Mark Carney warns of ‘rupture’ to global order as Donald Trump rattles allies

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The rules-based international order is undergoing a “rupture, not a transition”, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Tuesday, as he urged the world’s “middle powers” to unite in response.

Carney did not mention Donald Trump by name but his speech at Davos won a standing ovation from executives attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, where the US president will speak on Wednesday, days after threatening European allies with new tariffs if they do not accept his quest to acquire Greenland.

The Canadian leader pointed to the “fiction” of a global order with “American hegemony” at its centre, but said an era of multilateralism was ending as groups such as the World Trade Organization and UN became “greatly diminished”.  

“Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid,” Carney said.

“Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”

The blunt intervention from the leader of the US’s second-largest trading partner comes as European capitals wrestle with a response to Trump’s belligerence over Greenland and efforts to take control of the Arctic island from Denmark, a Nato ally.

Denmark has sent extra troops to the semi-autonomous territory amid the escalating tensions. The White House has refused to rule out taking the island by force.

The frictions between allies have arisen as Trump seeks to reorder global trade and tests the strength of economic and military alliances that have shaped geopolitics since the end of the second world war.

Carney, whose Liberal Party won an election last year on a promise to defend Canada from US tariffs, has sought to placate Trump as he tries to negotiate a trade deal with the president.

Trump has also repeatedly talked of Canada as a “51st state”, prompting boycotts of US goods by Canadians and a sharp fall in their travel to the US.

Earlier on Tuesday Trump shared a photograph of a map with Venezuela, Canada and Greenland covered with the US flag on his Truth Social account. The US earlier this month captured Venezuela’s leader and claimed its oil industry.

“You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” Carney said in Davos.

“Middle powers” including Canada must co-operate with each other because “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”, he said.

“Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.”

Senior European political figures hailed Carney’s comments at the WEF.

“That speech today was real leadership,” wrote Alastair Campbell, spin-doctor to former UK prime minister Tony Blair, posted on X. Carl Bildt, the co-chair European Council on Foreign Relations and former Swedish prime minister, said it was “very important”.

Carney travelled to Beijing last week for a landmark meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, the first official meeting in almost a decade, as Ottawa tries to rekindle relations to diversify away from US trade.

He told reporters during the visit that China was a more “predictable” partner than the US and the Canada-China partnership was part of an emerging “new world order”.

The Canadian leader quoted Thucydides and Václav Havel — the former Czech president, poet and jailed dissident — in Davos, saying countries such as Canada must pivot to avoid further “coercion” from powerful actors.

“When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.”

Canadian commentators also welcomed Carney’s speech.

“This is the best speech by a world leader that I have read in a very long time. Rhetorically, at least, he has met the geopolitical moment,” said Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained by the Chinese government for almost three years from 2018.