Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told political and business leaders in Davos that the US-led international system built after the second world war is breaking down and will not return. Speaking at the World Economic Forum a day before US President Donald Trump was due to address the gathering, Carney said the world is experiencing a fundamental rupture marked by growing rivalry between major powers and the steady erosion of the rules-based order.

Since entering Canadian politics in 2025, Carney has consistently warned that global politics would not revert to a pre-Trump status quo. In Davos, he reinforced that message without naming Trump directly, arguing that the shift under way is structural rather than temporary. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said, adding that nostalgia for the old system offers no solutions.

From Rules-Based Order to Power Politics

Carney acknowledged that countries like Canada had benefited for decades from the previous international framework, including from American dominance that helped sustain open sea lanes, financial stability, collective security and mechanisms for resolving disputes. That reality, he said, has now given way to a harsher environment.

According to Carney, the global system is increasingly defined by intense competition among great powers that use economic integration as a tool of pressure. Tariffs, financial infrastructure and supply chains are no longer neutral instruments but means of coercion. In this context, he warned that smaller and mid-sized countries can no longer assume that obedience or accommodation will guarantee their security. “Compliance will not buy safety,” he said bluntly.

For middle powers such as Canada, the question is not whether adaptation is necessary, but how it should be done. Carney rejected isolation and protectionism as insufficient responses, arguing instead for more ambitious cooperation among like-minded states. If middle powers are excluded from decision-making, he warned, they risk becoming objects rather than participants in global politics.

Middle Powers and Collective Action

Carney stressed that great powers can afford to act alone, relying on their economic scale, military strength and leverage to impose terms. Middle powers cannot. His message was that cooperation among such countries is no longer optional. Acting individually, they negotiate from weakness, accept unfavorable terms and compete with each other for approval. In his view, that dynamic amounts to a performance of sovereignty rather than its substance.

He outlined a strategy he described as “variable geometry”, based on forming flexible coalitions depending on the issue, shared interests and common values. This approach, he said, would allow countries like Canada to remain principled while navigating an unstable and unpredictable global landscape.