Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said the narrative that the United States-led international order operated equally for all was always partially false.
At the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Tuesday, he acknowledged that many countries, including Canada and many European countries, benefited from American hegemony, which provided a better trade system, financial stability, and collective security.
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“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,” he said further.
“This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
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“But more recently, 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.
He said powerful states often exempted themselves, applied rules unevenly, and enforced trade and legal norms asymmetrically. But this bargain, according to Mr Carney, has stopped working due to the intensified power “rivalry between America, China, and Russia.
“The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack.
“Every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must,” he said.
Mr Carney made this statement in reference to the United States’ increasingly unilateral and “America first” approach, which has involved the use of tariffs and economic coercion against other countries.
The rise of China and Russia as great powers, the post-war, rules-based international order underpinned by US hegemony, has come under increasing strain.
Since the beginning of Mr Trump’s second administration, the US policy has undermined the rules-based international trading and security system.
Most recently, Mr Trump withdrew the US from 66 United Nations and International organisation that it believes do not serve American interests.
It also imposed a 10 per cent tariff on the UK, France, Denmark, and five other EU countries for refusing to back his campaign to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.
The US leader said military action is not off the table in its effort to acquire Greenland from Denmark, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).
The reason, according to Mr Trump, is to protect the Arctic landmass from China and Russia, the two other rival superpowers.
In his fixation with the western hemisphere, which includes the US sphere of influence, Mr Trump has also threatened to annex Canada and turn it into the 51st US state. Since the US illegal arrest of Venezuelan President, Nicholas Maduro, Mr Trump has intensified focus on Canada, complaining about the country’s vulnerability to US adversaries in the Arctic.
Mr Carney described this series of developments as a rupture of the world order.
“It is the end of pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, is submitted to no limits, no constraints,” he said.
Mr Carney said to protect the interests of other countries from “hard power,” and ensure global cohesion, world leaders shift their focus away from restoring world order and towards creating institutions and agreements that “function as described, and reducing the leverage that enables coercion.”
The shift to value-based realism
Mr Carney also spoke of Canada’s effort to expand its relations, while encouraging other middle power countries to do the same.
He said countries, most of whom have decades-long histories of close alliances with the US, should begin to adapt to a world order that pushes them further away from the US.
Mr Carney also spoke of Canada moving away from traditional liberal internationalism toward a framework he calls values-based realism.
He spoke of partnerships with China and Qatar, and potential trade pacts with India, Thailand, the Philippines, and Mercosur.
His speech hints at a shift in Canadian foreign policy, but even more so, directly mirrors core realist tenets regarding the primacy of power and the fragility of international laws and structures that foreign policy analysts have long championed.
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Mr Carney said countries must diversify to hedge against uncertainty.
Hegemons such as the US, he said, should not continually monetise relationships with smaller countries.
“I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the various states,” he added.
While calling for deeper cooperation among world leaders, Mr Carney referenced the Melian Dialogue from Thucydides, which states that, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”
The quote is one of the foundational texts for foreign policy experts with a realistic worldview.
“And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.
“Well, it won’t,” he said.
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