It is always stunning to see how the key players in the world order take their annual holiday in Davos, where basic food items like hot dogs can cost over $ 40, while 673 million people go to bed every night hungry and 118 million children are pushed into hunger, many driven by conflict. 

At the same time, over 60 armed conflicts rage across the globe, with relentless attacks and atrocities committed against children, women, and other vulnerable people. Yet these elites still talk about a rules-based order, equality, and human dignity. 

Hang on… they named this whole episode the World Economic Forum, founded by Klaus Schwab, who has faced public allegations of misconduct and governance failures that were investigated but ultimately not found to involve material wrongdoing.

A staged performance of contrition

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who came to power when his predecessors’ failures lost the confidence of the party, was granted the chance to rule until 2027 unless there is a snap election. 

Staged in Davos, immediately after his visit to China where he met President Xi Jinping and signed strategic agreements, his speech on “emerging threats” sounded like a duck flapping its wings on a lake. 

He spoke about geopolitics and coercion, about “the end of a pleasant fiction,” about the need for Canada to stop pretending that the rules-based order still works. He spoke like a man who fears the storm approaching his door, yet he refused to name the storm. 

While US President Donald Trump’s personal fortune has surged by at least $ 3 billion during the first 12 months of his second presidency – largely through crypto ventures and what critics call ‘pocketing off the presidency’ – Carney pretends the real threat is an abstract “rules-based order,” not the man profiting from dismantling it. 

He did not mention President Trump, as if saying Trump’s name might summon him. He received rounds of applause and media praise. But what lies beneath? Does this performative awakening, this late-night confession, have any meaning at all?

Carney’s speech is not a sudden moral revelation. It is a staged performance of contrition designed to reassure the global elite that Canada is still a responsible partner in the imperial project, while admitting that the old rules are gone and the West must embrace naked power politics. 

This confession does not clear the soul; it shifts the blame from the system to the moment. Carney is not confessing because he discovered conscience. He is confessing because the world has changed and he has realised that Canada is vulnerable in a way it has never had to admit. That vulnerability is not philosophical; it is geopolitical panic.

A rebranding of dishonesty

The most striking element of Carney’s Davos address is its refusal to name the source of the rupture he describes. He talks about “great-power rivalry,” “economic coercion,” “weaponised integration,” and “the rules-based order fading,” yet never mentions the man who made these themes central to global politics. 

That is not restraint. It is cowardice. It is also an implicit admission that the real problem is not abstract geopolitics but a specific phenomenon: the Trump era. 

Trump is not merely a president. He is a social shift. He rejects post-Cold War liberal internationalism and the polite fiction that the powerful play by rules and the weak must accept it. Trump is the unapologetic statement that might makes right, and the West’s self-righteousness is a fragile mask.

Carney’s speech is a Machiavellian moment, and not in the flattering sense. It is the moment a leader realises the old moral narrative no longer serves his interests, and so he must switch to a new one. 

Machiavelli’s Prince does not talk about justice; he talks about survival. Carney’s Davos confession is the moment he admits that Canada must now survive in a world where the US no longer feels bound by the rules it once championed. He acknowledges the liberal dream is over, but he does so without telling Canadians what he really means: Canada is at the mercy of an unpredictable neighbour, and the illusion of sovereignty is being replaced by dependency.

This is why Carney’s speech is so deeply self-serving. He claims to be honest about the collapse of the rules-based order, yet insists Canada can build a “new order” based on values, coalition-building, and strategic autonomy. 

This is political theatre. Havel’s greengrocer placed the sign ‘Workers of the world unite’ in his window; Carney is the political class placing the sign “We were lying, but now we are honest about it.” That is not truth. It is a rebranding of dishonesty.

A confession of feebleness

Carney’s greatest fear is not merely that Trump is a threat to global stability. His fear is that Trump will treat Canada as he treats every other neighbour: as a market, a bargaining chip, a strategic asset to be acquired or discarded. 

The Greenland episode is not just an absurd story of a US president suggesting he might buy an island. It is a symbol of the return of imperial logic. Greenland represents the Arctic, future shipping routes, minerals, and military access. If Trump can publicly say he might take Greenland, what stops him from thinking the same about Canada? 

The message is clear: if the US decides it wants something, it will take it. The rules are irrelevant.

This is not paranoia. It is the logical conclusion of the transformation Carney describes. If the rules-based order is dead, then power is back. And power does not negotiate with equals. Power negotiates with the weak. 

The US can go it alone because it has the market size, military capacity, nuclear umbrella, global financial system, and ability to coerce through sanctions. Canada cannot go it alone because its economy is deeply integrated with the US, its defence is tied to US military capability, its energy markets depend on US demand, and its political class has treated sovereignty as a rhetorical ornament rather than a strategy.

Canada is not simply dependent on the US because of geography. It is dependent because of decades of political choices, trade agreements, intelligence pacts, and security arrangements that have bound the two countries in a relationship that is not equal. 

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is a military alliance, but it is also a structure in which Canada has played a key role – joining US-led bombing campaigns in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Libya; hosting Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ‘black sites’ for alleged terrorists; and providing a haven for separatist and extremist elements from groups such as the Khalistan movement to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to manipulate narratives. 

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a shared defence system in which Canada’s airspace and Arctic security are managed in cooperation with the US. The Five Eyes intelligence alliance makes Canada a partner in American surveillance and covert operations, and binds Canada to US foreign policy priorities. 

The Canada-US border, the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), and the deep integration of supply chains make Canada an economic appendage of the American market. These agreements are not merely practical arrangements; they are the wires that connect Canada’s nervous system to America’s heart.

And yet Carney speaks as if Canada can suddenly ‘diversify’ its alliances and become strategically autonomous. This is not realism. It is fantasy. It is like a small ship in a storm insisting it can change course by rearranging its deck chairs. 

The only reason Canada has been able to survive and prosper is because the US has chosen to protect it. The US can survive without Canada because it has the world’s largest economy and the world’s most powerful military. Canada cannot survive without the US because it has never built the capacity to do so.

This is not to say Canada should surrender its sovereignty or accept a subordinate role. It is to say that Carney’s speech is not a plan; it is a confession of feebleness. It is the speech of a leader who has realised that the rules have been broken and is trying to persuade the world that Canada has a strategy, when in reality it only has fear.

(The writer is an author based in Colombo)

(The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the official position of this publication)