{"id":3193,"date":"2026-03-20T17:27:22","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:27:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/carneys-middle-power-mirage-stephen-nagy-in-canadian-affairs-the-macdonald-laurier-institute\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T17:27:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:27:22","slug":"carneys-middle-power-mirage-stephen-nagy-in-canadian-affairs-the-macdonald-laurier-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/carneys-middle-power-mirage-stephen-nagy-in-canadian-affairs-the-macdonald-laurier-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Carney\u2019s middle-power mirage: Stephen Nagy in Canadian Affairs – The Macdonald-Laurier Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in the Canadian Affairs. <\/a>
By Stephen Nagy, Mar 20, 2026<\/strong>
Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s recent address at Australia\u2019s Lowy Institute offered a comforting vision for Canadians.
He spoke of a coalition of middle powers operating through \u201cvariable geometry\u201d \u2014 whereby subsets of nations work together on specific issues of mutual interest without full alignment on other matters. He described a \u201cvalues-based realism\u201d that could collectively shape the international order.
It is an elegant diplomatic framework. Unfortunately, it is also fundamentally detached from the geopolitical realities of the 2020s.
Carney\u2019s strategy rests on three flawed premises: a misunderstanding of what a middle power can actually achieve in today\u2019s bipolar system, a misdiagnosis of Donald Trump as the primary source of Canada\u2019s strategic woes, and a dangerous naivet\u00e9 regarding the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
If Canada is to survive the coming decades, it must abandon the comfortable mythology of its Pearsonian past and confront the harsh structural realities of the present.
First, Carney\u2019s reliance on a middle-power coalition to counter superpower hegemony is an exercise in multipolar delusion. As international relations scholar C. Raja Mohan notes, the idea that power is diffusing into a manageable multipolar order is a mirage.
The international system remains strictly defined by the comprehensive power of the United States and China. While Carney correctly notes that the combined GDP of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada rivals that of the U.S., this economic weight does not translate into unified geopolitical gravity.
As I have argued, middle powers are currently trapped in a classic prisoner\u2019s dilemma.
When faced with American tariffs or Chinese economic coercion, middle powers do not unite in \u201cvariable geometry.\u201d They scramble for bilateral accommodations. We saw this when South Korea, Japan and the EU rushed to secure their own tariff exemptions with Washington rather than mounting a coordinated defence.
The notion of 21st-century middle-power independence is increasingly fictional. Without the hard power to back it up, the ability to \u201cconvene\u201d and \u201cset agendas\u201d is meaningless.
Second, Carney\u2019s framework subtly scapegoats Donald Trump\u2019s transactionalism for Canada\u2019s vulnerabilities. Dealing with Trump is undoubtedly difficult, but Trump did not create Canada\u2019s problems; he merely exposed them.
Canada\u2019s strategic crisis is entirely self-inflicted, the result of decades of deep-seated complacency.
For generations, Ottawa has coasted on a \u201csecurity discount\u201d provided by its geographic proximity to the United States.
While Washington underwrote continental defence, Canada allowed its military spending to languish at roughly 1.3 per cent of GDP, utterly unprepared for the Trump administration\u2019s new five per cent \u201cHague Commitment\u201d standard.
Furthermore, Canada\u2019s vulnerabilities extend to its economic foundations.
As economist Mike Moffatt has highlighted, Canada\u2019s global performance rankings are in freefall, plagued by stagnant GDP per capita and a chronic housing crisis that predates the current U.S. administration.
When Carney warns that \u201ca country that can\u2019t feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options,\u201d he is inadvertently indicting his own government\u2019s legacy. Canada currently fields a woefully inadequate number of icebreakers to defend its Arctic sovereignty, leaving a gaping hole in NORAD\u2019s northern flank that Russia and China are eager to exploit.
Washington\u2019s pressure on Canada is not merely Trumpian bullying; it is a rational response to an ally that has become a security liability.
Finally, Carney\u2019s assertion that Canada can manage China through \u201cselective engagement\u201d and a mutual understanding of \u201cno surprises\u201d borders on strategic malpractice. As I have warned, Beijing does not view increased trade as a destination; it views it as leverage banked for the next dispute.
To believe that Canada can compartmentalize its relationship with Beijing \u2014 cooperating on trade while politely disagreeing on security \u2014 is to fall victim to what former Japanese Ambassador Shingo Yamagami calls \u201cChina magic.\u201d
The CCP operates under a doctrine of civil-military fusion, where economic policy, internal security, and propaganda are seamlessly integrated. Multiple public inquiries and CSIS intelligence assessments have definitively proven that China views Canada as a permissive environment for cognitive warfare.
Beijing has systematically engaged in transnational repression against diaspora communities, elite capture of Canadian politicians, and the theft of intellectual property from Canadian research institutions. This is the \u201cborrowed knife\u201d strategy in action: exploiting Canada\u2019s openness, multiculturalism, and desire to be an \u201chonest broker\u201d to undermine Canadian sovereignty from within.
Engaging in \u201cfriendly consultation\u201d with a regime that operates illegal police stations on Canadian soil and arbitrarily detains Canadian citizens for 1,019 days is not values-based realism. It is appeasement.
If Canada wants to protect its sovereignty, it cannot rely on the variable geometry of middle-power networking. It must practice what I call \u201chardened engagement.\u201d
This requires massive, sustained investments in defense and Arctic infrastructure, comprehensive foreign influence transparency legislation, and the ruthless elimination of vulnerabilities in our critical supply chains.
Canada\u2019s problem is not that the rules-based order is changing; it is that we have refused to pay the entry fee for the new one. Until Ottawa stops hiding behind diplomatic buzzwords and starts building genuine national capacity, we will remain at the mercy of the giants.
Stephen Nagy<\/strong> is a professor at the International Christian University, Tokyo, a visiting fellow with the Japan Institute for International Affairs, and a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. His forthcoming book is titled \u201cJapan as a Middle Power State: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides.\u201d<\/em>
323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 7Z2 Canada
613.482.8327
Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.
Support Us<\/a>
\u00a9 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.
This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2023 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article originally appeared in the Canadian Affairs. By Stephen Nagy, Mar 20, 2026Prime Minister Mark Carney\u2019s recent address at Australia\u2019s Lowy Institute offered a comforting vision for Canadians.He spoke of a coalition of middle powers operating through \u201cvariable geometry\u201d \u2014 whereby subsets of nations work together on specific issues of mutual interest without full […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3193","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}