'Nostalgia is not a strategy': Canadian PM Carney urges middle-powers to rebuild world order together

Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said that the world was in the midst of “rupture, not a transition”, seemingly offering a stinging rebuke to unnamed global hegemons.

Carney was speaking at the 2025 World Economic Forum, often known as Davos, on Jan. 21, before the main assembly.

The speech laid out a pathway for middle-powers like Canada in an age of rupture, what Carney called “values-based realism, “or, to put another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic”.

Carney also warned against the instinct for each country to build “fortresses”, or to “develop greater strategic autonomy”, saying that “a world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable”.

The bargain no longer works

Carney set out his position that the old, rules-based order was, in part, performative.

At times, rules, such as international law or trade rules, were selectively enforced, and more powerful countries would “exempt themselves when convenient.

The trade-off for smaller countries was stability, predictability, and protection.

But Carney warned that “this bargain no longer works”.

Rupture, not transition

Carney warned that great powers were now using “economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion.”

Countries drew “understandable” conclusions, seeking greater strategic autonomy, to build “fortresses” because “when rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself”.

“But let's be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.”

Carney issued a call to his fellow middle powers, saying that they must “Act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”.

Great powers could, for now, afford to go alone, but middle powers that negotiated bilaterally did so from a position of weakness, which he called “the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”

“Nostalgia is not a strategy."

He called on them to “live the truth”, to stop invoking the old rules-based order “as though it still functions as advertised".

“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.”

The old order is not coming back, but Carney issued a call of defiance: “We should not mourn it (the old world order).”

“Nostalgia is not a strategy."

He urged other middle powers to band together and rebuild the international order as better, stronger, and more just, saying that they were countries that had 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.”

Top image via Carney/FB