A World Without Pretence

There is something almost ritualistic about Davos. Leaders gather in a carefully constructed atmosphere of seriousness and cooperation, where the language is polished, the tone calibrated, and the assumptions quietly shared. Against that backdrop, Mark Carney’s speech landed differently. It wasn’t alarmist, and it wasn’t theatrical. It was calm, deliberate, and unmistakably clear-eyed.

Carney did not describe the moment we are in as a transition, something temporary to be managed until equilibrium returns. He called it a rupture. That distinction matters. A transition suggests continuity — a bridge from one familiar state to another. A rupture implies finality. Something has broken, and it is not going to be put back together in its old form.

For decades, countries like Canada benefited from what we called the rules-based international order. It was never perfect, and Carney is refreshingly honest about that. Enforcement was uneven. The most powerful actors exempted themselves when convenient. Still, the system provided enough predictability to allow middle powers to prosper, trade to flow, and values-based foreign policy to exist under its protection. It was a story we knew was partially false but it worked well enough.

So we played our part. We praised the institutions, repeated the language, and avoided looking too closely at the gaps between rhetoric and reality. As Carney frames it, we placed the sign in the window.

The most striking moment in the speech comes when he invokes Václav Havel’s essay The Power of the Powerless. Havel’s greengrocer displays a slogan he does not believe in, not out of conviction, but to avoid trouble and signal compliance. The system sustains itself not merely through force, but through participation in a collective fiction. Havel called this “living within a lie.”

Carney’s point is not subtle: that lie has now become untenable. The bargain that once underpinned global integration no longer holds. Economic interdependence is no longer treated primarily as a source of shared prosperity, but increasingly as leverage; tariffs as weapons, supply chains as vulnerabilities, financial infrastructure as a means of coercion. You cannot continue to speak of mutual benefit when integration itself becomes the mechanism of subordination.

Faced with this reality, many countries are drawing the same conclusion: if the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. Strategic autonomy in energy, food, defence, and finance becomes not a preference, but a necessity. Carney is careful here. He acknowledges that this instinct is rational. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has very few options.

But he is equally clear about where this logic leads if taken too far. A world of fortresses is poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable. Isolation may feel like sovereignty, but it often amounts to little more than expensive vulnerability. And for middle powers in particular, unilateralism is not strength, it is weakness dressed up as independence.

This is where Carney’s argument becomes quietly optimistic. Middle powers are not irrelevant spectators in an era of great power rivalry. But their influence does not come from pretending the old order still functions as advertised, nor from competing with one another for favour from larger actors. It comes from coordination, legitimacy, and resilience built at home.

He describes this approach as value-based realism; principled without being naive, pragmatic without being cynical. It accepts the world as it is, not the one we wish would return. It means engaging broadly, calibrating relationships honestly, and backing values not just with rhetoric, but with capacity. In Carney’s framing, values still matter — but only if paired with the ability to withstand pressure.

What struck me most is how deliberately he avoids nostalgia. There is no call to restore the old order, no suggestion that patience will bring things back into balance. Nostalgia, as he puts it, is not a strategy. The task ahead is not to mourn what is gone, but to stop pretending it still exists and then to build something that actually works.

That honesty is uncomfortable, because it carries consequences. Diversification, resilience, and shared risk management all come at a cost. They will affect growth patterns, trade relationships, and domestic priorities. These shifts will not remain confined to policy papers or diplomatic communiqués. They will shape prices, jobs, investments, and the sense of stability many of us have taken for granted.

Carney’s speech does not promise an easy path forward. What it offers instead is clarity. The powerful will continue to exercise power. But middle powers and the societies within them are not without agency. There is still room to choose cooperation over submission, legitimacy over performance, and truth over comfortable fiction.

Taking the sign out of the window does not guarantee safety. But continuing to live within a lie guarantees fragility. If the world really has entered a new phase, then honesty may be the most pragmatic starting point we have.