Canada is squarely alongside Greenland and Denmark, and mid-sized powers around the world must work together to resist the coercion of aggressive superpowers, said Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Greenland and Denmark have a “unique right to determine Greenland’s future,” Carney said in excerpts of a speech prepared to be delivered at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Recent events have shown that the “rules-based international order” is, in practice, dead, Carney said, meaning that Canada and other countries have no choice but to forge new alliances to oppose coercive and intimidating tactics by the major powers.
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Canada is working with partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to ensure the security of the alliance’s northern and western flanks, and its commitment to Article 5—the NATO collective defense clause—is “unshakeable,” he added.
Carney’s speech rebutted President Donald Trump’s statements that the United States needs to control Greenland, although the written text does not mention Trump or the United States by name. The remarks came a few hours after French President Emmanuel Macron criticized Trump’s trade strategy, which includes threats of new tariffs on European countries unless the United States can acquire Greenland, the huge Arctic island that is part of Denmark. During the early hours, Trump posted an image of a map in which both Greenland and Canada appear covered by the American flag.
In the face of intimidation tactics by larger nations, “there is a strong tendency for countries to yield to avoid trouble. Accommodate. Avoid confusion. Hope that obedience buys security,” Carney said. “It won’t.”
“Mid-sized powers need to act together, because if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,” the prime minister said at the gathering.
Canada and Mexico are also preparing for negotiations with the White House on the North American trade agreement, and American officials have publicly contemplated dismantling the pact to pursue bilateral talks in its place.
Trump is set to attend the meeting on Wednesday, the same day Carney will leave Davos. It is not yet known whether the two leaders will meet.
“Weapon of coercion”
In Davos, Carney urged world leaders and companies to “call the reality by its name.” He cited Václav Havel’s famous essay describing how the communist system stayed afloat because people accepted lying to one another, and to themselves, about reality.
Lideres globais não deveriam cair na mesma armadilha ao falar sobre o atual cenário geopolítico, Carney disse.
“Stop invoking the ‘rules-based international order’ as if it still functioned as promised,” he said. “Call the system what it is: a period in which the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a coercive weapon.”
He alluded to a “strategic partnership” he signed last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, under which China agreed to reduce tariffs on Canadian agricultural products, while Canada reduced tariffs on electric vehicles made in China.
“We are engaging in a broad, strategic, and open-eyed manner,” he said in the Davos speech. “We are actively facing the world as it is, rather than waiting for the world to be as we would like it to be.”
Canada is also working on new trade and security deals with India, Qatar, Thailand, the Philippines, and blocs such as Mercosur and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), he said.
He also cited Canada’s initiatives to significantly increase defense spending and to develop large-scale energy and trade infrastructure projects.
“We must not allow the rise of military power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and the rules will remain strong—if we choose to exercise it together,” he said.
Carney listed some of Canada’s strategic advantages, including large reserves of conventional energy and critical minerals.
“Our pension funds are among the largest and most sophisticated investors in the world,” he said. “We have capital, talent, and a government with enormous fiscal capacity to act decisively.”
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