For Canada and Carney, the end of the old order is just the start

The musical phrase "rules-based international prescribe" became pop among canadian river leaders starting in 2017.

It is non exactly poetry, but it was meant to mean something — shorthand for the web of multilateral acronyms (the UN, the WTO, the IMF, NATO, the G7, the G20, NAFTA, among others) that arose in the wake of the Second World War, all of it backstopped by American power. This was the stuff of relative peace and stability, at least for many (but far from all) of the nations of the world, at least as compared to the destruction of the Second World War.

From 1995 through 2016, the phrase was not spoken even once in the House of Commons. But then it became a refrain, first among Justin Trudeau's Liberals, but eventually including Conservatives — a classic case of not knowing what you've got til it's (nearly) gone.

"Rules-based international order" was a way to convey what suddenly seemed to be at stake with the election of Donald Trump as president. One of the major sticking points during the tumultuous meeting of G7 leaders in Charlevoix, Que., in June 2018 was whether or how to acknowledge "the" or "a" rules-based international order in the final communique. 

But it was still possible then to believe the post-war order merely needed to survive a Trump presidency. Nearly eight years later, it is harder to hold out such hope. And this week in Davos, Switzerland, Carney called on the world's "middle powers" to "live" that "truth."

"Stop invoking the 'rules-based international order' as though it still functions as advertised," he said. "Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion."

Carney's speech was well-crafted, refreshingly direct and bracing in some of its language — and it heralded a dramatic break in both Canadian foreign policy and the world order. But the reaction, both in Canada and internationally, may more simply speak to some unquenched desire among many to hear someone in a position of power say something like that about everything that is now unfolding.

At Issue | Can Carney deliver on his Davos speech?

"Carney looked Canadians in the eye and said, 'I see what you're seeing. You're not crazy, you're not alone,'" Kyla Ronellenfitsch, a pollster who worked with the Liberal campaign last year, wrote this week. "It's reassurance through shared reality."

Trump's vaguely threatening comments the next day may have only served to confirm Carney's thesis. 

Acknowledging you have a problem — and naming it — is an important and necessary step. It's also obviously just a start.

Carney's message to the world's middle powers — the non-hegemons — was a version of what Benjamin Franklin is often reputed to have told the American colonies in the 18th century: that they could hang together or they could hang separately.

There is an obvious logic to that idea. To borrow another old saw, there is strength in numbers. It remains to be seen how well and how readily the non-hegemons might hold together. But could Canada play a leading role in that effort?

Adam Chapnick, a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, says "historically, our ability to rally groups of states in the pursuit of collective action has depended largely on the amount of skin we were willing to have in the game."

PM's 'consequential' speech puts Canada 'at the centre' of middle powers: experts

"Thus far, Carney seems to be committing on the hard power front with military spending, and I'm sure he'll be personally engaged at various summits," says Asa McKercher, a foreign policy scholar at St. Francis Xavier University. "But [the Department of] Global Affairs is also subject to budget cuts, so day-to-day diplomacy with other middle powers will be affected." 

Words are important. But the inevitable response to any speech — particularly statements of intent or principle — is to measure words against actions. And in the wake of Davos, it was further asked whether Carney's speech might herald a tougher line with the American administration.

Carney's statement that "countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation" seemed an implicit acknowledgement that vulnerabilities make it harder to stand on principle. And while the world order may have changed, the vulnerabilities of geography and economic interconnectedness are harder to reverse.

Beyond negotiating a new relationship with the United States, there will be acute developments and crises to weigh.

The question of whether Canada should send military forces to Greenland was seemingly taken off the table by this week's "deal" — whatever it amounts to — between the U.S. And Denmark. And the American president then helpfully rendered moot the question of whether Carney should join Trump's "Board of Peace."

But there quickly came new things that might demand an official response — Trump's comments about NATO's contributions to the war in Afghanistan and a member of Trump's cabinet commenting on a possible referendum in Alberta.

The NATO comments drew a rebuke from the defence minister, while another minister brushed off the comments of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. But there will no doubt be many more moments when Canadian officials are asked to respond.

Carney's speech on Thursday, aimed more squarely at a domestic audience, was less direct and focused but perhaps not unimportant in its own right. The prime minister seemed to want to define the values that have defined Canada, ground his government's agenda in those values and perhaps attempt to reassure anyone who has seen reason to worry about Carney's commitment to progressive values.

"Canada must be a beacon — an example to a world at sea," Carney said.

That is not an unworthy goal — something to which any prime minister of any party stripe might aspire. But it puts the focus on Carney's domestic agenda and his ability to deliver on that.

Not coincidentally, that remains the primary focus of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

"After nearly a year of Prime Minister Carney, things have only gotten worse: the deficit has doubled, food inflation is double that in the U.S., housing costs are the worst in the G7 and no pipelines are approved or anti-development laws removed," Poilievre lamented on Thursday in what was billed as a reply to Carney's Davos speech.

There are debates to be had about the causes of and solutions to each of the issues Poilievre raised. But the broader truth might be that the strength of the Canadian response to this new world will depend on the strength of Canadian society.

The ongoing rupture in the world order will not make that simpler or easier.

Senior writer

Aaron Wherry has covered Parliament Hill since 2007 and has written for Maclean's, the National Post and the Globe and Mail. He is the author of Promise & Peril, a book about Justin Trudeau's years in power.

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