And he was honest, too, in describing the fact that this hegemony was loaded in America’s favor: that the United States excused itself from many parts of the bargain that others agreed to, from letting its soldiers be tried for war crimes right down to the most trivial detail—watch the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, next month, and you’ll see that the Stars and Stripes will be almost the only banner that doesn’t dip when it passes the reviewing stand, following the flag code adopted by Congress in 1942, which stipulates that we bow to no one. As Carney put it, “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 varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
It may well have been a bargain worth making for countries such as Canada. But now, since the U.S. has decided to dispense with even the veneer of equality, and instead has committed itself to the principle that, as Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s top advisers, put it recently, we inhabit a world that “is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” countries like Canada no longer get to make that bargain. They are told what to do, and tough if they don’t like it.
So, as Carney explained, those middle countries had best learn to stick together, and to stand up in something like coördinated fashion to the bully, since as individual nations they are simply too vulnerable. “You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” he said. Instead, nations will need to engage in “risk management,” strengthening themselves against attack and building new, more provisional, alliances. Carney, for instance, signed new trade pacts in recent weeks not just with South American nations but also with China, allowing limited imports of E.V.s in return for reduced tariffs on canola oil. On such things will the world now turn, but, if countries decide to go it alone, they will eventually lose. “In a world of great-power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact,” Carney said.
And what made his vision something more than Thucydidean realism was his reminder that these “middle powers” by and large still represent the core of values that America is now abandoning, and that they can build their unions at least in part on those shared ideas. Canada, he pointed out, “is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability.” (That last point is no small thing on a rapidly heating planet.) He added that, together, these nations “can build something better, stronger, more just.”
One can fault Carney on how well he’s kept his own promises domestically. Last fall, one of his cabinet ministers, a former environment minister, resigned because the Prime Minister had cut a deal with the oil-patch province of Alberta to let it build new oil pipelines to the Pacific Coast for shipment to Asia. I find it hard to believe that Carney—who is, remember, an economist—really believes there will be a market for that crude. Just last week, Mitsubishi and Shell were reportedly looking into selling part of their stakes in big Canadian liquid-natural-gas projects, as the demand for solar power surges across Asia. My guess is that Carney may be trying to thwart Alberta’s separatist impulses—there is a campaign for a secession referendum later this year, one that Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has been doing his best to encourage.
But that’s internal politics. In the larger world, Canada is emerging as the most levelheaded player out there: far firmer than the United Kingdom, led by Keir Starmer, and less mercurial than France under Emmanuel Macron. Trump certainly realizes this. In his own Davos address, on Wednesday, in between mixing up Iceland and Greenland, he had a message for the Canadians: “I watched your Prime Minister yesterday. He wasn’t so grateful. They should be grateful to us, Canada. Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”