Nathan Gardels at Noema:
When the United States summarily defected from the world order it had built since the end of World War II, effectively joining the revisionist powers of China and Russia, it was clear we were headed back to the kind of Great Power spheres of influence that characterized the 19th century. What was less clear was how all those left out of this equation would fare going forward.
In the most powerful speech delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid out a forward-looking vision for those who must operate in the breach.
To begin with, he acknowledged that, for all its faults and hypocrisies, the liberal rules-based order did benefit the security and prosperity of smaller powers enough to foster their allegiance. But that is all over. We should not fool ourselves that we are in a moment of “transition” that may someday revert to an approximation of the old normality, he chided. Rather, we are facing a total “rupture” with the past that compels the less powerful to construct an alternative collective approach.
“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he bluntly told the government and business elites assembled in the Alps.
More here.
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