In stark Davos warning, Canadian PM says era of U.S.-led rules is fading, advocates for ambitious collective action ahead of Trump’s address, against backdrop of invasion contingency reports.
DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – January 21, 2026 – Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney issued a clarion call to the world’s middle powers on Tuesday, declaring the post-war international order broken and warning that nations like his own risk being “on the menu” if they fail to unite in the face of rising great power coercion.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, Carney framed the current geopolitical shift as a definitive “rupture,” not a gradual transition. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he told an audience of global elites, delivering a speech laden with urgency just one day before U.S. President Donald Trump is scheduled to take the same stage.
“The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must,” Carney stated. “The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls—or whether we can do something more ambitious.”
Central to his address was the memorable admonition: “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” He argued that the old “rules-based international order,” underwritten by American hegemony, is “fading,” replaced by “a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion.”
Compliance, he warned, no longer guarantees safety. “It won’t,” he said bluntly.
The prime minister’s stark assessment comes amid dramatically heightened tensions between Canada and its southern neighbor and largest ally. His speech followed a report by The Globe and Mail revealing that the Canadian military has developed a contingency model for a potential U.S. invasion, focusing on asymmetric, insurgency-style tactics.
While direct annexation rhetoric from President Trump has lessened in recent months, he posted an image on his social media platform overnight showing maps of Canada and Venezuela covered by the U.S. flag—a symbolic gesture reinforcing expansionist themes from his 2024 re-election campaign.
The Davos forum itself has been dominated by Trump’s persistent threats to enforce U.S. control over Greenland. Carney directly countered that position, affirming, “Canada stands firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully supports their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.”
Carney, a former central banker who entered Canadian politics last year, concluded that middle powers lack the market size, military, or leverage of great powers and therefore cannot afford to “go it alone.” Their path forward, he insisted, must be one of ambitious collective action.
