In the United States, presidents have periodically undertaken major strategic re-orientations. Historians call these inflection points, doctrines. Today, scholars and policy makers speak in high flown language about the Monroe Doctrine, the Roosevelt Corollary, and the Truman Doctrine, which justified a strategy of Soviet containment.
Donald Trump wants to go down in history as the president who created a new world order. He’s even picked out a name. The so-called Donroe Doctrine is rooted in Trump’s own narcissistic belief that reciprocity is a weakness.
Unlike American presidents, Canadian prime ministers don’t often frame their policy pivots as doctrines, as if their ideas move the world. Even so, Mark Carney’s now-famous ‘rupture speech’ at Davos did just that.
Carney’s rejection of great power revanchism and call for greater cooperation among the world’s remaining democracies is a manifesto for renewing 21st century liberalism.
But it’s also a statement to temper expectations. As such, the Carney Doctrine is distinctly Canadian in its outlook and orientation. It is optimistic and noncompliant, realistic and defiant. Carney offers the first positive course correction to guide Canada through the end of the American Century.
What is a foreign policy doctrine?
Usually, foreign policy doctrines project influence by articulating a nation’s interests in clear and unambiguous terms. The doctrines that resonate most powerfully come from first world states projecting their influence and protecting sovereignty from the overreach of empires. For example, in 1823 US president James Monroe declared that the Western Hemisphere was closed to European colonization, on pain of American reprisal.
But the Monroe Doctrine wasn’t only a declaration of support for national liberation. Monroe’s opposition to the Spanish empire also laid the foundations for America’s own empire after the Spanish-American war. And that’s why Trump likes it.
Two hundred years later, Carney declared that the American claim to hegemonic leadership is no longer credible. As a statement of Canadian interest, his speech was a clear-eyed assessment of global power relations. It resonates with our many partners who fear the consequences of American authoritarianism in their own backyards. It also offers a roadmap for the protection of Canadian sovereignty, and for the support of other countries who share liberal values.
A good guy with a gun?
One mark of an effective foreign policy doctrine is that counterparties sit up and take notice. Carney’s message rallied European leaders. And the White House is still taking flak and dodging the fallout. Recently, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference referred to the end of the “old order,” a tacit admission that Trump’s people have been paying attention.
Foreign policy doctrines don’t just identify interests and suggest policy action. They also offer a way to hold governments accountable. To that end, the Carney Liberals aim to be a major force for the rejuvenation of liberal rules by leading coalitions of likeminded states.
Politico recently reported that the EU and the 12 members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership are in talks, “spearheaded” by Canada, to increase economic cooperation. This new deal would create an economic coalition of almost 40 nations representing 1.5 billion people. Tellingly, it doesn’t include China, Russia, or the United States.
When Carney said “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” it struck a nerve because it was true, and no other national leader was brave enough to say it. It is also the case that many commentators agreed. Now in his second term, nobody views Trump as an aberration. He is a symptom of deep systemic dysfunction. As the leading light of Western anti-liberalism, MAGA is a festering wound in the American body politic that will be difficult to heal – even after he’s gone.
Führerprinzip
The Republicans have embraced Führerprinzip, in which charismatic leadership gives the state its normative purpose. There are no easy off-ramps for this cult of personality. It’s hard to imagine Republicans winning future national elections without moving further into the depths of authoritarian populism. J.D. Vance is only taken seriously as a candidate in 2028 because he has wholeheartedly embraced every major conspiracy theory coming from the far right
Carney is entirely correct that we have entered a frightening period in which, to paraphrase Thucydides, the strong take what they want and the weak “don’t have the cards.”
What’s worse, future Democratic presidents who may come after Trump can never guarantee their country’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law for more than four years at a time. Now that the methods of ur-fascism have been legitimized, will there be another Führer waiting in the wings?
Despite all this uncertainty, Canada is not backed into a corner. For most of the 20th century, Canada was a North American power. Today, every clear-eyed assessment of Canada’s position concludes that we must become the sort of middle power that projects its interests and values far beyond North America.
The paradox of cooperation
The rupture speech did not simply capture a moment when Trump took America to the precipice of war with Europe. It flipped a switch that transforms our understanding of the paradox of cooperation.
The more urgent the need for cooperation in world politics, the harder it is to achieve. We used to think that effective international collaboration required hegemonic leadership. But now we see that progress on trade, human rights, and our boiling planet will be hopeless if we continue to rely on American self-interest to solve the problems they created.
Canada’s future as a democracy relies upon correcting the oversteer of the postwar era. But it’s not just Canada. Many other industrialized countries are coming to the same conclusion. At the same World Economic Forum meeting Bart de Weaver, Prime Minister of Belgium concluded, “so many red lines have been crossed [by Trump] . . . Being a happy vassal is one thing. Being a miserable slave is another.”
The Carney doctrine in practice
The US-led international order is crumbling, and with it, the comforting illusions of post-Cold War integration. Middle powers must use whatever tools they have to build defensive coalitions. Canada is now a regional power in search of the many connections that will ensure our economic stability in the coming decades.
Nation building is back. Prime Minister Carney has broad political support for using the “immense fiscal capacity” of the Canadian state to build infrastructure, attract investment and strengthen east-west ties.
For the foreseeable future, any coalition making progress on the most vexing issues like climate collapse won’t include the United States because they are dismantling their capacity for cooperation. And the worst is yet to come in the re-negotiation of continental free trade.
The US Supreme Court struck down Trump’s spurious rationale for emergency tariffs. He hasn’t been deterred, and is already planning to do “‘terrible things,’ to foreign countries, especially those countries that have been RIPPING US OFF for many decades. . .”
The outcome of this summer’s trade negotiations will be a definitive test of the Carney Doctrine. There is still a lot of backfilling that needs to go into a post-CUSMA trade policy and regime change in Iran. But we’ve already learned the most important lesson of Trump’s second term: the bully will never be satisfied.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
