Just in case anyone thought the genie could be stuffed back into the bottle once Trump is gone, Carney goes on to state that the rules-based world order we've been living under since WWII is somewhat of a sham. The rules have not been applied equally. Some nations, the powerful ones, have been given much more latitude to do what they want. Middle nations have gone along with this to avoid trouble.
The reward for avoiding trouble for so long is... big trouble (e.g. invasion threats for an ally of a big power and economic terrorism applied to its allies). So, why pretend the old system works to avoid trouble if the trouble lands on your doorstep anyways?
The answer seems obvious. Middle powers of the old rules-based order need to band together and put bigger powers in their place. It's not impossible. Just very, very difficult. France and Germany may be sticking up for Greenland, but where's Hungary (another EU member)? For this to work, you need everyone. Also, looking ahead, how would you prevent such an alliance of smaller powers, were it successful, from behaving like a bigger power?
Trump is currently showing off AI photos where he's meeting with world leaders in front of a map where both Greenland and Canada are a part of the U.S.[1]. As a Canadian, I think Carney gave a stirring speech here, but I suppose I'm biased given that he's our PM and his vision is one of the few things between us as being swallowed up by Trump's MAGA empire while the other big powers fall upon the respective apples of their eyes.
[1]https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/article/trump-shares-altered-m...
We have kinds of political problems, and it’s not clear they’re going away post Trump.
This isn't going to be solved in a decade, probably not even a couple of decades.
But enough of the US citizenry that I share the nation with seemingly can’t see beyond their own horizons. No matter how bad it is, there is still enough people who can’t possibly see the value of the government doing anything useful. Government is exclusively the enemy. And in turn those who seek to ransack the system do so under the guise of pushing back against so called “government overreach” (a deliberately vague term) and continue to give the general public the raw deal
Sounds like an economic NATO (without the USA). It's good that other counties are waking up at last. Taking the hit now (and blaming it on Trump) will make them stronger on the long run.
No it's not. The point of making an alliance is that you're not stuck with strategic autonomy. You can tell other people that if they mess with you, they're also messing with whoever you're allied with. If you were autonomous, that wouldn't be true.
The EU aligned countries would be crazy to let the US set these rules for some temporary maintenance of income. They've all tended to social Democrats and socialist governments and have a better lifestyle than the US at half or 1/4 the GDP. That goes away if they let the US set pure power based rules, then 1/2 the GDP really is being half an American and if being a whole American was so great no one would have voted for Trump.
That speech reminds me of the conclusion the main character in the movie Antz settled on. Being forced to be a cog in the machine is awful and no one should accept it. Instead we should be happy to volunteer ourselves to be cogs in the machine.
He won because:
- the NDP and the CPC were both led by deeply unpopular leaders: Jagmeet Singh the silk clad, Rolex-wearing self styled "man of the people" and Pierre Poilievre who is so dislikeable he routinely polls double digits below his party
- Trump threatening to collapse the Canadian economy and/or annex us by force
- Flat economic growth
- Carney's credentials on the economy being unparalleled in Canadian politics (see previous point)
- Voters tired of the far-left big government nanny state philosophy that was the hallmark of the Trudeau governments and Carney successfully presented himself as a centrist
Interestingly, Carney was appointed to the Bank of Canada by a Conservative PM and I'd argue he's got a similar appeal that Trump initially had, but for different reasons: Trump positioned himself as an outsider, and Carney is similarly not a career politician. By contrast his only real challenger (Poilievre) hasn't had a real job in his life and has been living on the taxpayer's dime his entire career.
I think voters in both the US and Canada are sick of slimy politicians.
(Edit: can't reply because rate limited, better go back to pointless discussions about JavaScript. My usage of "far left" should be understood as being relative to the Canadian political spectrum. Justin Trudeau was definitely a very left-leaning PM by any rational measure)
Ah, yes; that communist fiend, Justin "Al Jolson" Trudeau, seizing all those means and abolishing hierarchies and redistributing the wealth.
Please quote where I said he was a communist. I'll wait.
It’s always interesting to read some thoughtful opinions, especially as an outsider(Australian) looking in.
But he polled better than Trudeau: https://angusreid.org/trudeau-tracker/
CPC was firmly in the lead for the elections before Trumps' attention to Canada and the Liberals jumping on this to frame PP as another Trump or someone who would yield to Trump, both couldn't be farther away from his actual policy stances, but in the age of social media (and I guess major government owned media that does its bidding) that doesn't matter.
Mark Carney is born and raised Canadian. Just because he has had an illustrious career internationally does not make him any less Canadian than someone who has lived here their entire lives.
