From Beijing to Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has made international headlines with his consequential addresses about Canada’s participation in forging a “New World Order.” Last week Carney spent four days in Beijing with China President Xi Jinping and the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attending to the details of a new Canada-China strategic partnership that is to establish a New World Order. This week, Carney was holding court at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland where he declared the old rules-based order is dead – and Canada is ready to lead those willing to forge a New World Order.
There is nothing startlingly new in what Carney proclaimed in Beijing or Davos, albeit he stated what he is thinking more clearly and forcibly than before and did so on international stages. Since he first took office, Carney has espoused a worldview of shifting international relations that require some new order and provides an opportunity for Canada to reposition itself within the global community – to pursue a new set of alliances that can operate outside of the United States influence. Verily, for months now Carney has singlehandedly charted a course that is pulling Canada away from its traditional international policy positions as ally to the U.S. and steering us towards offsetting foreign affairs arrangements.
In the fall, Carney participated in United Nations meetings and was demonstrative in telegraphing that Canada is moving towards a new set of foreign policies aligned with a select group of leaders – less aligned with the U.S. and more coordinated with the European Union (E.U.) and, particularly France and the U.K. Carney sat down with The Economist for a flattering feature, Mark Carney’s radical vision for handling Trumpian America, in which the magazine identified Carney as “The Player of Games” who is leading “a new free-trade revolution” and masterfully establishing new international trading blocs. At the same time, he conducted a televised address to the nation where he emphasized a dire analysis that the close relationship between the Canadian and U.S. economies is over.
Carney’s dramatic soliloquies before international audiences continued with a trade mission to the Philippines and Japan, and later at the Asian-Pacific Economic Summit. While Carney was telling the Asian countries of the importance of having “reliable partners,” foreign minister Anita Anand jetted into Beijing to announce to the world that Canada now has a “strategic partnership” with China. In interviews since, Carney conjured up a new trading bloc that would have Canada positioned as “an honest broker,” a bridge that would bypass U.S. influence for a flow of goods and services between European and Asian countries.
It was no surprise that last week Carney used his official state visit and televised meetings with the heads of the CCP to ingratiate himself to his hosts, “The world has changed much since that last visit. I believe the progress that we have made in the partnership sets us up well for the New World Order.” The following day in a Beijing media session, he took the opportunity to define in his own words and in his global-banker-speak manner what he envisions as the “New World Order.” Here is Carney’s explanation verbatim:
“The world is still determining what that order will be. So, let’s be clear what we are talking about first and foremost, which is what are the trading, what is going to govern global trade? What is the role of the WTO going to be? How important are bilateral deals such as the one we’re developing, plurilateral deals if I can use that term for trans-Pacific partnership, um, ah, potential linkages between the trans-Pacific partnership and the E.U.? Where is a financial regulation, payment system regulation is going to fit into that? All of these aspects, um, that these, I am going to use a fancy word, like the architecture, the multilateral system that has been developing these is being eroded, to use a polite term. Undercut use another term. So the question is, what gets built in that place? How much of a patchwork is it? How much is it just on a bilateral basis? Or where do like-minded countries in certain areas – so, likeminded countries just to be clear doesn’t mean you agree on everything, um, so, ah, aspects for example on digital trade or agricultural trade, climate finance is another area, um, to move into areas of geostrategy, geosecurity, you’ll have different coalitions that are formed. So what this partnership does is in areas, for example, of clean energy, conventional energy, agriculture as we were just talked about, and financial services, which we have talked less about, um, but the evolution of the global financial system, the role of the FSB overtime, the evolution of cross-border payments, I know it all sounds very dry except for your organization (Bloomberg News) which I think takes an interest in it. These are important elements of how the system is going to work and, look, the expectation is that rather than these being developed necessarily through the IMF, WTO, and other multilateral organizations, it is going to be coalitions that develop them, not for the world but for subsets, subsectors of the world.”
In the following days, Carney advanced this concept of his New World Order to the Davos elites. He took to the stage to preach to the choir, an anxious audience of globalists who were bracing for the next day’s appearance of U.S. President Donald Trump. Carney seized the opportunity of being at the WEF lectern to, figuratively, shed his Clark Kentian prime minister disguise and don a WEF superman suit and establish himself as the world’s anti-American champion. He described his vision of a world without the need for U.S. trade pressures or bullying influences and offered up Canada as a reliable middle power, ready to broker future coalition-building. This WEF address echoes much of what Canadians have already heard elsewhere, but Carney’s perspectives on his New World Order were amplified given the shadow cast by Trump’s anticipated arrival in Davos.
It was a calculated address and Carney led with the observation that the “old order is not coming back” and that “we should not mourn it.” He dismissed the notion of a global system built around “American hegemony” as a “fiction,” arguing that the old order of multilateralism is fraying and institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the U.N. are “greatly diminished.” Carney then diagnosed that the world is “in the midst of a rupture, not a transition”; it is entrapped in a global system of economic coercion by major powers. Though not specifically naming the U.S., Carney left little doubt who he was referring to when he described the uncertainty in the world caused by superpowers that flex their economic and military muscle. He urged that “middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” Carney’s rallying cry was music to the globalist elites’ ears, “Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.” He suggested that middle powers like Canada must ban together and not accept “subordination” and Carney ended his address stating that he, as Canada’s PM, was ready to lead new coalitions.
Much is being made of his speech. Here it is: World Economic Forum: Special Address by PM Mark Carney.
Accolades aside for a well-delivered speech, it was less than 48 hours before Carney’s pronouncement that “the old world order had died” was proven to be far too premature. Carney left Davos not long after his speech and he was not present to hear the U.S. President deliver his rambling, self-congratulatory address that asserted America remains actively engaged in world affairs. President Donald Trump spoke of advancing peace and ending the Ukraine-Russia war, and entering the second phase of the peace plan for the Hamas-Israeli conflict. Then, during the time Trump was in Davos, he and other leaders also made announcements about the progress of their bilateral trade agreements. Most significantly, Trump and NATO boss Mark Rutte heralded a new agreement on American military presence in Greenland as well as a framework for NATO defence of the arctic. (Presumably, Carney and Canadian officials will be briefed on all these old world order developments in the coming days.)
After weeks of globetrotting, Carney has returned to Canadian soil to prepare his Liberal colleagues for the opening of Parliament. Canadians will want to know more of Carney’s New World Order that is realigning the country and its international trade and relations. Foreign minister Anand boldly stated in Davos that “What sets Canada apart from other countries is that we have a strategy and we are pursuing it.” Evidently that strategy includes a strategic partnership with the CCP and financial arrangements with Qatar. It also includes a foreign relations and trade effort to construct new relations and trading blocs that are designed to overlook Canada’s greatest trading partner. So, with respect to his recent “elbows up” anti-American posturing on the world stage and the subsequent frosty response from Trump, Carney has much to answer to regarding his New World Order.
Chris George is an advocate, government relations advisor, and writer/copy editor. As president of a public relations firm established in 1994, Chris provides discreet counsel, tactical advice and management skills to CEOs/Presidents, Boards of Directors and senior executive teams in executing public and government relations campaigns and managing issues. Prior to this PR/GR career, Chris spent seven years on Parliament Hill on staffs of Cabinet Ministers and MPs. He has served in senior campaign positions for electoral and advocacy campaigns at every level of government. Today, Chris resides in Almonte, Ontario where he and his wife manage www.cgacommunications.com. Contact Chris at chrisg.george@gmail.com.
