Following the election of Donald Trump to the White House, Canada’s then newly appointed Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland made a commitment to defending the “rules-based international order” (RBIO) one of the staples of her tenure. The meaning of this term, however, remains a matter of interpretation. Against the backdrop of resurgent great power rivalry in recent years, it has often been used interchangeably with the even more ambiguously defined “liberal international order” (LIO). To understand the sources of – and identify possible solutions to – today’s global uncertainty and instability, a conceptual clarification is in order.
