End of the global order: Canada calls on the middle powers to react

We seem to be reminded every day that we live in an era of rivalry between great powers, that the rule-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

And this aphorism from Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.

And in the face of this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to adapt, to avoid trouble, to hope that acquiescence buys security.

Well, he will not.

So what are our options?

In 1978, Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called 'The Power of the Powerless', and in it he posed a simple question: how did the communist system stand up?

And his answer began with a fruit seller.

Every morning, this shopkeeper hangs a sign in his window: 'Workers of the world unite'. He doesn't believe it, nobody believes it, but he puts up the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal complacency, to get ahead. And because every shopkeeper in every street does the same, the system persists - not only through violence, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they know in private to be false.

Havel called this 'living a lie'.

The power of the system does not come from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to act as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops acting, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to remove their signs.

For decades, countries like Canada thrived 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 this, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew that the story of the rules-based international order was partly false: that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that the rules of trade were applied asymmetrically. And we knew that international law was applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped to provide public goods, open sea routes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for dispute settlement frameworks.

So, we put the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and largely avoided exposing the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This pact no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the middle of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have exposed the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, major powers have begun to use economic integration as a weapon, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, and supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live in 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 is under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions: that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, finance and supply chains.

And this impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, supply itself with energy or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you have to protect yourself.

But let us take a clear look at where this leads.

A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If the great powers abandon even the appearance of rules and values for the unimpeded pursuit of their own power and interests, the gains of transnationalism will become harder to replicate.

Hegemons cannot continuously monetise their relationships.

Allies will diversify to defend themselves against uncertainty.

They will buy insurance, increase options to rebuild sovereignty - a sovereignty that used to be rule-based, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to resist pressure.

This room knows that this is a classic example of risk management. Risk management has a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can be shared.

Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than having everyone build their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive-sum. And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether we adapt to the new reality - we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Now Canada was among the first to hear the alarm bells, leading us to fundamentally change our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old comfortable assumption, that our geography and alliance affiliations automatically conferred prosperity and security - that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach is based on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, called 'value-based realism'.

Or to put it another way, we aim both to be principled and pragmatic - to be principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic in recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all our values.

So, we are engaging broadly, strategically, with our eyes wide open. We are actively facing the world as it is, not waiting for a world as we would like it to be.

We are calibrating our relationships so that their depth reflects our values, and we are prioritising a broad commitment to maximising our influence, given how fluid the world is right now, the risks this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer relying only on the strength of our values.

We are building that strength at home.

Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on income, capital gains, and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are accelerating a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond. We are doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade, and we are doing it in ways that build our industries.

And we are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a global strategic partnership with the EU, including membership of SAFE, the European Defence Procurement Agreements. We signed 12 other trade and security agreements on four continents in six months. In recent days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, the Philippines and Mercosur.

We are also doing something else. To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So, on Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly by Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future.

Our commitment to NATO Article 5 is unwavering, so we are working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic Gate, to make the northern and western flanks of the alliance even more secure, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in radar, submarines, aircraft and 'boots on the ground', 'boots on the ice'.

Canada strongly opposes tariffs on Greenland and calls for targeted talks to achieve our shared goals of security and prosperity in the Arctic.

On plurilateral trade, we are leading efforts to build a bridge between the Trans Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we are forming buyers' clubs anchored in the G7 so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supplies. And on Ai, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we are not ultimately forced to choose between hegemons and hyper-scalers.

This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it based on their institutions. It is building coalitions that work - issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.

In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.

What it is doing is creating a dense network of connections between trade, investment, culture, which we can count on for future challenges and opportunities.

I argue that the middle powers must act together, because if we are not at the table, we are on the menu.

But I would also say that the great powers for now can afford to go it alone. They have large markets, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. The middle powers do not.

But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from a position of weakness. We accept what is offered to us. We compete among ourselves to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It is the acting out of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of rivalry between great powers, the countries in the middle have a choice - compete with each other, or combine to create a third way that makes an impact.

We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong if we choose to use them together - which brings me back to Havel.

What does it mean for the intermediate powers to live the truth?

First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking the rules-based international order as if it still works as advertised. Call it what it is - a system of intensifying rivalry between great powers, in which the most powerful pursue their own interests, using economic integration as coercion.

It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticise economic intimidation from one direction, but remain silent when it comes from another, we are holding the sign in the window.

It means building what we say we believe in, instead of waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and arrangements that work as described. And it means reducing the leverage that allows coercion - that is, building a strong domestic economy. This should be the immediate priority of every government.

And international diversification is not just economic prudence, it is a material basis for honest foreign policy, because countries earn the right to maintain principled positions by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.

So we come to Canada. Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are among the largest and most sophisticated investors in the world. In other words, we have capital, talent... we also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.

Canada is a functioning pluralist society. Our public space is loud, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but. A partner that builds and values relationships over the long term.

And we have something else. We have the perception of what is happening and the determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture requires more than adaptation. It requires honesty about the world as it is.

We are removing the sign from the window. We know that the old order will not return. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that out of the rift we can build something bigger, better, stronger, fairer. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power.

But we also have something - the ability to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

This is the path of Canada. We choose it openly and with confidence, and it is a road that is wide open to any country willing to walk it with us. Thank you very much.

(translation made with the help of AI)