Prime Minister Mark Carney delivers a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. Carney warned that 'middle powers' such as Canada could be subordinated by domineering great powers.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Mark Carney’s stark warnings are by now central to his politics. In April, he told Canadians the old relationship was over. For many months, he has been saying that the world is in a period of “rupture, not transition.” On Tuesday, he pointed to the danger of a new world of rapacious great powers and called for middle powers to band together.
What is different now is that he’s undeniably telling the world that the wolves are at the gate. And for the most part, the wolf he’s warning the world about is Donald Trump. The United States.
His speech called on images of weak compliance and necessary resistance, from an essay by the late author and former Czech president Vaclav Havel about resistance to communism. There was a warning that middle powers, such as Canada and European countries, could be subordinated one by one by domineering great powers – presumably China and the U.S. and perhaps Russia – who now seek to use interdependence between countries as weapons to subordinate weaker ones.
Faced with that, Mr. Carney said, “there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along.”
“To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.”
Read and watch Mark Carney's Davos speech at the World Economic Forum
It’s hard to say what exactly Mr. Carney’s invitation to middle powers is supposed to lead to, beyond the sounding of an alarm. “Is he leading the revolt of the Lilliputians against Gulliver who has gone rogue?” Carleton University professor Fen Hampson asked.
But it is categorically not the way Canadian prime ministers speak on the world stage. At least, it has not been, not in the old world order.
It is certainly something that has to be said now, at a time when Mr. Trump is remaking the U.S. into a predator that threatens its former friends.
For now resisting the U.S., building relationships to protect against it and being wary of an avaricious power, is a cornerstone of Canada’s foreign policy. That has to be a clear message to Americans, too.
The backdrop for Mr. Carney’s speech, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland wasn’t just the annual confab of world leaders and financiers. Hanging over it all was Mr. Trump’s threat to levy tariffs on European countries until Denmark submits to his demand that it hand over Greenland.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump posted an image on social media of the Americas with a U.S., flag extending over Greenland, Venezuela and Canada. It was a good time for the Prime Minister to send a message and Mr. Carney did say Canada strongly opposes the imposition of tariffs over Greenland.
Carney stands behind Greenland, criticizes Trump without naming him in blunt Davos speech
That’s the kind of direct opposition to U.S. foreign policy Mr. Carney has usually avoided to manage trade relations with the U.S. His address in Davos suggested that is changing, but it is not clear how much.
His speech was a stark statement that it is time to dispense with the hope that the U.S.-backed, rules-based global order is coming back and instead deal with “the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints.”
That wasn’t a unanimous sentiment in Davos. France’s President, Emmanuel Macron, essentially pleaded for the restoration of rules-based order. Mr. Carney declared it dead and called for middle powers join forces to cope.
Still, this wasn’t a bona fide Carney doctrine. It was provocative. It marked a shift. But Mr. Hampson noted that it included contradictions that didn’t match his clear diagnosis with clear plans.
“The rules-based order is dead, but we’re still going to play by rules and defend the rules and Greenland is a case in point. We’re living in a world of protection, but Canada is still open for business,” Mr. Hampson said. “There’s strength in unity of middle powers, but then we’re going to be forming variable coalitions on an issue-by-issue basis.”
If Mr. Carney has a mechanism to promote an effective middle-power alliance against hegemonic power he didn’t reveal it. It isn’t easy to find historic examples. Smaller countries faced with the bullying tactics of China or Mr. Trump’s U.S. have faced a prisoner’s dilemma, where working together would be beneficial, but there is an impulse look out for number one.
For Canada, however, it is a statement. The U.S. is Canada’s biggest trade and security partner. And the Prime Minister is calling for global resistance.