First of two parts
AT Davos’ World Economic Forum on Jan. 20, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney gave more than a great speech. For me, he gave the speech of the century.
It’s a speech that is as great as Martin Luther King Jr.’s epochal “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963 or Winston Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech from 1946. It is a 16-minute speech (you can also watch the insightful Q&A afterward in a longer post) available on YouTube. As the host said, there a few standing ovations given at Davos. The audience was aware they had witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime event. It was analytical and sober, free of drama and histrionics, which made its impact even greater. A serious tone for an epochal speech addressing our existential crisis given what many have felt since last year. The post-WW2 and post-Cold War
orders have ended. It was probably coming, but the US election in 2024 made it a certainty. What does that mean, what do we do and what happens now? PM Carney spoke with insight, honesty, humility and gravitas of the highest order. I wanted to write about this for my column on the 23rd and already had something else written for today, but I wanted both some time to reflect and listen again and again to the speech. The speech is so clear and powerful, so this article will mostly be quotes. Fortunately, the speech is in the public domain. What PM Carney said cannot be improved on. Bravissimo!
“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry — that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must. (Thucydides).” PM Carney then brings up a 1978 essay of then-dissident then-later president Vaclav Havel on “The Power of the Powerless” and how the communist system sustained itself and talks about a greengrocer.
“Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite.’ He doesn’t believe in it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists — not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false. Havel called this living within a lie. 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, this illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
“For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection. We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigor, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
“This fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
“So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works.
“Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
“The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied — the WTO, the UN, the COP, the very architecture of collective problem-solving — are under threat. As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. And this impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options. When the 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.
“And there’s another truth: If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty — sovereignty that was once grounded in rules but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
“This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sums.”
To be concluded on Feb. 6, 2026
The author is an independent director of the state-run Maharlika Investment Corp.