Nobody leading a western country would’ve dared be this direct about America a decade ago.
The great irony with the current political climate is that America has truly been first for many decades, leading the world order to tremendous financial, military and material success. But nothing lasts forever.
We won’t know for many years if this moment represents America’s true descent into a has-been empire, but the message from our closest allies is very clear: world leaders don’t speak that kind of truth to a power like America unless they mean it.
I mean the damage has already been done. By electing Trump a second time, Americans have sent the world a clear and unambiguous message that it wasn't a fluke: They clearly don't want our friendship or value the treaties they've signed.
This is merely Carney calling a spade, a spade.
That's how you read it. But the Trump election was americans sending other americans a clear an unambiguous message.
Trump is an accurate representation of the median American voter. Progressive anericans refuse to accept that.
Why they won’t accept that is anyone’s guess.
On foreign policy? Probably not.
Like, Biden wasn’t an accurate representation of the median American voter on e.g. transgender kids in school sports. That wasn’t just right-wing delusion.
In this case it’s “American Voter” as the category. This is what messes most people up, because they read “American Citizen” but I’m describing only the subset of citizens who successfully vote.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patte...
Using that number you’ll see what the demographics demonstrate: there are not as many progressive voters as there are “conservative” voters and only 2/3 of eligible voters even cared to vote.
If you zoom out even further and you evaluate which candidates run, then it really does not matter who is voting or not because ultimately who is on the ballot is dictated by a small group of party leaders, who in turn are dictated by whomever has the most money for ad spending.
I think the problem is that if you read what people say about why they voted for Trump, it becomes clear that an echo chamber is at least as salient to these voters as traditional Republican motivations.
I am unsurprised about the 2024 election and it's exactly what you'd imagine from a purely economic perspective.
The 2016 election, however, has been studied extensively, and it's clear that several aberrations (large contingent of Republican candidates, the first black president, Facebook, Comey) tipped things in a way that you wouldn't expect if voters are acting rationally.
So as someone who genuinely wishes to understand how people think about things, I don't know what's going on here. I can't tell what new lie will be pushed next week to distract us from the recently-disproven lie of last week. Were I outside all of this, I would have very little hope.
(edit: re sibling poster, Trump is not a representative of the median voter but instead a representative of the median electoral college elector. We can't have it both ways, rejecting the popular vote and then failing to acknowledge that our politics represent the electors and not the man on the street)
same can be said about people on the opposite side.
This is perhaps true to an extent. But what is also true to an unprecedented extent for Americans is that this 'stance' is almost pure demagoguery. For many, there is no 'stance', their 'stance' is Trump, whether he hews close to a principle or completely contradicts it.
Second, don’t announce to the world you’re limiting your VP search to Black women, or any other Constitution-violating hiring criteria. Americans are sick of identity politics and you’ve tainted your candidate as a “DEI hire” instead of the best person for the job.
Third, don’t nominate an idiot as your running mate. It may have worked for George H.W. Bush but it won’t work for you.
Fourth, don’t foist the idiot running mate on the world as a presidential candidate because you hid the president’s cognitive decline until the last possible moment, a humiliating live debate.
I could go on, but you probably get the message.
It doesn’t even grasp the main point of what I said, which is that it does a disservice to the person you’re hiring.
Let's be honest, Europeans haven't valued their "friendship" with America since the end of the cold war.
Europe helped America when they could and when they thought it was the right thing to do.
I'm mad about the election and what it seems to say about us, but I still haven't completely lost faith in the American people.
Also, what commitments? Since this is a tech centric forum, the easy guess would be breaking the dominance of the US tech industry. I'm a cheerleader for that effort.
I would say children having worse prospects than their parents at the same age is a good indicator of it. The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people and The jobs market being brutal to graduates.
Things are not so great at the moment.
Honestly? When America nukes someone or itself. Empires decline slowly then suddenly, and that final bit tends to involve a tantrum. The only exception is when they’re conquered.
People talk about "worse prospects" all the time. It irks me: you know nothing what your "prospects" are. That's why they're prospects!
> The big issues IMO are: The housing market locking out young people
The housing is still there. All those old people are gonna die. Who do you think will get the housing?
If all their countrymen were equally down on their luck, then there would be no rage. Instead, it's the result of one group of people that used to enjoy success watching it all fall apart while different people just do better and better.
Exploding inequality simultaneous with DEI obsession was a perfect storm of radicalization. The only thing that's really surprising is that "smart" people didn't see it coming.
Sure, but hasn't that been the case the world over, or at least for developing economies? This isn't terribly unique to the US.
