Anthony Albanese said last weekend that he agreed with the Canadian PM. But it is highly unlikely he or any of his national security ministers would give the same kind of speech.
For months now, Canadians have been waking up to images of their country’s map being blanketed by the American Stars and Stripes.
How would Australians react to similar provocation? Probably with a shrug of the shoulders. Perhaps Australians, as indicated by polling numbers on the US alliance, have resigned themselves to the gamble their leaders took from the early 2000s to hitch the nation’s strategic wheel so closely to the American chariot, regardless of its driver.
Perhaps too, this is becoming more and more the unseen alliance. Unlike the visibility of the US military presence in Japan, for example, the American footprint here treads mainly in far-flung outposts – Darwin, Alice Springs and the far north coast of Western Australia.
But in Switzerland last month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney showed he had had enough of Trump’s taunts. Carney’s speech enunciated the kinds of sentiments felt by many in allied capitals, most ducking and weaving amidst the Trump hurricane.
His remarks exuded a confidence rare in allied rhetoric since Trump’s return. Its essence was to remind middle powers of two key facts: that they cannot be pushed around; and that they retain agency even in a world of revived great power competition.
Carney’s most potent line ought to be ringing in Australian ears, especially given a steadily increasing US military presence here: “You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration,” Carney said, “when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
The Canadian leader will hope his Davos remarks stick. But he still has to confront Trump’s whims.
Much of the context for this speech missed its other purpose – positioning for the renegotiation of the US/Canada/Mexico trade deal.
Bob Rae, once premier of Ontario, a former leader of the federal Liberal Party and most recently Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, spoke to this column about the speech.
“Canada has a lot on its plate, much of it of our own making,” Rae says, “but President Trump’s approach faces us with some difficult challenges.
“Carney’s speech was a message to Canadians, but also to Europe and Australia … about the reality of great powers trying to draw us into their orbit and the consequences of the US pulling away from global commitments, attacking the UN, and engaging in a full-scale assault with their tariff war with everybody.
“Carney observed everyone going to Washington to cut their own deal, and thought it was a disastrous strategy. He is reaching out broadly (to China, India and Australia) and is determined to keep doing it.
“With the Americans, we need to maintain dialogue, but the unpredictability is hard to manage. There are powerful forces in US that want the trade deal to happen, but also MAGA voices determined to keep throwing sand in our face.”
Questions remain, however, despite the silken oratory. Which middle powers is Carney primarily addressing himself to? France and India? Australia and Thailand?
Moreover, Carney’s idea of a world entering an era of “variable geometry” is still one divided into blocs rather than the multilateral one Australia has helped to shape from the 1990s. As he explained in The Economist late last year, Carney sees not a “single, rules-based trading system” but rather the possibility for a “mosaic of partial agreements and creative ‘docking’ arrangements between blocs”.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said last weekend that he agreed with Carney. But it is highly unlikely he or any of his national security ministers would give a speech of the kind Carney delivered at Davos.
Indeed they were remarks that had some Australian officials in Canberra shifting somewhat uncomfortably in their seats. Australian leaders and ministers, it seems, simply do not wish to exit the semantic cul de sac where their language about the world tends to dwell. Or where their views, to quote former US treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, become exercises in “incestuous amplification”.
Canberra instead has adopted the submarine principle for dealing with Trump, as detailed in a Financial Times profile last week of NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte: “You stay below the surface, don’t make waves, and surface only when you absolutely need to, to get something done.”
That probably best sums up the current Australian policy – one that is only privately declared. It goes something like this: it is best not to say publicly what ministers really think: play it cool, humour both Washington and Beijing, keep the cards close to the chest, and don’t take anyone’s rhetoric too seriously. And make the most of our geography by staying close to Jakarta, Wellington, Suva, Tokyo, Port Moresby and others.
Carney will probably use his speech to the parliament here, when he visits in early March, to develop this new agenda for middle powers. As Canadian High Commissioner to Australia Julie Sunday tells this column: “Canada is ambitious in what we want to achieve with Australia … anything that reduces barriers to us working together, innovating together, trading together and investing in each other is what we should focus on.”
French president Charles De Gaulle, near the end of his life, confided to writer Andre Malraux: “I tried to prepare France for the end of a certain kind of world. Did I fail? It will be for others to see later on.”
Carney was doing something of that kind in Davos. Just don’t expect the same kind of brutal clarity from Australian leaders any time soon.
Source: https://www.afr.com/policy/foreign-affairs/carney-s-middle-powers-agenda-leaves-canberra-squirming-20260128-p5nxin