Canada stands fully behind Greenland and Denmark, and the world’s middle powers need to act together to resist coercion from aggressive superpowers, said Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Greenland and Denmark have a “unique right to determine the future of Greenland,” Carney said in excerpts from 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 effectively dead, Carney said, meaning Canada and other countries have no choice but to create new alliances to oppose pressure and intimidation tactics by great 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 — NATO’s collective defense clause — is “unwavering,” he added.
Carney’s speech counters 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 speech came just hours after French leader Emmanuel Macron criticized Trump’s trade strategy, which includes the threat of new tariffs on European countries unless the US can acquire Greenland, the huge Arctic island that is part of Denmark. During the early hours of the morning, Trump published an image of a map in which both Greenland and Canada appear covered by the American flag.
Faced with intimidation tactics by larger nations, “there is a strong tendency for countries to comply to avoid problems. To accommodate. To avoid confusion. To hope that compliance buys security,” Carney said. “It won’t.”
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“The middle powers need to act together, because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”, said the prime minister at the meeting.
Canada and Mexico are also preparing for negotiations with the White House on the North American trade agreement, and American officials have publicly considered scrapping the pact to pursue bilateral talks instead.
Trump is expected to attend the meeting on Wednesday, the same day Carney leaves Davos. It is not yet known whether the two leaders will meet.
“Weapon of coercion”
At Davos, Carney urged world leaders and companies to start “calling reality by its name.” He cited a famous essay by Czech dissident Václav Havel that described how the communist system was sustained because people accepted lying to each other, and to themselves, about reality.
Global leaders should not fall into the same trap when talking about the current geopolitical landscape, Carney said.
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“Stop invoking the ‘rules-based international order’ as if it still works as promised,” he said. “Call the system for what it is: a period in which the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”
He alluded to a “strategic partnership” he signed last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in which China agreed to reduce tariffs on Canadian agricultural products, while Canada reduced tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles.
“We are engaging in a broad, strategic way, with our eyes open,” he said in his speech in Davos. “We actively face the world as it is, rather than waiting for the world as we wish it to be.”
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Canada is also working on new trade and security agreements with India, Qatar, Thailand, the Philippines and with 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 develop large 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 rules will remain strong — if we choose to exercise it together,” he said.
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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 immense fiscal capacity to act decisively.”
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