Most "smart" people could see this coming but as always the question is when? Just have to go back a small ways to the last heydays of communism and inequality was the stick to beat capitalism with.
The issue now is that if there is successful destabilisation of world economies in the way this could currently play out, if some brinkmanship isnt pulled back, you're left with a situation where the group of people who have already seen it fall apart realise it can fall apart even more for them, and the other group also see it start to fall apart.
All progressions from a higher to a lower order are marked by ruins and mystery and a residue of nameless rage
there is a group obsessed with DEI, it's true. It's the MAGA folk
EU vs US Comparison
Life expectancy EU: 82 yrs US: 78 yrs
Infant mortality (per 1,000) EU: 3.3 US: 5.6
Poverty rate (below 50% of median income) EU: 15% US: 18%
Public debt EU: 81% of GDP US: 120% of GDP
Top 1% wealth share EU: ~25% US: 40%
Student debt EU: ~€0 US: $40k
Homicides (per 100k) EU: 2 US: 5
Prison population (per 100k) EU: 111 US: 531
Women in workforce EU: 71% US: 57%
Workplace deaths (per 100k) EU: 1.63 US: 3.5
Source: OECD, Eurostat, CDC
[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat...
America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work. Not perfectly. (China annexed Tibet. America invaded Iraq.) But there were many times sacrifices in self interest were made for the sake of alliances and international law.
Today, that is gone. None of the great or regional powers are playing by those rules. Outside Europe, nobody even pays them lip service.
We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions. You could adjudicate differences through them instead of calling for new systems of military alliances.
Regional powers are starting to attempt to make their own multilateral arrangements, but they will inevitably end up relating to either the US or China.
Additonal multipolarity will arise when individual countries can hit around 40-50% of nominal GDP of either the US or China (using a rule of thumb Allison used to use back for US-China relations).
> America (and China) a decade ago were still trying to make the (or at least a) rules-based international order work
The US and China relationship also didn't transition into a competitive relationship until the early 2010s following Operation Aurora, the CIA purge, and the OPM breach.
> We didn’t hear such language a decade ago because it wasn’t yet true, and it wasn’t necessary—that was the point of the rules-based institutions
Depends where you were.
The China-Japan naval standoff (2011-12), the China-Vietnam-India naval standoff (2011-12), the China-SK standoff (2015-16), the Russian invasion of Abkhazia (2008), the Russian invasion of Crimea+Donbas (2014-), the Syrian+Libyan+Yemeni+Somali Civil Wars, and a couple other similar incidents in the 2010s led to a fraying of the rules-based order in much of Asia, Eastern Europe, and MENA.
The only difference between the truth and a lie is that a lie can become the truth if you believe enough.
Now count the centuries those cultures existed and exercised hegemony.
The dark thought is this: we may be at the crossroads for containing an imperial America. Because if America commits to global empire it will take WWIII to contain it.
The Roman Republic was a rising power for centuries. It became the eminent Mediterranean power in 146 BCE and annexed Gaul under Caesar, right as it was collapsing. The Roman Empire then lasted for centuries more.
> doesn't feel like it would be a good time for the rest of the world if the United States gave way to the United Empire for next 500 years
Or America trying for that future. That’s WWIII.
Industry was not globalized in the previous regimes of pre-World war imperialism. That is the novel difference now. And China requires globalized trade in order to support its overindustrialization and economy.
America also currently requires it because it doesn't have its industrial base anymore. It will probably re-industrialize over the next coming decades but that's something that happens over decades.
However, I feel the new rise of imperialism also marks the end of civilization's historical memory of industrial warfare of the world wars.
And that is a very very bad thing
Russia has been itching to use tactical nukes. If America makes two, that’s the future.
The last was Amsterdam.
I’m seeing the Sino-Soviet split.
Europe might have a unique opportunity to ally with China to pry it from Russia. America gets the Western Hemisphere. Eurasia contains itself.
Germany only became a national project in the 19th century. It was a collection of principalities before that. Unlike its neighbours, who were actual Great Powers at the time, it lacked colonial interests to exploit and get rich from. And then when oil became important in the early 20th century, Germany didn't have access to oil.
So Germany felt like it would get swallowed up by its neighbours at some point and sought to assert its dominance, throwing away the Bismarck order. When scores were settled, Germany was punished with devastating reparations that laid the groundwork for WW2 and, on the side, countries like Britain secured their oil interests in the Middle East.
Post-WWI brought the Spanish flu (pandemic anyone?), hyperinflation to Germany, a badly attempted coup (the Beer Hall Putsch; sound familiar?) and the rise of a populist fascist who blamed all of Germany's problems on undesirables, Jews and Communists (any modern parallels, at all?).
