“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said in his speech at Davos on Monday. “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,” Carney said, making a case for “middle powers” like Canada to work together to gain leverage against “great powers,” which he said have the luxury of going it alone.
“When we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating,” Carney said. “This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice — compete with each other for favor, or to combine to create a third path with impact.”
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He called other nations to join Canada to pursue shared values, supporting Ukraine, NATO, and Danish and Greenlandic sovereignty, and warned them to “stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is — a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests, using economic integration as coercion.”
“The powerful have their power,” Carney said. “But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.”
His remarks drew a standing ovation.
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