Six months ago Trump might have pulled off this brazen attempt to hijack the UN

It’s too early to be sure, but it seems likely that we have just seen “Peak Trump.”

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Last week, Donald Trump arrived at the Davos conference radiating power and menace. Fresh from his attack on Venezuela, he was going to invade and annex Greenland. If his European allies in the NATO alliance tried to protect it, he would crush them with tariffs. And he would launch a new rival to the United Nations that would make him World-President-for-Life.

By the time Trump and his retinue landed in a fleet of four military helicopters, however, the wind had changed. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney had already crystallized the new mood with a remarkable speech that bade a regretful but decisive farewell to the old “rules-based” international order.

What is happening now is “rupture” with the past, Carney said, and the risk is that we end up with a world solely run by and for the great powers. He proposed instead a shifting coalition of the “middle powers” that would work to contain the more outrageous wishes and whims of the three autocratic great powers:........

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