By Philip Yeung
Carney's speech is no ordinary Davos speechifying. This is a sermon for the survival of middle powers and minor countries, from the mouth of a prophet-like pragmatic leader, as the global order crumbles around him.
Carney's powerful message has a Churchillian ring to it, but stops short of enraging his thin-skinned neighbor. While European leaders are tiptoeing around a brutal predator known to fly off the handle, Canada's Carney decided to take the tiger by the tail, without poking it in the eye. He spoke calmly from the core of his being.
He was pitch perfect. France's Macron didn't do nearly as well; his flat refusal to join Donald's greedy billion-dollar Peace Board instantly tipped Trump into threatening a 200% tariff on French wines and champagne. While blunt, Carney never once mentioned Trump or the US by name. He didn't need the tit-for-tat fireworks.
Carney wrote the speech himself. Well-schooled in the rhetorics, he crafted a string of memorable lines: "If you are not at the table, you are on the menu" and "The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must." Best of all, he declares: "Nostalgia is not a strategy."
He even invented a new term, "variable geometry," for his idea of forming different coalitions for different regional interests. Conceptual thinking comes naturally to Carney, the economist. This is his finest hour.
His call-for-coalitions hit the right note. The fearful and frustrated audience, dying for direction and leadership, gave him a standing ovation.
This is the most consequential speech by a major Western leader who summoned the courage to call on like-minded countries to band together for a third path through the T-rex jungle.
He did not appease, flatter or flinch.
Against his northern neighbor, Trump is at his cruelest, slapping crippling tariffs on Canadian exports, 75% of which are destined to America.
Trump arrived at Davos the day after Carney, mocking Canadians for enjoying US freebies, telling them to be grateful, as Canada only lives because of the US. Trump had come to insult his Nato allies. He succeeded.
Carney's courage is not limited to rhetorics. Canadian troops are said to be conducting exercises in preparation for repulsing any military attacks from its former closest ally. Meanwhile, Canada will stand “firmly” with Greenland and Denmark in defense of their territory and sovereignty.
Lesser politicians, such as the pig-headed Ontario Premier Doug Ford, seem too dim-witted to adapt to drastically changing circumstances.
In knee-jerk fashion, Ford rehashes the same old rubbish about China being the greatest threat to Canada's security, when he is staring at the only existential threat from south of the border.
How exactly has China threatened Canada? Its only sins are countermeasures to rescue the unlawfully detained Huawei CFO. The nasty back-and-forth is best forgotten, for it resulted from the stupidity of a clueless and spineless Justin Trudeau.
Stubborn as an ox, Ford talks like a retarded redneck and thinks like a retarded redneck. He doesn't realize that Carney's concessions in allowing 49000 Chinese electric cars to come into Canada annually represent only 3% of its auto market. In exchange, Canada is getting Chinese technology and investment to boost the scale of its auto production, plus access to a huge market for its agricultural and fishery products.
Ford is too slow to play the fast geopolitical chess game. He is too provincial for international politics.
Carney, by contrast, is a hard-nosed realist who warns Canadians against "negotiating from weakness" and of over-dependency on the US.
Carney rejects appeasement as a doomed strategy against a bully. Canada's survival resides in reaching across the Pacific, for trade ties with China and other Asian countries, and across the Atlantic, for partnerships in Europe.
As a middle power, Canada doesn't have the luxury of going it alone. Doing so will leave it at the mercy of a temperamental bully.
How do you keep Trump's tightening noose from Canada's neck? In its hour of maximum danger, Ford's ideological blinkers will be a nail in Canada's coffin. Stop making China your phantom enemy.
China-bashing is so yesterday. It has outlived its usefulness. It limits Canada's options and elbows out a powerful economic player whose default mode is peace and prosperity for everybody.
Carney came to office as a "rockstar banker" and blue-ribbon economist. Few suspected the Machiavellian strategist in him, brandishing big-picture thinking, mental discipline and political courage to navigate the treacherous waters of the Trump era.
His Davos speech tells us that Canada is in safe hands, as he goes toe-to-toe with a dirty fighter who punches below the belt.
What a difference one speech makes! Overnight, Carney has become a hero at home and abroad. Canada now stands tall, and Canadians walk taller.
This speech brings a tidal wave of sympathy and support. It says the unsayable for a proud country and a grateful world. Without doubt, this is Canada's most famous speech, Churchill-class, though not quite Churchill-style.
It took a terrible Trump to help a gutsy Carney climb the ladder to greatness. After all, heroes need villains, the bigger the latter, the bigger the former.
Carney's courage and true-to-himself street credibility will keep the True North strong and free. Oh Canada, he stands on guard for thee.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | How Trump, the non-winner, has become a Nobel Peace Prize blackmailer
Opinion | Canada's U-turn on China takes both countries to new V-era
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