Browsed by
Category: Federal politics

The Davos Doctrine: A house of cards

The Davos Doctrine: A house of cards

Comments 0 comment

The past week has demonstrated that the so-called Carney doctrine, for all its rhetorical elegance, may be a house of cards.

Consider the sequence of events.

Last Saturday, Prime Minister Mark Carney declared that Canada supported the United States in its strikes against Iran.

Two days later, in New Delhi, standing in for the prime minister — who had made himself unavailable to the media — Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand struck a noticeably different tone. She spoke of diplomacy, avoided the question of the legality of the strikes, and emphasized that Canada would not participate in military operations.

Tuesday, the prime minister returned to the spotlight, clarifying that Canada’s support had been given “reluctantly” and in a “limited” way —  insisting it was not a “blank cheque” while calling on all parties to respect international law.

A day later, the position shifted again. Speaking in Canberra on Wednesday, Mr. Carney said Canada could not categorically rule out military participation should allies be threatened.

Five days. Four shifting positions. Each one subtly recalibrating the last.

The consequences of this shifting narrative are now being felt inside the government itself. On Friday, Liberal MPs held a caucus call with Minister Anand after several privately expressed concerns about the prime minister’s initial statement and its silence on international law.

How quickly the shine has come off the Davos doctrine.

Only weeks ago, Mr. Carney’s speech in Davos was widely praised as a bold attempt to redefine Canada’s place in a fractured world — and a roadmap for middle powers to follow. It not only won him international applause but also supercharged his political fortunes at home.

Unfortunately for Mr. Carney, the events of the past week suggest that the framework may be far more flimsy than originally advertised.

In that address, Mr. Carney argued that the old rules-based international order was giving way to a harsher era of great-power rivalry. Middle powers, he said, would have to adapt.

His answer was what he called “values-based realism.”

Canada, he suggested, would accept the realities of geopolitics while remaining anchored in core principles: respect for sovereignty, consistent standards for allies and adversaries, and limits on the use of force except within international law.

It was an elegant formulation — realism without cynicism, pragmatism without abandoning principles.

But the value of policies and doctrines should not be measured by the elegance of their framing. They should be assessed by the clarity of the light they cast on the pathways they are meant to illuminate.

And the events of the past week suggest that the Davos framework sheds very little light on the decisions it is supposed to guide.

In the wake of the Iran strikes, Canada endorsed the use of force by an ally without explaining how that action aligned with the principles invoked only weeks earlier. As political pressure mounted, the government adjusted its position — first emphasizing diplomacy, then stressing legal constraints, then raising the possibility of military support.

In Davos, Mr. Carney described Canada’s approach as one of “variable geometry” –– coalitions formed according to circumstances, interests and evolving realities.

The events of the past week suggest that for Mr. Carney, this variable geometry extends well beyond alliances.

The evidence is there. Confronted with its first real test, the Carney framework bent as events unfolded and tensions changed.

Defenders of the Davos doctrine will argue that this is simply realism at work. They will say that middle powers must navigate a world defined by shifting alliances and unpredictable crises.

This is true. And there is no doubt that the stakes are high.

But realism is a moving target. It shifts with circumstances, alliances and political cycles. Untethered from bedrock principles, it becomes little more than a justification for improvisation — a polite way of saying that policy will be adjusted as events dictate.

And when a country’s foreign policy becomes a series of never-ending recalibrations in response to shifting perceptions of the real world, the framework meant to guide decisions collapses.

Like a house of cards.

Mr. Carney’s Narrow Path

Mr. Carney’s Narrow Path

Mark Carney’s Davos speech drew a standing ovation from an audience of heads of state, business leaders, and global elites. It was an ambitious speech: carefully constructed, intellectually confident, and rhetorically effective. But it was also revealing of the tensions and contradictions embedded in Mr. Carney’s own worldview.

Mark Carney addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos

From the outset, he framed his argument around a blunt premise: that responsible leaders must see the world as it is, not as they would like it to be. And yet, it is precisely here that the tension begins. Because seeing the world clearly does not inevitably lead to a single conclusion or a unitary vision.

Mark Carney’s speech laid out a stark vision of the post-war world order: The rules-based international order is fraying; rivalry among great powers is intensifying; multilateral institutions on which middle powers have long relied are weakening. Drawing on Václav Havel’s sign in the window metaphor, he condemned the rituals and false assurances of a system that many states continue to praise publicly while privately acknowledging that it no longer functions as advertised.

The diagnosis itself is neither false nor naïve. Few serious observers would argue today that the postwar international order was a model of enlightened governance or moral consistency. It was unequal, often hypocritical, and applied unevenly. But it did possess a critical virtue: it maintained a strategic balance.

For the West, this imperfect order long served as a practical framework for defending values deemed fundamental — the primacy of law, restraint in the use of force, predictability in trade, and the legitimacy of common institutions. These values were not always respected but violating them carried costs.

It is precisely this system of constraints and counterweights that Donald Trump is helping dismantle. Not by exposing the system’s hypocrisy but by openly rejecting its limits, norms, and guardrails. By replacing the language of rules with the language of raw power, he is shattering a tacit pact that, for all its flaws, has continued to govern international behaviour for the last 80 years.

This is where Mr. Carney’s analysis becomes more problematic.

By dismissing the rules-based order as a “fiction” and urging states to stop “living a lie,” he risks conflating a legitimate critique of state hypocrisy with the abandonment of the fragile equilibrium that hypocrisy itself helped sustain. Under the banner of realism, he calls for a rapid reconfiguration of alliances, an enhanced reliance on bilateral and plurilateral deals, a sharp expansion of military capacity and an assertive pursuit of strategic autonomy.

Each of these moves can be defended on its own. Taken together, however, they point toward a more openly transactional world — precisely the outcome Mr. Carney claims to want to avoid.

The contrast with several European leaders is instructive. The pragmatism of Emmanuel Macron or Friedrich Merz is shaped by a far more immediate reality: Russian nuclear missiles aimed at their capitals and a hot war being fought on their doorstep. They, too, see the world as it is — not as they would like it to be. But confronted with direct existential risks, they draw a different conclusion: not to discard the rules-based order, but to reinforce it and adapt it to the new circumstances precisely because its erosion carries costs they cannot afford to ignore.

Mr. Carney’s realism is also shaped by Canada’s own historical experience —  that of a country that has not seen a foreign war fought on its territory for more than two centuries. That distance confers analytical freedom, but it also creates a blind spot. What may appear from Ottawa as clear-eyed realism can look elsewhere like an unacceptable strategic gamble.

This is the narrow path Mr. Carney must now navigate.

In rejecting nostalgia and preaching realism, he must take care not to become Donald Trump’s unwitting partner in dismantling the postwar international order, contributing through technocratic adaptation to what Trump pursues through disruption and contempt.

Threading this needle will require prudence and the recognition that certain fictions, however imperfect, have at times prevented far more brutal realities from taking hold.