The powerful have their power. We have the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to act together | Mark Carney

"where geopolitics where the large, main power, geopolitics is submitted to no limits, no constraints. On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states."

"Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: Workers of the world unite. He doesn't believe it no one does but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false."

A rupture in the world order signals the end of a pleasant fiction and the arrival of a harsh reality in which great powers act without limits or constraints. Intermediate powers such as Canada retain agency and can help build a new order grounded in respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. The power of less powerful actors begins with honesty and principled conduct. The assumption that strong states can do as they please while weaker states must endure is not inevitable. Compliance and accommodation will not buy safety; collective adherence to shared values and active resistance to false rituals sustain alternative orders.

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