A global order based on rules has been rendered "fiction," and smaller countries should forge new strategic alliances to keep from being subjugated by "great powers" acting in their own self-interest, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, The Hill reported.
Carney did not specifically mention President Donald Trump or his administration, but it amounted to a rallying cry for smaller nations to work together to wrestle economic control of their future.
"This fiction was useful," Carney said, but "this bargain no longer works."
Carney said all is not lost in the world order, calling on middle powers to unite to "build something bigger, better, stronger, more just."
"This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation," Carney added.
"We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is."
Carney said, "We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it — nostalgia is not a strategy."
Carney's speech builds on his landmark declaration last March that Canada's traditional relationship with the U.S. is "over."
In that speech, Carney said that while Canada needed to strengthen its own economy, it would face a day where it would have to lead to the creation of a "like-minded" new world order of countries that excluded the U.S., something the prime minister called both a "tragedy" and a "new reality."
In his Tuesday speech, Carney made a thinly veiled reference to Trump's trade war on Canada, which was launched even before Trump was inaugurated one year ago, saying, "Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture."
Carney's Davos speech capped a three-nation trip that included "new strategic partnerships" with China and Qatar, as well as seeking free trade pacts with India and the multilateral trading blocs in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
"We're engaging broadly strategically with open eyes," Carney said. "We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be."
He reiterated, "We're pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests," Carney said.
"On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future," he added, reiterating Canada's commitment to NATO's Article 5, which affirms an attack on one member state is an attack on the alliance.
Carney and French President Emmanuel Macron met earlier Tuesday on the Davos sidelines, where they reaffirmed their commitment to Denmark and Greenland's sovereignty and a shared commitment to working through NATO to preserve Arctic security.
Macron said at Davos that Trump's tariff threats against nations supporting Greenland were "fundamentally unacceptable, even more so when they are used as a leverage against territorial sovereignty."
Carney echoed that theme in his remarks, saying, "Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited."
"You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination," he added.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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