How the world must change to stand up to the US and China – key points from Carney's historic speech

Leaders of states, governments and global companies gathered for the World Economic Forum this week in Davos, Switzerland. Despite its name, there was a clear understanding that this meeting would be not only about economics, but also about geopolitics.

On 20 January, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech in Davos.

Many are already calling his address historic or epoch-making, as it outlines the contours of a new world order.

The editorial team of European Pravda agrees with this assessment and has published the full text of the speech in the article: In the age of Trump, the world must stop pretending. The historic speech of Canada's PM.

It is both a pleasure, and a duty, to be with you tonight in this pivotal moment that Canada and the world going through.

Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality – we must.

We aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.

The power of the less power starts with honesty.

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source.

When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?

First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. 

It means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and agreements that function as described. 

And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion – that's building a strong domestic economy. It should be every government's immediate priority. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction, but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.

This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power.

But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

That is Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.