Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and French president Emmanuel Macron are being hailed for finally speaking out against bullying and the undermining of multilateral institutions by US President Donald Trump. Carney especially earned much praise for his speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he said “the old order is not coming back” — referring to a world where it was assumed that there were accepted international rules that each of the world’s nations agreed to play by. He then called on “middle powers” such as Canada and, presumably most of Western Europe, to speak in one voice against superpowers such as the US and China who believed in running the world along the “might is right” principle.
“Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” he said, to much applause from the audience attending his speech on Tuesday. He then went on to confirm Canada’s support for Denmark’s continued control of Greenland and said, as a member of Nato, it would stand to protect Denmark as a fellow alliance member. While it is encouraging to hear the likes of Canada and France finally speaking up, we believe that their lack of consistency is what is going to incentivise geopolitical bullies against changing their ways.
When Trump’s US ignored international law and attacked another sovereign state, the “middle powers” spoke in riddles and refused to openly condemn the abduction of a head of state. They chose to look the other way because the target at that time was Venezuela, a badly-run Latin American country recently plagued by political and economic turmoil. Yet the principles of “the rules-based world” are clear, a country’s sovereignty is respected and protected no matter what we think of those who run it.
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Hence his intended assault on Greenland and Denmark. If we are to build a better and fairer world, those countries claiming commitment to multilateralism and “the rule of law” need to be a little more consistent in speaking up when things go wrong.
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