Canada's Carney Warns Against ‘Living Within the Lie’

COLOMBO (News 1st): Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that the world has moved from “a nice story” to a “brutal reality,” where great‑power geopolitics operate without constraints and the long‑touted rules‑based order is fading.

Yet, he argued, middle powers are not powerless—they can build a new order grounded in human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.

Carney framed his message with stark clarity:

“We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” He said countries can no longer “go along to get along,” nor assume that compliance buys safety. Instead, he urged a sober reassessment of strategy: “The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.”

“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry… That the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must. …Faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t. So, what are our options?”

Carney reflected on decades of prosperity under the rules‑based international order—its institutions, principles, and predictability—acknowledging that countries like Canada joined, praised, and benefited from that architecture. But he also conceded the partial fiction at its core: that the strong often exempted themselves, trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and international law was applied unevenly depending on who stood accused—or victimized.

“This fiction was useful. And American hegemony… helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and frameworks for resolving disputes. …We participated in the rituals… and largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works.”

Describing a cascade of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics, Carney warned that economic integration itself has been weaponized: tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, and supply chains turned into vulnerabilities.

“You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”

With the WTO, UN, and COP—the very architecture of collective problem solving—now “under threat,” Carney said many countries are drawing the same conclusions: they must build strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, finance, and supply chains. But he cautioned that a world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable. Carney argued that if great powers discard even the pretense of rules and values, the gains from transactionalism will diminish. Allies will diversify to hedge uncertainty and rebuild sovereignty—not merely through treaties, but through the capacity to withstand pressure.

“Risk management comes at a price. But that cost of strategic autonomy—of sovereignty—can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.”

Positioning middle powers at the heart of the solution, Carney urged adaptation with “values‑based realism”—what he called being principled and pragmatic. That means holding firm on sovereignty and territorial integrity, prohibiting the use of force except under the UN Charter, and respecting human rights, while still managing risks and building resilience together.

“Canadians know our old assumptions—that geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security—are no longer valid. …Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed ‘values‑based realism’… principled in our commitment to fundamental values, and pragmatic in execution.”