Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
“The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu."
Imploring an audience chock-full of European officials at the annual World Economic Forum to recognize that “nostalgia is not a strategy,” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada rallied middle powers—countries with economies similar to Canada—to bind together in the face of unilateral military and economic coercion by bigger powers. (Unspoken but clear among them: Trump’s America.)
In doing so, Carney painted a stark view of a new world in which old rules have been torn up, and countries should stop pretending otherwise. “We are in the midst of a rupture,” he said, “not a transition.”
His call to the world: Resist subordination to the “great powers” who “have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms.”
“The middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu."
Imploring an audience chock-full of European officials at the annual World Economic Forum to recognize that “nostalgia is not a strategy,” Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada rallied middle powers—countries with economies similar to Canada—to bind together in the face of unilateral military and economic coercion by bigger powers. (Unspoken but clear among them: Trump’s America.)
In doing so, Carney painted a stark view of a new world in which old rules have been torn up, and countries should stop pretending otherwise. “We are in the midst of a rupture,” he said, “not a transition.”
His call to the world: Resist subordination to the “great powers” who “have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms.”
