Western imperial alliance in crisis: Canada condemns USA, declaring 'new world order' in China

At Davos, Canadian PM Mark Carney admitted that the West's imperialist "rules-based international order" was "false", hypocritical, & exploitative. What does his criticism of "American hegemony" mean?

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has garnered a lot of attention for a speech he delivered at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, in which he condemned Donald Trump’s threats and announced that Canada will “fundamentally shift our strategic posture” and “diversify” away from the United States.

These remarks came just a few days after Carney took a high-profile trip to China, to try to mend relations. He was the first Canadian leader to visit since 2017.

At a meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Carney said foreign relations must shift in a “new world order”.

Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton discussed these events in detail with independent journalist Daniel Dumbrill:

These two events were indeed significant, and historic.

But many observers have overlooked the most revealing admission that Carney made in his 2026 World Economic Forum (WEF) speech, which exposed the blatant hypocrisy of Western imperialism.

The Canadian prime minister acknowledged that the so-called “rules-based international order” was always deeply hypocritical and biased, serving the interests of the imperialist West.

Carney said (emphasis added):

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

In other words, Carney was admitting that what he called Western “middle powers” (such as Canada or European countries) willingly went along with US hegemony and supported the US-led imperialist system — which is predicated on the systematic subjugation and exploitation of Global South countries in the periphery — because these Western middle powers also benefited from this pillage of the Global South.

It must be noted that Carney said they always knew that the so-called “rules-based international order” was hypocritical and exploitative.

But he emphasized, “This fiction was useful” for Western imperialist countries. They benefited from imperialism, as the US hegemon’s junior partners in crime.

Carney understands very well how this system operates. The neoliberal technocrat got his start working at Wall Street mega-bank Goldman Sachs, before going on to lead the central banks of both Canada and England.

However, “This bargain no longer works”, Carney stressed.

Now that the US empire has turned against these Western imperialist middle powers that it previously called its “allies”, and now that they are getting just a glimpse of what it feels like to be on the receiving end of what they have been doing to the Global South for centuries, they are (ostensibly) turning against the exploitative system that they had helped to sustain for so long.

Canada assisted the genocide in Gaza by sending weapons to Israel.

Canada helped NATO wage war on Libya in 2011, destroying its central government.

Canada has been a key part of colonial military occupations of Haiti, and has supported US-led coups across the Global South.

Carney was himself governor of the Bank of England in 2019, during the first Trump administration’s coup attempt in Venezuela, and he illegally froze (read: stole) billions of dollars worth of gold belonging to the Venezuelan government.

Canada and other Western “middle powers” supported the US-led imperialist system as long as it benefited them.

They were fine with the US-sponsored colonization of Palestinian land, but Trump’s flagrant attempt to colonize Greenland (an autonomous territory of NATO member Denmark) is a bridge too far for them.

Now that that imperialist system no longer benefits these middle powers, they suddenly pretend to be acting in a principled way, supposedly to uphold international law and defend sovereignty.

But Canada’s prime minister has publicly acknowledged that they never truly cared about that. It was just the public relations narrative.

It would be objectively good for the majority of the world population (which is in the Global South) if the Western imperial alliance broke apart, but it is hard to take Carney’s rhetoric about a “new world order” seriously, given Canada’s track record.