Kate Mackenzie an Tim Sahay in Polycrisis:
Eulogies for the rules-based international order have been piling up in 2026. Mark Carney’s speech at Davos in January was lauded for its open acknowledgment of the political “rupture” in the world order that has been long apparent, but which no world leader of the global North had as yet been willing to openly name. The US-led liberal order was as good as finished, Carney surmised, and it was incumbent on “middle powers” such as Canada and the Europeans to recognize that fact. In its place, “a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion” was emerging. He described a near-Hobbesian vision of geopolitical relations in which “the strong can do what they can and the weak must suffer what they must.” The task, he argued, was for middle powers to “act together” so as to increase their leverage. “If we’re not at the table,” he warned, “we’re on the menu.”
Carney’s speech was received at the time as not only a clarion call for what Finnish president Alexander Stubbs has called “values-based realism,” but as a viable alternative to the bullying treatment many US allies have received at the hands of the second Trump administration. The joint Israeli and US airstrikes on Iran last week brought with them the first test of Carney’s stated commitment to “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” as he had put it in his speech at Davos, and Carney was quick to voiced his support for his allies’ bombing campaign in the name of “international peace and security”—all while insisting the assault was due to the “failure of the rules-based international order.” Whether or not Canada will be drawn into the expanding war in the Middle East remains to be seen. For now, Carney is plowing ahead with his plans for building strategic autonomy from Washington’s unpredictable trade policies.
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