It was a moment of global clarity. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to the world’s political and economic elite gathered in Davos this week described global realities, past and present, with a candour and nuance rarely heard from a serving politician.
The message was twofold.
First, Carney made clear that the world has changed, and the old comfortable ways of global politics are not coming back. Those who wait for sanity to return are waiting in vain. We are in a world increasingly shaped by the threat and the use of hard power. All states must accept that reality.
Despite this, Carney’s second and more hopeful message was that while the globally powerful may act unilaterally, others — notably “middle powers” like Canada — are not helpless.
By finding ways to co-operate on areas of shared interest, states like Canada can pool their limited resources to build what amounts to a flexible network of co-operative ties. Taken together they can provide an alternative to simply rolling over and taking whatever great powers like the United States dole out.
I think anyone who thinks in absolutes of saying he’s “flip flopping” is a fool and have no concept of nuance and pragmatism. Even more so after he gave that speech, especially f you didn’t catch the part where he said “such classic risk management comes at a price”.
What we’re seeing, I believe, is risk management in action. The “price” we’re paying is likely every single piece of policy that is short term (as in 5-10 years IMO) detrimental. But can be diverted course when things improve. But that’s also up to us to vote for people that are principled rather than voting by emotions. The horizon of a government should be long term and not short term.
There was no capitulation. The take is just stupid and naive.
Canada needs to build lasting relationships with democratic allies like the European Union, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and others. Carney’s visit last week in China and the deal was a mistake imo. It risks to contribute to Canadian canola farmers ongoing dependence from a single market that is governed by a dictatorial government, and could make Ottawa vulnerable for future coercion as we have seen in other countries.
That’s silly, you can’t just decouple from both of the world’s largest economies. The EU deindustrialized itself, and Australia and New Zealand aren’t exactly economic superpowers. Also, Japan is a de-facto one party state with a far-right government.
The smart thing to do is to play the superpowers against each other - distance yourself from the US as much as we can (which we of course can only do to an extent), and normalize relations with China. We would be fools to continue to blindly follow US foreign policy while the US threatens to invade us.
This is how China argues, but it doesn’t make sense. There is no such thing as a ‘normal’ relationship with a dictatorship like China (or the US). Canada needs to diversify its trade toward reliable partners in the democratic world. China will take advantage at the cost of Canadian citizens as soon as it can.
The rest of the “democratic” world supported Israel as they bombed Gaza to rubble, and supported America in basically every murderous invasion and regime change of the last 80 years, right up until America threatened to take Greenland - suddenly it’s different if America comes for someone in the club. All the “democratic west” amounts to is a few rich countries run by rich pedophiles, but God forbid we do business with big bad China, right?
I moved from Lebanon 8 years ago with my Canadian wife, and I was happy to leave that unstable region with the worst neighbours. Alas, I’m fated to live next to terrible neighbours again. I hope Canada will strengthen the relations with the rest of the world, and never turn to the US again. And as an anti-capitalist and anti-facist, I hope Canada does not become like the US.
I mean, look on the bright side. At least the unhinged fascists to the south aren’t bombing us right now, unlike Lebanon’s case. It’s not ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’, it’s ‘out of the frying pan, into a different, less hot frying pan’. Could be worse!
For now. If not militarily, they might get us politically by turning our politicians into their fashion, and thus take control of us.
Hell, they already had us, and we just didn’t know it. Every western country was in lockstep with the US, especially in foreign policy. Now the US has decided that soft power is woke, and everyone has to publicly submit to them. This could at least offer us an opportunity to break free, though the odds could be better.
I don’t know if you are on FB (I hadn’t used it for a long time but now I’m active again, especially after being suspended on reddit, don’t judge me 😳) but there’s a lot of Canadian posts asking if we are ready to defend Canada against a possible US invasion, join the army, that sort of talk. Which makes me wonder if our taxes are going to be spent on the military instead of our public services (mainly the healthcare system which is not doing too well). But honestly I don’t think we stand a chance against them, unless we form alliances with Europe. I don’t know I’m too hungry now I can’t focus.
I got rid of it years ago, thankfully, but I’ve heard the talk. As it stands, we wouldn’t make it a week outside of a guerrilla war, and I don’t know if we have a strong enough society or motivated enough populace for guerrilla war. We could make ourselves a hard enough target for them to avoid if we invested heavily in expanding the military, but where are we going to get the weapons? America? They could turn them off remotely I’m sure. China would be a good option, but America might invade us right away once they found out we were doing that. It’s a big problem.
Even if we could get the Europeans to do anything more than write a strongly-worded letter, they don’t have much in the way of military might themselves. Frankly, I don’t trust them to help unless something changes, but the ticket is deterrence. We need to make ourselves a hard enough target that the Americans aren’t willing to try to take a bite, and it’s going to take a combination of alliances (we should ally with Mexico, since America is coming for them too) and armaments.
Regarding shifting social spending to defence, I think it’s a bad idea, at least without other major changes elsewhere. Part of our problem is motivation - we’ve had 40 years of neoliberalism telling us the state owes us nothing besides tax credits and we owe the state nothing besides paying our taxes and obeying the law. We’re already halfway to losing public healthcare, so we won’t even be able to fight for that. We need a fundamental paradigm shift to save this country, and I’m not sure if we have the will or the imagination.
