During his speech at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called on the states of the world, especially the middle powers, to wake up to the reality that the old international order is crumbling. Without naming President Donald Trump directly, Carney also predicted that if the United States seeks to “continually monetize” its relationships, then its allies “will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.”
More broadly, Carney suggested that if Washington can no longer be counted on to hold up its side of the collective security bargain it has struck with its allies since the end of World War II, then those states that have relied on the U.S. should and will engage in “risk management.”
Carney’s speech gave voice to the sentiment that the United States was now a predatory hegemon, one whose behavior—from imposing massive and capricious tariffs to demanding sovereignty over the Danish territory of Greenland—has alienated its longtime allies in Canada and Europe. As Phil Gordon, who served as a National Security Council and State Department official under three past U.S. presidents, remarked, “If you tried to design a plan to get Europeans to unite against the US … you’d struggle to find a better one than US foreign policy over the past few weeks.”