- Mark Carney called the US-led rules-based order fractured by great power rivalry
- Carney warned that compliance with powers won't guarantee safety for middle countries
- "Middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu," Carney said.
Mark Carney, Canada's Prime Minister, used his address at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos to deliver a watershed moment in global diplomacy. The career economist and banker, who entered politics less than a year ago, declared that the US-led "rules-based international order" is enduring "a rupture", defined by great power competition and a "fading" rules-based order.
"The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must," the Canadian premier said in a wide-ranging speech that was at times elegiac for the predictable rules-based order. He also laid out a doctrine for a world of fractured international norms, warning, "Compliance will not buy safety."
'End Of US-led Order'
"The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it," he said. "Nostalgia is not a strategy."
Since entering Canadian politics last year, Carney has repeatedly warned that the world was not going to return to a pre-Trump normal. He reaffirmed that message on Tuesday, in a speech that did not name US President Donald Trump but offered an analysis of the president's impact on global affairs.
"We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition," Carney said.
He noted that Canada had benefited from the old "rules-based international order", including from "American hegemony" that "helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes."
A new reality has set in, Carney said. "Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion."
Call To Middle Powers
In an apparent warning against efforts to appease major powers, Carney said countries like Canada can no longer hope that "compliance will buy safety."
"The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls -- or whether we can do something more ambitious."
"Middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu," Carney said.
"Great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not."
Support For Greenland
The Canadian leader also declared that Ottawa "stands firmly" with Greenland and Denmark, after US President Donald Trump vowed his plan to take control of the autonomous Danish territory was irreversible.
"Canada stands firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully supports their unique right to determine Greenland's future," Carney told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Standing Ovation
Carney's address to the world's political and financial elites and media in Davos, Switzerland, received a standing ovation. Without explicitly mentioning Trump, Carney alluded to growing frustration and concern across the world that the United States was eager to dismantle the "architecture of collective problem solving" that has defined much of the past eight decades.
Citing two unnamed senior government officials, Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper said the Canadian response model centres on insurgency-style tactics, like those used in Afghanistan by fighters who resisted Soviet and later US forces.
In an invasion scenario, US forces would likely overtake Canada's strategic position within days, the Globe reported, citing the military model.
After Trump's 2024 election and in the early months of his new term, he repeatedly referred to the United States' northern neighbour as the 51st state and said a merger would benefit Canada.
Trump's annexation talk has eased in recent months, but overnight he posted an image on his social media platform of a map showing Canada and Venezuela covered in the US flag, implying a full American takeover of both countries.
