Canadian prime minister (PM) Mark Carney has delivered a stark assessment of the global order, declaring that the US-led rules-based system is undergoing a 'rupture' driven by intensifying great power rivalry and the weaponisation of economic integration. At the heart of Mr Carney’s message was a call for middle powers to coordinate more closely to counter-balance great power rivalry.
“Middle powers must act together, because if we are not at the table, we are on the menu,” he says. “Great powers can afford, for now, to go it alone. Middle powers do not.”
Speaking at a special address at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF's) annual meeting in Davos, Mr Carney says the world was no longer in a period of transition but had entered a harsher geopolitical reality in which power increasingly operates 'without limits or constraints'.
“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” Mr Carney told an audience of political and business leaders, warning that middle powers such as Canada could no longer rely on established multilateral institutions or assume that compliance with major powers would guarantee security.
His speech came a day before US president Donald Trump was scheduled to address the Davos gathering, amid rising tensions between Washington and European allies over Greenland, tariffs and NATO unity.
Mr Carney argued that the traditional narrative of a rules-based international order had become a 'pleasant fiction', sustained as much by ritual and habit as by genuine adherence to shared norms. Drawing on the writings of Czech dissident Václav Havel, he says many countries had continued to 'live within a lie' by pretending that global rules applied equally, even as the strongest powers exempted themselves when convenient.
“For decades, countries like Canada prospered under this system,” he says, noting that American hegemony had provided public goods such as open sea lanes, a stable financial system and collective security. “But this bargain no longer works.”
According to Mr Carney, recent crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics had exposed the vulnerabilities of extreme global integration. More recently, he says, major powers had begun using tariffs, financial infrastructure and supply chains as tools of coercion.
“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” he says.
While acknowledging the growing push among nations to build strategic autonomy in areas such as energy, food, critical minerals and defence, Mr Carney warned against a retreat into isolation.
“A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable,” he says, arguing instead for collective resilience among like-minded countries. “Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses.”
Mr Carney outlined what he described as Canada’s shift towards 'value-based realism' — a strategy that combines commitment to principles such as sovereignty, territorial integrity and human rights with a pragmatic recognition of diverging interests in a fragmented world.
Since taking office, he says, his government had moved to strengthen Canada’s domestic economic and strategic base, including cutting taxes, removing federal barriers to interprovincial trade and fast-tracking around a trillion dollars in investment across energy, artificial intelligence, critical minerals and trade corridors. Defence spending, he added, would double by the end of the decade, with a focus on strengthening domestic industries.
Internationally, Mr Carney says Canada is diversifying its partnerships, citing a comprehensive strategic agreement with the European Union, new trade and security deals across four continents, and ongoing negotiations with India, ASEAN, Mercosur and others. He also confirmed new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar.
Canada, he says, is increasingly pursuing 'variable geometry' — forming different coalitions for different issues. He highlighted Canada’s role in supporting Ukraine, its stance on Arctic sovereignty alongside Greenland and Denmark, and its efforts to build new trade and critical minerals alliances.
“Canada stands firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully supports their unique right to determine Greenland’s future,” Mr Carney says, as tensions grow over US ambitions in the Arctic.
Without naming Mr Trump directly, Mr Carney cautioned against appeasement, warning that hopes that “compliance will buy safety” were misplaced. “It won’t,” he says.
He concluded by urging countries to abandon nostalgia for a world that no longer exists and to confront geopolitical reality with honesty.
“The old order is not coming back,” Mr Carney says. “We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
Instead, he argued, middle powers must stop pretending, build strength at home and act together to shape a more resilient and cooperative global system.
“That is Canada’s path,” he says. “We choose it openly and confidently — and it is a path open to any country willing to take it with us.”
