The hard truths Mark Carney left unsaid in Davos |
Prime Minister Mark Carney departs Zurich, Switzerland, on Wednesday, after attending the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
It is not often that a Canadian prime minister captures the world’s attention, if not imagination, as impressively as Mark Carney did this week in Davos. His speech before global elites at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland brought the room to its feet and garnered rave reviews in the European media. Even Le Monde published a large excerpt.
His core message – that the old, rules-based international order has ruptured, requiring middle powers such as Canada to build new alliances amid the new great-power rivalry – laid bare the hard truths facing this country and many others as the United States turns its back on the multilateral institutions that emerged under its postwar leadership.
This new world disorder has shattered any pretense of a benevolent hegemon – as the U.S. was long seen to be – providing the financial underpinning and security umbrella that had enabled the value of global trade to grow by nearly 382 times between 1950 and 2024. Given the chilling geopolitical portrait of a lawless world that Mr. Carney painted, one might have expected the audience in Davos to be crying, not clapping.........