Europe had entered an era of appeasement, desperately seeking to not repeat the "Great War". Reunification of German peoples was used as an excuse to seize all sorts of land.
Now Stalin tried to warn Britain and France of the dangers of Hitler and form an alliance in 1939, which failed [1]. So instead Stalin formed what you'd have to call an uneasy alliance with Hitler.
WW2 breaks out, yada yada yada, Hitler betrays Stalin and Stalin basically defeated Hitler at a terrible cost. The US had 400k casulaties in the European theater of WW2. The estimates for Soviet military and civilian losses in the same period are between 26 and 29 million.
Where FDR had sought to rebalance the inequalities in the Depression and created lasting legacies we depend on today such as Social Security, Truman decided Communism was the enemy and, as such, the USSR was the Great Enemy, a decision that led directly to the Korean and Vietnam Wars and other smaller conflicts.
And who would be good at killing Communists? Nazis of course. Operation Paperclip is well known. Less well known is how hudnreds if not thousands of former Nazis were forgiven their "moral lapses" and joined the ranks of the CIA, the FBI and NATO as well as the new West German military command [2].
Hitler and Stalin were fundamentally different beasts. I'm not saying Stalin was a good guy. He commited his share of atrocities. So did every American president if we're keeping score. But one thing Stalin was really good at was killing Nazis.
So began almost 50 years of Cold War that saw the Red Scare and the near complete destruction of any form of organized labor in the US. All to fight Communism.
I say "fascism won" because the Nazis weren't wiped out and we're seeing fascism reborn in the US and Europe while people who survived the Holocaust are still alive. That's how little time it took.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_alliance_negotiations
[2]: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/05/361427276/how-thousands-of-na...
I haven't seen Trump allying himself with China. Any references?
https://www.belfercenter.org/programs/thucydidess-trap/repre...
> 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 varied rigor, 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.
An interesting observation I came across today:
> The genius of American foreign policy since 1941 was that it found a way to be both the single strongest state and the leader of the strongest coalition of states: power and legitimacy, together. That's the achievement Trump has jeopardized - and possibly permanently wrecked.
* https://x.com/davidfrum/status/2013735844721349115#m
* https://xcancel.com/davidfrum/status/2013735844721349115#m
But I can't help notice the inconsistency in this imagery. First, he says it himself a few minutes later. He doesn't "take the sign off" for NATO. We can understand why it's important to keep this facade.
But another one that bothers me is "energy, both clean and traditional". Oh, you didn't go for "clean and dirty"? Categories are clearer thus. Oh, not ready to take the sign off on the climate front? Too bad.
Turkey? Hungary? Slovakia?
As an Indian listening to this, this comes across as absurd. Trudeau constantly invoked this phrase when dealing with India about the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. It basically meant Trudeau could level allegations, not provide any evidence, and strut as if he as won. In due course, the murderers turned out to be their own terrorists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar#Diplomati...
This book has more details about the movement: https://www.amazon.in/Blood-Fifty-Global-Khalistan-Project/d...
Canada's case was well corroborated by US and UK intelligence. India's claims of Mr Nijjar of being a terrorist was not.
>But nothing in the evidence India presented, the people say, met the standard for criminal charges in Canada, let alone for extradition. To press their case, officials in New Delhi frequently sent clippings from Indian media, which was rife with lurid stories about Nijjar’s alleged involvement in violence, instead of providing what the process required: hard evidence, obtained without coercion, that would stand up in a Western courtroom. When that didn’t work, the people say, the Indians suggested that Canadian police find a way to concoct the necessary evidence.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-india-sikh-separatis...
But I'm not talking about this claim. I'm talking about the fact that Trudeau accused the Indian government being responsible for his murder. The onus was always on the Canadian government to prove it.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-indian-government-n...
Absurd. These are YOUR 'ethno nationalist wars' because your country has given them a safe haven. This problem does not exist in India. Not one Sikh I know sympathizes with these separatists, and I have plenty of Sikh friends, been to their homes, been to their hometowns.
Then problem solved! If there are no separatists there is nobody to offer asylum to!
A major issue was the Truduea-era diplomatic spat that led to the expulsion of Canadian [1] and Indian [2] diplomatic staff who cooperated on background checks along with an MP in Punjab who ran a "cash for asylum claim" racket [3].
After Carney became PM and Anand became MFA, the Canada-India relationship went back on track, and Trudeau era appointees were largely sidelined.
[0] - https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/canada-c...
