In a packed hall at the World Economic Forum in Davos this January, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney delivered a pivotal speech.
Drawing on the words of Czech dissident Václav Havel, Carney’s speech, titled Principled and Pragmatic: Canada’s Path drew a powerful parallel between the fading “rules-based international order” and the mechanisms that sustained the late-Soviet system – a rigid, ideologically driven structure that endured not primarily through overt coercion, but through widespread, ritualistic conformity and the quiet acquiescence of ordinary people in maintaining a facade they privately recognised as hollow.
In his seminal 1978 essay The Power of the Powerless, Havel illustrated this dynamic with the famous image of the greengrocer who hangs a sign reading “Workers of the world, unite!” in his shop window. The shopkeeper does not believe the slogan; few if any do. Yet he displays it daily to avoid repercussions, to signal outward compliance, and to secure a measure of personal safety in a system where deviation invites trouble.
As Havel explained, the regime’s longevity stemmed from this collective performance. Individuals “live within a lie,” participating in rituals that affirm the system’s legitimacy even as they erode personal authenticity and truth. The power of such a structure lies in its reliance on shared pretence, everyone acting as if the ideology holds true, rather than on genuine conviction or constant brute force.
Carney challenges prevailing narrative
Carney invoked this analogy to describe the contemporary global order, where nations (and companies) have long upheld certain narratives and practices, about mutual benefit, equal rules, and shared prosperity, despite knowing them to be unevenly applied, selectively enforced, or subordinated to the interests of the most powerful.
Like Havel’s greengrocer, participants in this system have performed compliance to navigate risks and preserve stability, sustaining an arrangement that persists through collective ritual rather than unassailable truth. The fragility, as both Havel and Carney emphasised, emerges precisely when someone refuses to play along – when one actor removes the sign, exposing the underlying fiction and inviting a broader unravelling.
This comparison is especially resonant because the late-Soviet order, in Havel’s view, was a “post-totalitarian” system: bureaucratic, sclerotic, and dependent on internalised conformity and subservience. Carney quoted:
He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places the sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
Applying this to today, Carney declared:
Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
The “sign” here? The myth of a fair, US-led global order that benefits all. For decades, nations like Canada propped it up, knowing it was “partially false” – with the powerful exempting themselves from rules on trade, law, and coercion.
Carney admitted:
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically.
But it was useful, providing “public goods” like open seas and stable finance under “American hegemony.” No more. Carney described the current moment as “a rupture, not a transition,” where economic ties are weaponised:
Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.
He warned:
You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.
In plain terms, clinging to US alliances means accepting vassalage and second-class status, especially as Trump ramps up his aggression against elements he deems as harming the “national security” interests of the US.
This speech echoes Havel’s role in exposing Soviet fragility, which helped precipitate the USSR’s collapse. Carney, a former central banker, knows systems like currencies or empires rely on belief. Once private doubts become public – what game theory calls “common knowledge” – the cascade begins. He said, quoting Havel:
The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.
The end of the illusion
By speaking out, Carney is that first greengrocer removing the sign, signalling to allies: the illusion is cracking. If Canada – a G7, NATO, Five Eyes member and US neighbour – publicly dubs the order a “pleasant fiction,” who’s left to defend it? European leaders like UK’s Keir Starmer or Germany’s Olaf Scholz might cling on, but Carney’s words make their positions untenable.
“We are in the midst of a rupture,” he stressed, urging middle powers to “name reality” and build coalitions based on shared interests, not blind loyalty. This is not about joining China or BRICS; it’s about sovereign equality without hegemony.
Carney committed Canada to liberal values at home – NATO, Ukraine, human rights – but stripped away the messianic urge to export them. “We’re engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes,” he said, advocating “variable geometry” – flexible alliances on issues like AI, minerals, and trade.
Carney’s not alone in this shift. Similar cracks are appearing across the West, exposing the fragility of US leadership. Take French president Emmanuel Macron: in a leaked private message to Trump, published by the US president himself on Truth Social, Macron bluntly said:
I do not understand what you are doing on Greenland.
He proposed a G7 meeting to discuss it, alongside Syria and Iran, showing quiet defiance against Trump’s bizarre bid to seize the Danish territory. Trump, in response, threatened 10% tariffs (rising to 25%) on eight European nations, including Denmark, France, and Belgium, effective 1 February, unless they caved. But after backlash and talks with NATO’s Mark Rutte, Trump backed down on 21 January, announcing a “framework” for Arctic deals and scrapping the tariffs. It was a humiliating climbdown, underscoring how US bluster is losing its bite.
Carney looks towards China
Then there’s Canada’s own bold move. Just days before Davos, Carney inked a landmark deal with China, easing tariffs on up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles (at 6.1%) in exchange for China slashing duties on Canadian canola, lobster, and peas. This “preliminary agreement-in-principle” revives ties strained since 2018, promising joint ventures in EVs and supply chains.
Critics, including auto unions, worry about jobs, but it’s a pragmatic step toward diversification – exactly what Carney preached. The deal, potentially boosting farmers hit by past retaliations, states:
Canada expects that China will lower tariffs on Canadian canola seed to a combined rate of approximately 15% by March 1.
It’s not kowtowing to Beijing; it’s middle-power realism, reducing reliance on a volatile US. Even in Belgium, prime minister Bart De Wever echoed the sentiment at Davos, quoting Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci:
If the old is dying and the new is not yet born, then you live in a time of monsters.
De Wever warned Europe against becoming a “miserable slave” to Trump, vowing to tell him directly: “Here and no further.” Planned for a bilateral meet, his words capture the limbo Carney described – a dying US order birthing uncertainty, where “monsters” like tariff wars and territorial grabs thrive.
Carney’s speech aligns closely with China’s Global Governance Initiative, pushing sovereign equality, no blocs, and a strengthened UN without double standards. Xi Jinping’s GGI states:
International law and rules must be applied equally and uniformly, without any double standards or imposition.
This mirrors Carney’s call to “apply the same standards to allies and rivals”. As Carney put it:
No single power dictates terms, and no ideological bloc demands loyalty… We are taking the sign out of the window. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.
In the end, Carney’s Davos address may mark the true passing of Atlanticism: that once-ironclad transatlantic compact, born in the ashes of 1945, which promised collective defence, shared prosperity, and a unified liberal project.
Featured image via the Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.