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Moving on from Davos

Moving on from Davos

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Last Saturday, Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a statement declaring that “Canada supports the United States” in its strikes against Iran.

Two days later in New Delhi, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand struck a noticeably different tone. Carefully avoiding the question of the legality of the strikes, she spoke of the need for a diplomatic solution and reminded reporters that Canada would not participate in any military operations.

Then on Tuesday – after avoiding reporters in New Delhi — the prime minister himself clarified that Canada’s support had been given “reluctantly” and in a “limited” way, while calling for de-escalation and respect for international law.

The original statement has now been reinterpreted after the fact. On Tuesday, Mr. Carney even felt compelled to specify that Canada’s position had not been a “blank cheque” — a defence that is all the more revealing given that no one had accused him of signing one.

This was more than a recalibration. This was a retreat. And the explanations that followed it, inevitably bring us back to the speech the prime minister delivered in Davos only a few weeks ago.

At Davos, Mr. Carney did not deliver a routine address. He deliberately offered an ambitious reading of the current geopolitical moment, denouncing the “fictions” of the old international order while calling on middle powers to move beyond comfortable complacency.

The speech was widely praised in Canada and abroad as a clear articulation of a worldview suited to a fragmented world: a “values-based realpolitik” grounded in respect for sovereignty, the consistent application of the same standards to allies and adversaries, and a prohibition on the use of force except in accordance with the UN Charter.

It was presented as a framework suited to the Trump era — a promise of coherence in a world unsettled by incoherence and chaos.

Yet only weeks later, in the aftermath of the U.S. strikes, he endorsed the use of force by an ally without explaining how that action fits within the principles invoked in Davos.

At Davos, Mr. Carney quoted Václav Havel and called on countries to take the “sign” out of the shop window — to stop pretending. Nations, he argued, should face reality and apply the same rules to everyone.

Yet that is precisely what Canada’s position on the Iran strikes — and the subsequent clarifications — make difficult to sustain.

Those – including the Prime Minister — now turning to the Davos speech to explain the recent twists in Canadian foreign policy will invoke realism. They will argue that the world has changed, that the old order is broken, that middle powers must navigate shifting power balances, and that strategic caution is unavoidable.

But realism is a moving concept. It changes with circumstances, partners, and political cycles. By its nature, it is transactional.

And in a world where the only constant is the speed of change, a foreign policy built on constant adjustments eventually loses its anchor.

A foreign policy cannot be grounded in the prohibition of the use of force while remaining silent when force is used by a convenient ally.

One can defend the American strikes. One can condemn them. One can avoid judgment. But one cannot simultaneously proclaim a new normative framework and avoid the implications that follow from it.

The Davos speech was ambitious, elegant, and carefully constructed. It offered an appealing analytical framework for a fractured world.

But an analytical framework – elegant as it may be — does not a foreign policy make.

In that speech, Mr. Carney described an approach based on “variable geometry”: different coalitions depending on the issue, built around shared interests and values.

Yet when variable geometry applies not only to alliances but also to principles, the problem becomes something else entirely.

If principles are always subordinated to circumstances, they cease to be principles. They become variables.

At that point, strategic flexibility becomes indistinguishable from the very complacency Mr. Carney condemned in Davos.

Moving beyond Davos does not mean rejecting the ambition of a clear-eyed foreign policy. It means recognizing that a policy constantly adjusted to shifting winds is meaningless.

When Applause Comes Before Principles

When Applause Comes Before Principles

Prime Minister Mark Carney and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre responded to the U.S. capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in markedly different tones.

Mr. Carney welcomed the operation, then called for respect for international law, sovereignty and democratic self-determination. Mr. Poilievre offered unqualified praise for President Donald Trump.

The distinction matters. But so does what unites the two responses.

Both reflect a dangerous and increasingly familiar tendency: the normalization of behaviour that weakens the normative guardrails meant to constrain the conduct of states and governments.

In Mr. Carney’s case, applause for the capture and rendition of a foreign head of state came first, followed by pious invocations of the rules-based international order. In Mr. Poilievre’s, enthusiasm displaced restraint entirely.

The difference is real. The common ground is more troubling.

When breaches of international norms are greeted with approval and only later qualified with caveats, the caveats lose their force. Ordering matters. Principles invoked after the fact rarely survive first contact with power.

For Canada, it is against that backdrop that the U.S. operation in Venezuela must be assessed.

In the hours following Nicolás Maduro’s capture, President Trump and members of his administration framed the action as justice in motion — a law-enforcement operation designed to bring a fugitive to account, not the overthrow of a head of state.

The language was familiar and reassuring, drawing on two enduring elements of American political mythology: the belief that the United States is uniquely entrusted with the defence of law and liberty, and the conviction that American power carries moral purpose beyond its borders.

The mask slipped almost immediately.

Within hours of the capture, President Trump indicated that the United States was already working with Venezuela’s vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, describing conversations in which she offered to “do whatever you need,” and adding pointedly that she “doesn’t really have a choice.”

In the same exchange with reporters, Trump dismissed Venezuela’s leading democratic opposition figure, María Corina Machado, as lacking the support or respect required to govern.

Soon after, the president dispensed with even the pretence of moral justification, openly acknowledging that American involvement in Venezuela was about oil.

What had been framed as justice delivered in defence of law and liberty was revealed instead as the pursuit of strategic and economic advantage.

The transactional character of this moment — and the lesson it carries for Canada — is underscored by the conditions under which Venezuela’s democratic opposition must now operate.

María Corina Machado, an internationally recognized advocate for democratic change and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, publicly praised President Trump following her award.

Yet within hours of Maduro’s capture, Machado and her movement were summarily dismissed by the same president whose favour they had carefully sought. The speed and ease with which that dismissal occurred is instructive.

That is the deeper lesson for Canada. In a transactional order, fealty buys access, not assurance. Praise secures attention, not commitment. When power is exercised without restraint, yesterday’s ally can become today’s adversary, and yesterday’s cause can be readily abandoned.

For Canada and for our partners across the Western alliance, this latest act of imperial power, predicated on the thinnest of rationales, must be viewed with alarm.

What is at stake is the continued erosion of the institutional, political and moral guardrails that have underpinned the international order

As former foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy warned, silence in the face of norm-breaking does not preserve stability. It invites vulnerability. Canada’s former ambassador to Venezuela made the same point: abandoning rules-based action has consequences.

Deference may secure short-term, transactional returns. It offers no protection over the longer term. A world in which justice, freedom and democracy become infinitely adaptable justifications rather than bedrock principles is one in which sovereignty is more exposed, not more secure.

For Canada, vigilance does not mean panic or posturing. It means resisting the temptation to applaud first and qualify later — and recognizing that the defence of institutional, legal and moral norms may be the only real bulwark against the erosion of our own sovereignty.