Wednesday, January 21, 2026 →

There’s a lot to like in Mark Carney’s speech at Davos. I certainly didn’t expect Thucydides and Havel to get cited.

Carney was clear about the problem. For example:

More recently, great powers began 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. The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.

Along with ideas about how “middle powers” should proceed:

This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities. Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.

But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.

And a pitch for Canada:

Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent, and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.

Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable, reliable partner—in a world that is anything but—a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.

Jen Gerson has a good follow up in Go home, America. You’re drunk. that includes:

Nor can we trust the American people to rise up against tyranny in any great numbers: they are not who they think they are, and far short of what they once were. Americans as a people today are unequal to their nation’s history and to their own sense of greatness. This is being demonstrated to us, every single day, in the clearest possible terms.

Out of a swirl of emotions that include anger and fear, I think the dominant one for me is sadness. America was obviously not perfect, but it at least had aspirations that I could admire and a long friendship with Canada that brought us both prosperity.

Of course, as Gerson points out, the real test will be what Carney and Canada do next:

In short, the Canada that Carney is describing is one that isn’t satisfied with half assery and speechifying. What would be truly provocative is if Carney didn’t just say the right things, but also demonstrated he was dead serious about following through with a plan to make this country tough enough to withstand America’s increasingly crazy bullshit.