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<\/p>\nMiddle powers \u2014 like Canada \u2014 are not powerless and need to build a new world order based on new alliances and shared interests, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has told the World Economic Forum.<\/p>\n
In a powerful speech \u2014 reflected in another given by French President Emmanuel Macron \u2014 Mr Carney sought to move beyond the current crisis engulfing Europe and the United States over Donald Trump’s claims on Greenland and galvanise smaller countries to band together so as not to be overpowered by larger players.<\/p>\n
“Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” Mr Carney said, as he declared that the old world was over and there was no point just mourning its end or hoping for a continuation of the multilateralism of the postwar period.<\/p>\n
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“This is not naive multilateralism,” he said. “Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.<\/p>\n
“And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.”<\/p>\n
Mr Carney spoke on the first full day of the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos \u2014 which has been dominated and overwhelmed by Donald Trump’s pronouncements on Greenland and attempts by European nations to find a way forward.<\/p>\n
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Mark Carney arrived in Zurich, Switzerland on Monday to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos. (AP: Sean Kilpatrick)<\/p>\n
European leaders have increasingly pushed back against Mr Trump on Greenland in recent days \u2014 following the leaking of the president’s text messages with the Norwegian prime minister in which Trump links his more aggressive position with the fact he was not awarded the Nobel Prize.<\/p>\n
But Mr Carney’s speech was widely heralded for looking beyond the crisis to assert the position of, and potential future path for, medium-sized powers as the world appears to be heading into a new era of great power rivalry between the US, China and Russia.<\/p>\n
Carney says Canada is not powerless<\/p>\n
“Great powers can afford to go it alone,” Mr Carney told the audience in Davos.<\/p>\n
“They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms.<\/p>\n
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Mark Carney met with Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, local time. (AP: Sean Kilpatrick)<\/p>\n
“Middle powers do not. But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.<\/p>\n
“This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”<\/p>\n
“Middle powers like Canada are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that embodies our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of states.”<\/p>\n
Trump shares Macron’s messages<\/a><\/p>\n US President Donald Trump has shared a private message purportedly from his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.<\/p>\n Mr Macron had a similar message of building more economic sovereignty and “strategic economy” \u2014 though he was focused more specifically on the issues confronting Europe.<\/p>\n Addressing the issues for Europe from both the US and China economically as well as strategically, Mr Macron said middle powers could not just “passively accept the law of the strongest, leading to vassalisation and bloc politics”.<\/p>\n “I think accepting the sort of new colonial approach doesn’t make sense.”<\/p>\n ‘We are in the midst of rupture’<\/p>\n Mr Carney quoted the Czech dissident (and later president) V\u00e1clav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless, which asked how the communist system sustained itself.<\/p>\n He said this did not occur “through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false”.<\/p>\n Havel called this “living within a lie”.<\/p>\n
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