Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canada’s prime minister declared that the system of international rules and norms that’ve been in place since World War II aren’t working anymore — and that “middle powers” like Canada should stop pretending that they are. Tension between the US and its European and Canadian allies has been ratcheting up for months. What’s special about this? What’s different?
Benjy Sarlin (senior editor): One thing that Trump’s second term has changed, and that Carney’s speech reflects, is that the West’s tensions with America are no longer just about Trump’s personal behavior. You could look at this current Greenland standoff, for example, as a personal obsession of Trump’s that has no real connection to any faction of either party, that polls about as terribly in the US as it does in Europe, and that will go away as soon as he goes away or faces enough pressure from US voters or the stock market.
But that’s not how it’s being treated by Carney: Canada now has to consider the possibility that the US — whether in the next election, or 20 years, or 40 years — is capable of empowering another Trump-like figure who tears up existing agreements and fundamentally does not believe in the post-World War II project of shared security and democratic values.
Carney starts out by critiquing the “rules-based international order,” which is an interesting choice. He says, in particular, that “we knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient.” Is he saying that the old world order was a lie? Or that American dominance was universally bad?
Seth Maxon (senior editor): There has been quite a bit of left-wing commentary about the line “we knew that international law applied with varying rigor,” with some people expressing shock to hear that articulated by a major Western leader. I think this is key to why this speech resonated so much — Carney’s tendency to say a quiet part out loud.
Zack Beauchamp (senior correspondent): But Carney is not, as some on the radical left have suggested, admitting that the international order was “always” a total lie. He is saying that there were gaps and hypocrisies in it, but that these were outweighed (at least from the Canadian perspective) by the benefits reaped from a system that constrained power and provided for greater global prosperity and peace.
The point is not that the pre-Trump era of US leadership was bad and everyone was lying about it. It’s that it was good in a lot of ways, despite its flaws, but that Trump’s behavior has destroyed what’s good about it and there isn’t any going back.
That is stunning! And it’s more stunning still, at least to me, that Carney articulates an alternative vision to the US-led international order. For starters, he suggests that middle powers immediately prioritize the buildup of their domestic economies and “criticize economic intimidation” from both “allies and rivals.”
Benjy Sarlin: In other words, the US, without being named, is now being thrown in with countries like Russia and China.
He also holds up Canada as a kind of model for the world — economically, but also morally. Canada almost sounds like a spiritual successor to the US here: “a pluralistic society that works,” “a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but.” What do you make of that?
Zack Beauchamp: This is an oblique reference to the idea of “Canadian exceptionalism”: that every Western democracy has experienced some type of far-right xenophobic political surge except Canada. It’s mostly true: while there is a real element of the Canadian right that wants to be a kind of MAGA North, including Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, their rhetoric and policy is considerably less aggressive compared to Trump or comparable European figures.
What does this speech tell us about what Canada and Europe plan to do next? Carney talks a bit about strengthening Canada’s economic ties with Asian and European countries, including China. He also talks about the multilateral commitment to protect Greenland and Denmark. But he suggests there’s also room to “do something more ambitious.” Like what?
Seth Maxon: That’s an open but important question: What does that mean? What does it look like in practice? Carney’s proposal seems to be an informal alliance of these “middle power” nations — but as needed and without the structure of an institution like the UN, at the moment.
Benjy Sarlin: Ultimately, this is about preparing for a future in which you can no longer take for granted that whatever president and Congress the US elects will share a certain foreign policy vision and honor the nation’s prior commitments.
Now, you actually have to consider the possibility that the US might militarily threaten Canada or its allies. Trump’s “51st state” talk might be treated as a joke in the US, but confronting it was a dead serious part of Carney’s appeal to voters when he was elected.
Read the full conversation here.
