As the Rules-based Global Order Collapses, Mark Carney Proposes a Middle Power Alternative

While Donald Trump warns him to watch his words

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On Tuesday, Mark Carney delivered an historic speech at the Davos gathering. In the face of a “ruptured” rules-based global order, Canada is offering to lead the world’s middle powers in a system of shifting trade and geopolitical alliances intended to counter the return of 19th-century Great Power competition. Carney’s remarks were greeted with a standing ovation. They were also a shot across the bow of US President Donald Trump. How this new tension will play out remains to be seen, but Trump’s Wednesday speech left no doubt that Carney’s message had been heard.

Carney stood before an audience that has convened for decades to defend globalisation and the norms that underpin it. The rows of suits and ties in the assembly hall in Davos, Switzerland, represent the world as it was: a collective faith in rules, in shared institutions, in a set of implicit commitments among sovereign states. But Carney opened with a declaration that broke with that faith.

“Nostalgia,” he said plainly, “is not a strategy.” That sentence — crisp, final, unyielding — encapsulated the core of his argument.

The old order is dying. The United States, once the guarantor of that order, now prefers a bullying unilateralism. China, a rising power, offers its own orderly alternatives, but ones not rooted in liberal democratic values. In this world of shifting tectonics, Carney argues, middle powers have a choice: retrench, or engineer new geometries of alliance.

He argued for the latter. His speech was not rooted in abstraction. It was grounded in Canada’s recent diplomatic arc and his government’s policy thrust.

Only days earlier, Carney concluded a state visit to China — the first by a Canadian prime minister in nearly a decade — that yielded a new strategic partnership focused on energy, agri-food, trade and climate cooperation and, crucially, reductions in punitive tariffs that had frozen commerce between Ottawa and Beijing.

The Canadian press release after Davos makes clear that this partnership is part of a broader strategy: diversify trade, attract investment, and build “a stronger, more independent Canadian economy.” Carney’s framing is not free trade for its own sake, but a resilience built on networks that generate both economic opportunity and strategic hedges to the tottering hegemon to the south.

In Davos he emphasised that middle powers are not impotent: they can shape outcomes by acting together. He met with European leaders — from France to the Netherlands to Sweden — to discuss not only trade but security, the defence of Ukraine, and the principle that sovereignty and territorial integrity should not be up for grabs. He reaffirmed that decisions about Greenland’s future belong to Greenland and Denmark, standing in direct contrast to threats from Washington and illustrating the broader stakes: sovereignty is no longer a given, even among allies.

Carney’s message was unambiguously moral at its core. He spoke of shared values — sovereignty, pluralistic democracy, human rights — not as ornaments on a fading world order but as the glue for new partnerships. He offered Canada’s record of stability, democratic governance, fiscal prudence, and openness as an example for others to follow.

Carney also proposed an idea, borrowed from engineering, that is not part of the everyday Canadian lexicon: variable-geometry. This means a coalition of middle powers and like-minded democracies that would operate together when interests align, without the assumption of unipolar backing that no longer exists.

He explained the concept in a November 12 op-ed in The Economist.

“To re-establish resilience, a new web of ad hoc co-operation is beginning to emerge. We are entering an era of “variable geometry” characterised by dynamic, overlapping, pragmatic coalitions, built around shared interests, and occasionally shared values, rather than shared institutions.”

The Economist may seem like an odd choice for the Canadian prime minister. The publications of choice are usually the Globe and Mail, perhaps the National Post in a pinch. But Carney was not speaking to a domestic audience. He sought the ears of decision-makers and influencers in the middle powers he hoped to recruit for his coalitions.

From the op-ed:

“To address the risks of sudden disruptions to global trade in critical minerals, Canada is bringing together like-minded nations to form a critical-minerals strategic alliance. The goal is to secure and diversify supply chains by investing in mining, stockpiling supplies and developing standards-based markets to guard against future shortages.”

This was not the rhetoric of retreat. It was instead the rhetoric of realistic hope. Carney did not present Canada as a saviour. He presented Canada as a partner among partners, willing to lead when others are willing to engage.

The standing ovation he received was not just polite protocol; it reflected a deep yearning among many global actors for leadership that can navigate between the dominance of superpowers and the vacuum of isolationism.

The Response From Washington

If Carney’s speech was calibrated to shake complacency among the global centre, Donald Trump’s response the next day in Davos was calibrated to assert dominance.

Trump’s brief remarks did not engage with Carney’s nuanced call for collective action among middle powers. Instead, he lobbed a personal rebuke: “Canada lives because of the United States,” he declared. That phrase was not an aside. It was a geopolitical claim of ownership, expressed with the bluntness that has become Trump’s diplomatic style.

Trump doubled down on rhetoric that has rattled Canada and Europe alike.

On the issue of Greenland, he escalated what has been described as an ongoing crisis by doubling down on claims of US ownership. This is a claim that directly contradicts the principle of self-determination that Carney enshrined in his address. This is not a minor clash over semantics. It goes to the heart of how nations perceive themselves, their agency, and the integrity of international norms. Trump’s threat to annex or reassign sovereign land lies at the extreme end of a larger strategy that privileges power over principle, coercion over consensus.

The underlying tension here is not purely bilateral. Trump’s assertion of America’s primacy and unilateral prerogatives undermines the very foundations of the cooperative networks that Carney seeks to build.

It raises acute questions for Canada: can it be truly independent while still embedded in a security architecture dominated by the United States? Can it lead middle powers without alienating its most powerful neighbour? Trump’s speech made clear that these questions are not theoretical. They are now the substance of high diplomacy and strategic competition at the highest level.

Trump’s address at Davos was not a strategic rejoinder in policy terms. It was a political gambit: to assert that Canada’s prosperity is derivative of American largesse and to delegitimise Carney’s argument for a diversified set of alliances. But in framing the relationship as one of dependency rather than co-equal partnership, Trump reminded the world why many states are looking beyond traditional alignments and why Carney’s message resonated so powerfully in Davos.

From the Ashes of the Old…

Professor Jack Cunningham, whose voice echoes with measured realism in my interview with him, offers a vital corrective to both euphoria and cynicism. Cunningham views Carney’s address not as hot air or academic theorising but as a concrete articulation of a strategic pivot that has already begun.

In his analysis, Carney is schooling Western democracies on the simple yet profound truth that they must act collectively or risk being marginalised by the great powers that exercise raw economic and military leverage. That is not an ideological position; it is a pragmatic reading of the emerging global balance.

Canada stands on the threshold of playing a much bigger role in international affairs than it ever has in the past. That role will not be easy. It will require a capacity to broker interests among nations that historically have not seen themselves as partners. It will require moral clarity and a willingness to defend democratic values without falling into the trap of binary opposition. And it will require a deep reservoir of patience for the slow work of building trust and shared purpose.

Carney’s challenge to middle powers is a challenge to Canada itself: rise to the moment or retreat into the comfort of old alliances. The choice is not simply about foreign policy. It is about the kind of nation Canada wants to be in a world where power is diffuse and norms are contested. Democracy, Carney seems to suggest, is not a static inheritance. It is an active project, one that depends as much on how we engage with others as on how we conduct ourselves at home.

The rupture is real. The old order may indeed be dead. But from that rupture, a new pattern of cooperation — imperfect, organic, and strategically agile — can emerge. Canada has stepped into that space.

The question now is whether others will step in alongside it. And in that answer lies the shape of the next world order.