Prime Minister Mark Carney says the old “rules-based” international order, which allowed Canada to remain secure and prosperous for generations, is gone.
And while Carney told the crowd of international elites in Davos, Switzerland, that the old order should not be mourned, that doesn’t mean that Canada won’t feel its absence.
“A series of crises in finance, health, energy, geopolitics, and health care over the past two decades have revealed the dangers of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited,” Carney said, without naming U.S. President Donald Trump. One year into Trump’s second term, it now appears that the Canadian government is considering the unthinkable. That the “rules-based” international order is collapsing — a collapse driven primarily by the United States, which for generations championed that order — will not come as news to the people of Venezuela, Greenland or Denmark.
But it’s noteworthy that it’s an opinion shared by the prime minister of Canada, given the two countries’ close security and economic ties.
A doctored image that Trump posted to social media early Tuesday morning, depicting European leaders in the Oval Office while Trump sits behind the Resolute Desk, provided a helpful illustration of the kind of subordination Carney was referring to. A map of the Americas to Trump’s left depicted Canada, Venezuela, and Greenland with the stars and stripes of the American flag grafted over them.
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