Terence Corcoran - Why Canada Will Eventually Join the United States

 At this link:  Terence Corcoran: Why Canada will eventually join the United States

Without specifically mentioning any single nation during his World Economic Forum speech, Prime Minister Mark Carney was clearly setting the political stage for Canada to move away from the United States as a trusted economic and political ally.

Unlike U.S. President Donald Trump, who willingly and enthusiastically ridicules and puts down most of the world’s nations as basket cases led by numskulls and idiots — or as good guys he’s keen to work with (i.e. Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping) — Carney prefers to paint the world in broad ideological and philosophical brushstrokes.

Carney has been doing this for years in speeches and in Value(s): Building a Better World for All, his 2021 book that projected environmental collapse if the world economic system were not purged of market fundamentalism, globalization and the role of individual freedom as the main determinants of value and values. Carney claimed in his book that the “rules-based architecture that Canada has long cherished is under strain.” The world economy needed to be reformed into stakeholder capitalism and the pursuit of sustainable development in the name of controlling the greatest crisis, “the tragedy of the horizon,” climate change.

These old themes were rarely mentioned by Carney at Davos. The existential climate crisis and net-zero carbon emissions were absent, replaced by alarmism about the rupture of the world order, the collapse of rules-based global governance and trading systems, and the unravelling of international structures that leave the world in the hands of hegemons. Unnamed as such are China, Russia and the United States.

To fend off the hegemonic trio, Carney proposes that the smaller nations that he describes as middle powers rise up. “The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls — or whether we can do something more ambitious.”

The objective is unclear, but it appears middle powers should form a power structure of their own, wrangling individually and collectively in opposition to the three major powers, thereby creating a kind of fourth hegemon. How that would work in the context of Carney’s recent trade and co-operation pact with China is hard to fathom. If China should move in on the Arctic, will Canada still be able to turn to the U.S. for protection? Or does Canada plan on raising a finger to say: “You can’t do that.”

There are many reasons to conclude that the Carney middle-power plan will not become a new world order. For Canada, the model implies breaking with the United States, a dubious project that stretches economic and political realities. There are four key reasons for doubting and rejecting the Carney go-it-alone plan."