Opinion: The Wheel Turns: Carney’s Davos Speech Again

Many of us have grown immune to this sort of disdainful, offensive and often rude – to say nothing of untrue – language by Trump, but words matter, and nearly a year later real resistance is starting to appear. You can only castigate your allies, use executive orders to throw trade agreements into constant turmoil, constantly show disrespect – for just two of so many examples think of the treatment of Zelensky in the Oval Office and Vance’s disgraceful speech at the Munich Security conference a year ago – before pushback emerges. And pushback is now quietly and steadily – without any of the Trump-like rhetoric – well underway.

Words matter, and having written about Carney’s speech at Davos in my previous opinion piece, I am intrigued to find it referred to again and again by thoughtful commentators. Carney not only delivered a vision for a positive way forward for middle powers like Canada, but quietly he and his government have clearly been working hard to establish new partnerships and to steadily wean themselves off overdependence on the US. Instead of going along with a multi-polar world order, alliances are steadily and quietly being forged among middle income nations that bypass the US and entrench a multi-national order. It is noteworthy that Carney has been invited to address the Australian parliament in March this year and most of our western democracies have declined the offer (to pay) to join Trump’s much vaunted “Board of Peace.”

Commentators are disagreed as to whether this is a rupture or a temporary change. What must be noted is that markets – or more accurately people responsible for markets – loathe the constant uncertainty generated by the Trump administration. Intriguingly we now see that trust, truth, respect, and reliability – wonderful Christian virtues – are an essential ingredient in healthy economics. The realignment that is taking place is putting agreements in place between middle powers that will last for years, indeed decades to come. In the process, if the US is not careful, the rupture becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In Carney’s memorable words, middle powers need a seat at the table if they do not want to be on the menu!

I welcome the move towards multi-national realignment. At the same time I long for the US to find its way to servant leadership among the nations. Sadly, amidst all this quiet but inexorable movement, religion – and specifically Christianity – barely receives any attention at all. This is myopic in the extreme. Imagine … if American Christians for all their differences could coalesce around the following:

• Telling the truth is important and we will hold our Administration to this. When we hear rhetoric like that of our allies having raped, pillaged and looted us we will not just accept it and – in some cases – cheer, but do the hard work to see if it is true.
• Treating people with respect is a basic virtue and we will demand it of our leaders. Indeed, Jesus even insists that we love our enemies.
• Keeping our word is a fundamental Christian virtue and we will insist that our leaders keep to agreements that the US has signed up to. An astonishing example of this is the Budapest Memorandum – which I wrote about in an earlier opinion piece –, signed by the US, the UK, Russia and Ukraine in 1994 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal. If the signatories – especially the US – just kept their word with the security guarantees, I suspect the dreadful war would soon be over.