Rupture, not a transition
And not a doctrine. Something rarer
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos left quite the impression today:
It’s already being called a doctrine, at least in my LinkedIn and Substack feeds. And while it’s a hell of a speech, I’m not convinced it’s a doctrine yet. It is, however, the first step required before a doctrine can stick: an admission that the operating system Canada and other middle powers has relied on doesn’t work anymore, and that rebuilding it will require trade-offs we’ve dodged for generations.
And that’s why it landed. For me, at least.
Yes, it also landed because of the context of the last week. Mostly, it landed because it said out loud what heads of states and heads of government have spent the last year avoiding saying so clearly and so publicly—that the world we organized ourselves around is gone, and pretending otherwise has become risky, if not naive.
PM Carney could have played it soft. He could have hedged, noted the obvious that the world is changing, that power dynamics are evolving. No, he said it plainly, without sugar coating it: “we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
As a former speech writer, I’m a sucker for a good line. And that one line says it all. He shuts the door on the idea that we’re moving from one familiar phase to another. Transitions imply continuity. Ruptures don’t.
The inheritance money has dried up
For most of Canada’s modern history, power arrived quietly. Geography helped. Alliances helped more. The combination let us grow prosperous without constantly proving our strategic relevance or rebuilding our institutions from scratch.
That arrangement did more work than we acknowledged. It shaped how we funded defence, how we regulated our economy, how slow we let ourselves become.
Carney named the break cleanly: the assumption that geography and alliance membership automatically deliver prosperity and security no longer holds. Once you accept that argument, a lot of familiar arguments collapse. You can’t organize a country around inherited advantage once the inheritance stops paying out.
Why this speech feels different
Some will say it was inevitable. They’re half right. Recent events made silence impossible—economic coercion deployed openly, tariffs as strategic weapons, alliances turned conditional, even territorial sovereignty discussed as negotiable. Any prime minister would’ve had to address that, given the week’s events.
What makes this different is that it wasn’t dragged out under pressure. It felt planned, considered, almost restrained. That matters because reactive speeches can age badly—they answer the moment that forced them. Prepared speeches linger, especially when the diagnosis applies beyond your borders.
Whether this becomes doctrine depends on what follows, particularly in Europe. I don’t believe doctrine is declared. It only emerges when behaviour changes. We’re still far from that. We have, a very good speech.
The cost of “Variable Geometry”
The most ambitious idea here is also the most fragile: “variable geometry”—different coalitions for different problems, based on interests and values.
This is realism. It’s also uncomfortable. Flexible coalitions mean values won’t always align neatly. Compromise won’t be theoretical. Decisions that make strategic sense will sometimes sit poorly at home.
That tension hasn’t hit yet. It will when Canada deepens relationships that matter economically but challenge our moral self-image. Saying you’re prepared for that is one thing. Living through it is another.
This is a capability speech
And living it out domestically won’t be easy either. We have some serious capacity-building to do at home, not matter how positive the case the PM made in his speech about how Canada has pivoted in the last year.
A country that can’t rely on automatic guarantees has to rebuild power the old way: through capacity, competitiveness, and speed. The kind of stuff we excelled at during, and after the two World Wars. A military sized for reality, not reassurance. An economy that attracts capital because it’s decisive, not merely stable. Institutions that move faster, regulate with intent, block less by default.
This is the unglamorous work that follows an honest diagnosis. It’s also the work most governments delay because the costs are immediate and the benefits take time. Yes, Carney’s government has taken many important steps in this direction. But given the scope of the problem, he’s barely hit the 1km mark in an Ultramarathon race in the desert.
After the Rules
The rules-based international order depended on enforcement. That enforcement came from the United States. Remove it, and rules become optional.
Even if Canada, Europe, and much of the Global South agree on new standards, the major powers won’t bind themselves to them. That doesn’t mean chaos—it means leverage matters more than legitimacy, and capacity matters more than consensus.
Carney didn’t offer comfort on this. He didn’t try to revive the old language. He acknowledged the environment as it is.
That’s what made the speech consequential. It plainly accepted that the old one no longer applies—and that rebuilding will be harder than preserving ever was.