'We are on the menu': Why Carney upended US-led world order at Davos
It was likely the most resonant speech given by a Canadian prime minister on a global stage in decades.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a former central banker who had never run for any political office until April of last year, pointedly declared on Tuesday that the liberalism long-adopted by the West is no longer viable in an environment where US President Donald Trump is unilaterally calling the shots.
"It's rare for me to receive a link to a world leader's speech by diplomats from all over the world telling me, have I seen this yet? So I think it's absolutely accurate to characterise it as a bit stunning," Maya Ungar, an analyst at the International Crisis Group, told Middle East Eye.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Carney said that Canada, along with other "middle powers" like it, must chart a new path.
"For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order," he told a crowd filled with the top echelons of government and finance.
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"We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigour, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim," he continued.
"So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality."
"This bargain no longer works."
The admission was stunning, but many saw the irony of a G7 country now lamenting the loss of its privilege after benefiting for decades from a system that kept the Global South at arm's length from the economic and social security of the liberal rules-based order.
Why now?
Canada shares the longest international border in the world with its superpower neighbour to the south, and the two countries are inextricably linked through trade, business, tourism, and families. More than $2.5bn in goods and services are exchanged between the two countries each day, according to the US State Department.
The US and Canada are also G7 partners and Nato allies.
Over the past year, Trump has slapped a 35 percent tariff on Canadian imports that are outside the scope of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement, and also threatened to make Canada "the 51st state".
He has also openly and repeatedly undermined institutions that Canada helped build and support, such as the United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
In his remarks, Carney, the former head of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, then declared that a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics of the last two decades had exposed the risks of "extreme global integration" where tariffs and financial infrastructure are weaponised and exploited.
"You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination," he added. "When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself."
"Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition."
But that rupture may not be so new to many of Carney's compatriots, Canadian defence and foreign policy analyst Steve Staples told MEE.
"A lot of people in Canada recognise the disparities of the old system and oppose that, and others may be saying, well, also, wait a minute, don't we benefit from that rules-based system? We benefit from that, and we don't want to give it up so easily."
Canada now finds itself in the crosshairs of Trump's remoulding of the traditional liberal order into his own image - a point which Trump made sure to communicate to Carney at Davos.
'Canada lives because of the US'
In his own remarks at the summit on Wednesday, Trump aimed directly at Carney.
He said the "Golden Dome" that he is building - akin to Israel's Iron Dome, which the US also funds - will "be defending Canada" and that "Canada gets a lot of freebies from us".
"They should be grateful, but they're not," Trump said. "I watched your prime minister yesterday. He wasn't so grateful. But they should be grateful to us."
"Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements."
'I’m dubious of the idea that you can build a liberal order on the basis of a coalition of middle powers'
- Peter Rough, Hudson Institute
Before arriving in Davos, Carney had been in Qatar for the first-ever visit there by a Canadian prime minister, and before that, in China for the first visit by a Canadian prime minister in eight years.
The Canada-China relationship, in particular, had been strained by arrests of high-profile citizens on both sides, with Washington's shadow looming over the entire affair.
The prime minister spent four days in China and spoke of a "new world order". He walked away with an agreement stipulating that Beijing lower tariffs on Canadian canola oil exports to 15 percent, while Canada takes in 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles.
In Qatar, the deliverables included major Qatari investments in Canadian "nation-building" projects, as well as Canada finalising the stalled Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with Qatar by summer, and Ottawa creating a defence attache post in Doha.
It was clear Carney could no longer rely as heavily as Canada always had on its southern neighbour.
"We’re engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be," he said.
But Carney didn't lay out a plan for what precisely the world should be doing instead.
"I'm dubious of the idea that you can build a liberal order on the basis of a coalition of middle powers, which seems to be the underpinning, the kind of theoretical framework, that was in play," Peter Rough, senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute in Washington, told MEE.
"Secondly, I don't think that the idea of the middle powers as a bloc is viable because there's so little that unites them. I mean, what brings together the worldview of somebody in Brasilia versus Ankara versus Tokyo is so different. Even the Europeans, who theoretically are the best candidates to form a block of sorts, can't even get the Mercosur agreement across the finish line," he said.
Ungar told MEE that while Carney didn't propose a new coordination mechanism or international institution, he did enjoin "a plea to the broader middle powers".
"I think the speech was... a rallying call for middle powers to say, 'Canada believes that we need to be cooperating more. We are open if you want to join us in doing so'," she said.
Many, if not most, of those "middle powers" are part of the Global South, which has had to effectively stare down the barrel of an American gun in ways Washington's western partners hadn't previously.
"The Global South has for a long time felt and understood the power dynamics of the system, which oftentimes made it more difficult for them to be able to develop and take on leadership roles and capacity," Ungar said.
"I think that Carney is echoing what many world leaders have said for a long time, but because it's coming from someone with a face of those who are typically in the structures of power, it is resonating more so than it otherwise would," she explained.
That resonance was profound among Canadians who lauded their prime minister's bold statements online.
"Canadians take the prime minister at his word; he's still very new. This has all happened in months, not years," Staples told MEE.
"I think that they appreciate the thoughtfulness and an attempt to try to find a way forward," he added. "The prime minister needs to walk a fine line between moving forward in a new direction, but not risking a renewed fight with the Americans, because Canada is just so vulnerable as a result of the system."
Staples characterised the state of Canada-US relations as "terrible".
"I mean, not just the trade problems and border issues that individual Canadians are having. [There are] massive boycotts of US products and travelling into the United States. The Canadian public is very unhappy, and not only that: we have front row seats to Trump's domestic policies in the United States," he said.
"We need to find new relationships. Otherwise, we are going to be on the menu."
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