Everyone likes someone who stands up to a bully. In a dramatic speech at the World Economic Forum last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood up to President Donald Trump’s unprecedented bullying of America’s historical allies in his quixotic quest for what he calls “ownership” of Greenland. The Davos crowd gave him a standing ovation.
Carney declared the present moment a “rupture,” not a transition in global cooperation. He announced Canada’s independence as a “middle power” from the “fiction” of American-led multilateralism. At the start of the speech, and in its conclusion, he invoked Soviet dissident Vaclav Havel speaking truth to power, and then he criticized “the power of the powerful”—meaning, the United States of Donald Trump.
The cheers on my social media feeds could not have been louder. And I admit that, at first blush, I was also moved by the speech. But soon after, re-reading the transcript, I started to have my doubts.