Well said. With the way things are going globally, climate change, AI takeover, I don’t know what to worry about more. Fun days.
At least it’s interesting to watch!
Ah, so you brought it with you!
/s
Heheh sorry guys i jinxed everyone.
In some ways, you lived next to the US then, and you live next to the US now. :D
True. There’s no escape from those fuckers.
The sun never sets on the shithead empire
Every Lebanese person I’ve ever met has been rad AF. Please explain.
Explain what exactly?
How every single person from your country is so nice! I don’t understand. I’ve never met a single Lebanese person that was anything but funny and sweet and kind.
You haven’t met enough i suppose. There’s a lot of shit people from Lebanon just as from anywhere else in the world, no matter the race or religion. I’ve met wonderful Canadians and some bad ones, same with US folks. I appreciate your nice words though, it’s positive, if this was reddit i would have been attacked by now. Thanks :) stay good!
Why you’re all rad, I presume
I was born that way, what else can I say :)
I feel this is a pivotal moment in history. If we can somehow avoid an American invasion, we can help build a more just and equitable world, one that can stand in front of giants and say, nuh uh with a waggy finger!
The key part comes from what Carney said about living in the lie: we can’t just give lip service to those principles, like we did before.
I honestly have no idea what that would look like. Should we have put boots on the ground in Ukraine? What about the CCP’s oppression of Uyghurs? Okay, now climate change?
Maybe the answer is that we be less principled, but honest about where we’re willing to act.
Maybe the answer is that we be less principled, but honest about where we’re willing to act.
This. He said that in unambiguous terms that being able to act on principle is a right won on the back of having eliminated your vulnerability to coercion.
That means a country that wants to act in principled manner must be able to produce what it needs to survive and defend itself. Otherwise demanding country X do Y when you depend on X for your survival is just propaganda theatre produced for whoever it placates. We’re very far from that, so we’re likely dropping the theatre.
In theory we have a principled stance on Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan, and whatever is going down in Myanmar. We don’t depend on those countries, but I would be very surprised if we change our verbiage or actions toward those countries.
I think it’s gonna be case by case basis depending on the expected blowback.
Given that Carney will allow corporations to rule Canada with an iron fist it will only be a different kind of tyranny. Between a rock and a hard place and all that.
God. I hate living in this timeline.
I think we aren’t as powerless as you think and that we have both done something that seems small but is a step in the direction of freedom from those corporations. We have joined a platform not owned by them. We have freedom to choose and make our thoughts heard still. So elbows up into the jaw of cynicism.
I donated to Avi Lewis for NDP. I voted NDP before and going forward they are the only ones getting my vote.
but is a step in the direction of freedom from those corporations.
The Liberal party introduced Bill C-15 which literally allows any corporation to be exempted from any law.
https://lemmy.ca/post/59019030
They know who they want to rule us.
90%+ of every policy in every country in the world is written at the request of corporations.
Usually guided by McKinsey, Bain, or BCG.
Us here, yes. That said parent’s talking about what Carney might do to achieve the vision of regaining sovereignty and that’s one likely future given similar historical conditions. If that’s where it goes, we’d have to do a lot more to resist getting crushed by the corporate machine than we’re doing today. There’s historical templates for that too so there’s reason for optimism. E.g. radical unionism.
I share your optimism though. I also think that barring invasion, we’ll be alright and possibly have decent future. At least until climate change destabilizes the world. :D
Do people not get that he needs to play nice with Trump? Like what do you want him to say to the guy? “Go fuck yourself!”?
Maybe if we had a similarly sized military….
In hindsight it’s all water under the bridge.
I wasn’t expecting Carney to be like the Ford and call him a pedophile protector, or to explicitly label the US as a military threat… But I can’t deny I was disappointed of how easily he was able to be a doormat in response to Trump’s sudden inexplicable gripe against the Digital Services Tax. And I would have liked him to drop the pretenses earlier, of hoping (beyond hope) Trump would pull back on his self-imposed tariff foolishness, by the mere virtue of Canada being a reasonable negotiating partner.
I mean, I would love for Carney to waltz in the white house, sock Trump in the mouth, and give him the Stone Cold stunner, followed by the people’s elbow.
But it’s not going to happen.
What a waste of money that would be. Canada’s military is appropriately sized. The US has the massive insecurity complex. Russia isn’t really a threat. China Is.
I’m not saying we should have a similarly sized military. I’m saying it’s a bad idea to tell your neighbour tyrant directly to fuck off when he’s on a rampage, and that if our military was comparable then maybe you could expect him to say that.
Canada having a military or weapons on par with the US would make them even more insecure. They like to play the all powerful big shots. We let them.
Everyone’s seemingly got this fantasy of walking up to Homelander or Mr. Incredible, punching them in the face, and walking away triumphant to… something. Nobody jerks it to breaking their hand on the superpowered jaw and then getting a hole kicked through their chest, even if that’s what would happen.
