It was a moment of global clarity. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech to the world’s political and economic elite gathered in Davos this week described global realities, past and present, with a candour and nuance rarely heard from a serving politician.

The message was twofold.

First, Carney made clear that the world has changed, and the old comfortable ways of global politics are not coming back. Those who wait for sanity to return are waiting in vain. We are in a world increasingly shaped by the threat and the use of hard power. All states must accept that reality.

Despite this, Carney’s second and more hopeful message was that while the globally powerful may act unilaterally, others — notably “middle powers” like Canada — are not helpless.

By finding ways to co-operate on areas of shared interest, states like Canada can pool their limited resources to build what amounts to a flexible network of co-operative ties. Taken together they can provide an alternative to simply rolling over and taking whatever great powers like the United States dole out.

90%+ of every policy in every country in the world is written at the request of corporations.

Explain what exactly?

I don’t know if you are on FB (I hadn’t used it for a long time but now I’m active again, especially after being suspended on reddit, don’t judge me ) but there’s a lot of Canadian posts asking if we are ready to defend Canada against a possible US invasion, join the army, that sort of talk. Which makes me wonder if our taxes are going to be spent on the military instead of our public services (mainly the healthcare system which is not doing too well). But honestly I don’t think we stand a chance against them, unless we form alliances with Europe. I don’t know I’m too hungry now I can’t focus.

How every single person from your country is so nice! I don’t understand. I’ve never met a single Lebanese person that was anything but funny and sweet and kind.

I think we aren’t as powerless as you think and that we have both done something that seems small but is a step in the direction of freedom from those corporations. We have joined a platform not owned by them. We have freedom to choose and make our thoughts heard still. So elbows up into the jaw of cynicism.

I got rid of it years ago, thankfully, but I’ve heard the talk. As it stands, we wouldn’t make it a week outside of a guerrilla war, and I don’t know if we have a strong enough society or motivated enough populace for guerrilla war. We could make ourselves a hard enough target for them to avoid if we invested heavily in expanding the military, but where are we going to get the weapons? America? They could turn them off remotely I’m sure. China would be a good option, but America might invade us right away once they found out we were doing that. It’s a big problem.

Even if we could get the Europeans to do anything more than write a strongly-worded letter, they don’t have much in the way of military might themselves. Frankly, I don’t trust them to help unless something changes, but the ticket is deterrence. We need to make ourselves a hard enough target that the Americans aren’t willing to try to take a bite, and it’s going to take a combination of alliances (we should ally with Mexico, since America is coming for them too) and armaments.

Regarding shifting social spending to defence, I think it’s a bad idea, at least without other major changes elsewhere. Part of our problem is motivation - we’ve had 40 years of neoliberalism telling us the state owes us nothing besides tax credits and we owe the state nothing besides paying our taxes and obeying the law. We’re already halfway to losing public healthcare, so we won’t even be able to fight for that. We need a fundamental paradigm shift to save this country, and I’m not sure if we have the will or the imagination.

In hindsight it’s all water under the bridge.

I wasn’t expecting Carney to be like the Ford and call him a pedophile protector, or to explicitly label the US as a military threat… But I can’t deny I was disappointed of how easily he was able to be a doormat in response to Trump’s sudden inexplicable gripe against the Digital Services Tax. And I would have liked him to drop the pretenses earlier, of hoping (beyond hope) Trump would pull back on his self-imposed tariff foolishness, by the mere virtue of Canada being a reasonable negotiating partner.

Well said. With the way things are going globally, climate change, AI takeover, I don’t know what to worry about more. Fun days.

I’m not saying we should have a similarly sized military. I’m saying it’s a bad idea to tell your neighbour tyrant directly to fuck off when he’s on a rampage, and that if our military was comparable then maybe you could expect him to say that.