For much of Mark Carney’s career as an economist and central banker, he existed at the nexus of global thinkers and multilateral institutions. The “rockstar banker” was a fixture at summits, where he spoke beside business leaders and the political elite, espousing the values of international cooperation and the need for open economies and shared rules.
But after less than a year as prime minister of Canada, Carney offered a blunter assessment of the world on Tuesday: “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
In a wide-ranging speech that was at times elegiac for the predictable rules-based order, Carney laid out a doctrine for a world of fractured international norms, warning “compliance will not buy safety”.
“The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it,” he said. “Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
The remarks, delivered to politicians, media and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, were received with a standing ovation. While they did not explicitly mention Donald Trump, Carney nonetheless alluded to growing frustration and concern that the White House is eager to dismantle and weaken the “the architecture of collective problem solving” that has defined much of the past eight decades.
“Leaders in other western capitals have alluded to ‘dangerous departures’ Trump has taken from norms, but they always return to the possibility that he can be appeased or accommodated. Mr Carney has exposed that as simply inaccurate,” said Jack Cunningham, a professor of international relations at the University of Toronto.
Leaders increasingly realise they will not be able to “manage” Trump for the remainder of his term, says Cunningham, and are reckoning with the fact that the systems of international order that the US helped craft are crumbling.
“Carney is the first major western leader to basically acknowledge the reality. A lot of leaders abroad are looking for somebody to set a direction. And this speech is planting a flag.”
Canada’s prime minister warned that the “great powers”, a thinly veiled reference to the US, have started using economic integration as “weapons”, with “tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” he said. In recent days, Trump has threatened to place levies on European nations that oppose his bid to seize control of Greenland.
But Carney also warned against diplomatic and economic retreats, telling attendees that a world of “fortresses” will be poorer and less sustainable.
“The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls – or whether we can do something more ambitious,” he said.
“If you are not at the table, you are on the menu”
Much of Carney’s rapid rise from economist to world leader is centred on a thesis that geographic proximity, tight economic integration and longstanding political alliances with the US no longer guarantee prosperity and security. But the speech, written by the prime minister himself, comes as the two nations prepare for a protracted trade negotiations and Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada.
“Carney understands that while there’s no need to poke him in the eye, there’s also no need to excessively flatter the president,” said Cunningham. “The prime minister knows that Trump’s commitment and his words are essentially worthless. He can- and often does, go back on them on a whim. And so this is a position we are being forced into by growing American unreliability.”
Carney touted his government’s recent trade mission to China, where he courted Chinese investment in Canada’s oil sector and dramatically scaled back tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, the latter of which signalled a break with US policy.
But as Canada shifts to become more “principled and pragmatic” in its dealings with other nations, Carney laid out his vision for how his government and other middle-power countries could navigate the tumultuous and unpredictable nature of global politics.
“Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms,” he said. “Middle powers do not.”
Carney said he would pursue a policy of “variable geometry”, which involves forming different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests. Carney pointed to billions spent in support of Ukraine’s defence and reiterated that Canada stood “firmly” with Greenland and Denmark. He said his government was also seeking to link trade with Asian and European nations.
This flexible, seemingly ad-hoc way of developing alliances comes in stark contrast to the concrete certainties of the post-war international order that Carney has long championed.
But Bob Rae, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations, said it was the nations meant to uphold the institutions that have failed in their duties, not the institutions themselves.
“Superpowers – like Russia and the United States – have decided that they’re going to take the law into their own hands,” he said. “The prime minister was clear in his message: You don’t abandon those institutions, and you don’t give up on them. But you do need to recognise that in the real world, they’re very challenged. Too many countries in the world are breaking all the rules and asking everybody else to break those rules.”
Rae, who saw first-hand the “fickle” and erratic nature of US foreign policy commitments at the UN, said the speech was both “blunt” in its assessments- and optimistic in his call to allied nations.
“Mr Carney is clear: we are not bending to nations that want to break these systems and we will work tirelessly with other countries that feel the same way,” he said. “We’re much stronger working together in the face of the countries that want to break up the global system.”
In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump wrote that he had agreed to a meeting with “various parties” regarding Greenland while visiting Davos, reiterating his belief that US interest in the island was “imperative for national and world security”.
Carney cautioned that as nations look to strike deals with powerful nations, “we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination,” he said.
“We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong – if we choose to wield it together.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
