the U.S. helped establish after the Second World War. It explicitly prohibits states from threatening or using force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any other state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Selective enforcement of international law<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. appears to invoke these rules primarily when confronting geopolitical rivals such as Russia or China, or when imposing its will on the rest of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. and other western powers began shifting their rhetorical support from the liberal toward the rules-based order in the 2000s in response to the rise of Global South powers like China. In many ways, the rules-based order is an inequitable, colour-coded system that reinforces western power, and Canada has been a strong supporter of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carney acknowledged this in Davos by saying the rules-based order was never fair because the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, trade rules were enforced asymmetrically and international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is on vivid display when comparing Canada’s strong response against Russia’s illegal 2022 invasion of Ukraine<\/a> compared to its support for the U.S.-Israel illegal 2026 war against Iran, its reluctance in early January to condemn the U.S. government’s illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> and its de facto support for Israel’s illegal occupation and war crimes in Palestine<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump and the unraveling of the western order<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What changed in 2025 is the Trump government’s hostility to the rules-based order, which it considers a costly obstacle to consolidating power around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Its strategic approach has included an explicit disavowal of liberal internationalism’s values, including multilateralism<\/a> and international law. It has threatened to seize western allied territory and resources while imposing tariffs on them and pressuring them to substantially increase U.S. arms purchases<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carney noted that western states had been fine with the inequities of the rules-based order so long as they benefited from it at the expense of the rest of the world. Their problem was when the U.S. started to treat them like it treats the Global South, through a neo-imperialism built on principles that “might makes right” and the strong should dominate the weak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another important factor that may have encouraged some in western capitals to accept the U.S. war against Iran was Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent Munich Security Conference speech<\/a>. He lauded Europe’s colonial past and encouraged them to join the U.S. in a renewed global domination, plundering the rest of the world like they did in the past<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canada’s decision to back the war with Iran was likely also based on the Carney government’s courting of Jewish and Iranian diasporic constituencies<\/a> and a longstanding institutional reliance on U.S. leadership<\/a>. But Rubio’s speech created conditions favourable for Carney to support the war under the logic of the rules-based order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, Canada will have weakened its moral standing if the U.S. turns to territorial expansion in the Americas. The war is also deeply unpopular among Liberal voters<\/a>, and support for it undermined the prestige Carney gained from Davos, causing him to begin equivocating on his initial position<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2013
Jeremy Wildeman<\/a>\u00a0is an adjunct assistant professor in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is\u00a0republished<\/a>\u00a0from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. All photos provided by\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0from various from various sources.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” many saw this as a defence of international law and the multilateral order. It earned him global accolades. At the time, Canada and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":100677,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"cu_story_type":[1623],"cu_story_tag":[1921],"class_list":["post-100675","cu_story","type-cu_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","cu_story_type-expert-perspectives","cu_story_tag-faculty-of-public-and-global-affairs"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/100675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/cu_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/100675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100684,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story\/100675\/revisions\/100684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"cu_story_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_type?post=100675"},{"taxonomy":"cu_story_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cu_story_tag?post=100675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}