Mark Carney was right: if middle powers aren’t at the table, they’re on the menu. A credible ‘Trade NATO’ would make the great powers think twice.
At Davos earlier this year, Mark Carney delivered a stark warning: the rules-based international order no longer works and a new architecture is needed. We are living through a “rupture”, not a transition, in which great powers increasingly use tariffs, supply chains and economic dependence as tools of coercion.
At the Lowy Institute in March, Carney put more flesh on the bones. He called for a “dense web” of middle-power partnerships and “variable geometry”: different coalitions working together on different problems, from AI and critical minerals to trade and supply chains.
But he stopped short of proposing a standing pact committing those countries to defend each other against economic coercion. I think that matters.
In 2023, the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan signed a joint declaration pledging to deter and address economic coercion. Three years later, Canada is finding out the limits of political declarations when governments change.
If Carney’s rupture is real, we need something legally binding with teeth.
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