[1] - https://www.canada.ca/en/global-affairs/news/2024/10/ministe...
[2] - https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/38420/India+ex...
[3] - https://theprint.in/ground-reports/punjabi-illegal-migration...
We want nothing to do with this.
Nobody is getting 'safe haven' - we have 'laws' and 'citizenship' so we respect those things, otherwise, we'd prefer all of you who want to continue your infighting to go home. Totally unwelcome.
Crucially - has nothing to do with this post.
They are all in your immigration pipeline or already through it.
> involving Indian government
This is your fantasy. You're playing fast and loose with accusations, just like Carney and Trudeau were while calling it "rules-based international order".
> We want nothing to do with this.
Then stop providing asylum. Stop courting them for votes. Prosecute criminals.
> Crucially - has nothing to do with this post.
Refer to the first line that I quoted.
Rhetoric doesn’t make the economy recover and we are teetering on the brink of things. Businesses are struggling and many industries have hit a standstill. The best we can do is shift from being a vassal state of US to being a Chinese one.
The country is massive and yet we are so unproductive that Bank of Canada issued a warning late last year saying if productivity and wages don’t go up, the situation will get worse. Canada was one of the least productive countries in their analysis. Things have gotten worse since then. The only light at the end of this tunnel is the impending train wreck. Wages going up? Don’t make me laugh. My colleagues have moved to the US and are buying real estate with their tech salaries.
I wouldn’t blame Trump for Canada’s failings. I’d blame every layer of the government that is playing to lose and has brought this country to its knees. We are paying out of our asses in interest rates and taxes and our money is going nowhere. Inflation has eaten everything up and people have been getting progressively poorer over the decades. That’s got absolutely zero to do with Trump’s blowhard attitude.
Stop getting hoodwinked by professional speechwriters.
I share your concern about growing inequality, but to lie down and give up does not help anyone
A country that’s owned by bankers and we are supposed to believe a banker will pull us out of this. Yeah, now pull the other one.
People move to the US and they make twice the money. That is not “a whole lot of nonsense” and has nothing to do with “doomer propaganda” - it’s literally the brain drain that Canada has been dealing with for a long time.
Waterloo and other grads get poached by US companies before they finish schooling. This is nothing new. US just pays way better no matter how you look at it.
This is so true and I think economic sanctions should be recognized as the weapons they actually are.
Just a taste: No Amazon, No Gmail: Trump Sanctions Upend the Lives of I.C.C. Judges President Trump’s retaliation against top officials at the International Criminal Court has shut them out of American services and made even routine daily tasks a challenge. https://archive.is/KflDP
Now consider the US has been doing this to entire countries for decades. Cuba, Venezuela, Iran. Forget Amazon, the inability to use the SWIFT banking system has all sorts of nasty consequences that get elided by a clinical sounding term.
From the Lancet:
Our findings showed a significant causal association between sanctions and increased mortality. We found the strongest effects for unilateral, economic, and US sanctions, whereas we found no statistical evidence of an effect for UN sanctions. Mortality effects ranged from 8·4 log points (95% CI 3·9–13·0) for children younger than 5 years to 2·4 log points (0·9–4·0) for individuals aged 60–80 years. We estimated that unilateral sanctions were associated with an annual toll of 564 258 deaths (95% CI 367 838–760 677), similar to the global mortality burden associated with armed conflict. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-1...
You don’t need a study to conclude the mortality of actual weapons.
Sanctions are bad. But war is horrible.
In aggregate. America isn’t in armed conflict with those folks. If everyone we sanctioned were attacked, more people would die.
Really it isn't just a different order. Imo it is a reversion to imperialism with us eyeing Latin America, Russia Ukraine, China Taiwan.
https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart
They would have gone right-wing in Carney's election if not for Trump meddling. He needs to get those cost of living issues fixed ASAP, probably starting with housing.
Everyone who has a chance to get out is getting out, and moving to US. The anti-US rhetoric is a false front in Canada - US money smells better and buys you a very comfortable life. Trump’s bullshit is a temporary blip in the grand scheme of things. “Elbows up” on your flight to Seattle.
Last time it took a great depression to convince Americans to actually care about each other (socialism-lite), and I expect nothing less this time around.
Aren't all problems in Canada 5x worse in the US?
“Money talks, bullshit walks” is all that needs to be said. Canadian salaries are half (if that) of US ones.
yeah, I don't believe you, random, anonymous, throwaway account on the Internet
Everything I hear around me is people coming back from the US, they don’t feel safe with their family.
Oh, just saw you created your account an hour ago. Never mind then, just making shit up to troll.
jleyank•12h ago