Prime Minister Mark Carney’s much criticized ambiguity about the role of international law regarding U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran is more than an excusable stumble by an inexperienced politician operating in a challenging environment.
Carney is building a foreign policy “doctrine” that increasingly warrants a closer look.
Last October, Carney lavished praise on U.S. President Donald Trump for supposedly “disabling Iran as a force of terror” with U.S. strikes months earlier. While the prime minister has softened — but not withdrawn — his support for the current military campaign that began in spite of progress on peace talks, he has not explained why he has long disagreed with intelligence assessments that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Nor has Carney or his ministers refused to rule out some form of participation in the conflict that is rapidly extending to other Persian Gulf states.
An opportunity to provide clarity on such issues was rebuffed when Carney skipped an emergency debate in Parliament on the growing crisis. Meanwhile, the war continues to unleash enormous human suffering and chaos.
No, this is literally exactly what he said in Davos.
Remember the part about how we can only afford to be generous from strength? His point was that beggars don’t get to influence the systems that govern our world in a meaningful way, i.e. sometimes you have to focus on building yourself up in order to be a force for good.
His record will always bear continuous scrutiny, but you also have to give him some time and space to cook, and recognize that the fastest way to the top of the mountain isn’t always by naiively going straight up.
The parts he is sticking to are the pivot to realism, but most of the rest has already been binned.
Values-based realism has been revealed as just realism wearing a “values” hat to make it palatable to liberals who need some hand holding into a Hobbesian state of chaos and a return to the Standard of Civilization.
The principles in “principled pragmatism” are just more branding. The principles he spoke to, including naming reality, being consistent, building what we claim to believe in have all been more absent by the week. What we’ve seen recently is actually a refusal to name reality, a refusal to be consistent, and a throwing of institutions we claimed to believe in under the bus.
No, again, you are mistaking the path to the top of the mountain as one that always slopes upwards.
Ah, the condescending tone of self-assured belief in 4D chess and promises of payoff someday in the future when evidence in 3D world is mounting in the opposite direction.
It’s not belief that Carney is taking the right path, it’s the knowledge that you haven’t had enough time to assess his path finding ability, given that his stated goals weren’t going to materialize in a 6 month time frame.
His Davos speech did not simply lay out a destination. It laid out a vision for how to walk the path to reach that destination. There absolutely is evidence to demonstrate that he has contradicted his own statements about how to walk the path. He set the pathfinding standard that he’s not following. I’m just assessing him on his following the standard he set. The result of contradictions is that it’s an incoherent foreign policy, and that’s why its being called out and debated by many people in IR and policy spaces.
Yes, middle powers pooling together and using their collective economic power to force fairer systems.
Please go ahead and tell me which middle powers banded together with him to create a fairer system?
Oh you can’t? So we’re still operating in the existing unfair system then? So then we’re back at taking the world as it is.
It is not incoherent foreign policy, it just foreign policy whose goals don’t happen instantly.
Reflect on what you’re writing. You’re just leaning into circular logic that absolves the Carney government by dismissing contradicting evidence out of hand.
Carney says there’s a way to do things. Carney doesn’t do things that way. Must be that Carney couldn’t do things that way. Him not meeting the standard is justified because that’s “the world as it is.”
But wait, wasn’t he the guy who knew how the world is when he set the standard in the first place?
Hmm, also, if “the world as it is” justifies every departure from the way he said to walk the path, does he even have agency as a leader navigating circumstances, or should we put his agency aside any time a decision looks off?
You reflect on what you’re writing. It is not conflicting evidence it is simply a situation more nuanced than black and white.
Honestly, stop responding if you need to boil everything down to simplistic terms to understand them.
This is literally just the most basic game theory problem of coordination. A single actor cannot move on their own if the move requires the coordinated efforts of many.
why not address the concept , as opposed to insults and hand waving? because you can’t
Your bullshit might work with the braying imbeciles you consort with, but sad news, the inmates time running the asylum is winding down
You’re really making the case for avoiding insults and addressing the concepts there.
cry more
you started it
I really appreciate your ability to elevate a conversation. Impressive.
The only mountain Carney is interested in is the enormous pile of money he is fire-hosing at the corporate world
I agree that it’s what he said in Davos, but this ‘doctrine’ is effectively just caving to the outlook of Trump, Putin, et al, which deems that economic and military might make right, and that we should measure human worth in GDP rather than the inherent value of one’s humanity.
The Carney Doctrine is Value over Values, in other words. It’s really cynical and shitty tbh
He dealt with Brexiters, the IDU and Trump, not hard to be cynical.
You did not understand his speech at all then.
The literal entire thesis of it was that we take the world as it is, not as we want it to be. The game isn’t always set up to let you play nice and still achieve a good outcome.
Well, let’s look at Carney’s actions then.
He vocally supported the kidnapping of Maduro.
Then just days later he went and made some handshake investment deal with Qatar, a gulf dictatorship that used thousands of slaves to build its World Cup stadiums, and is the country holding onto the proceeds of Trump’s sale of stolen Venezuelan oil.
Then Carney cheered the unprovoked US & Israeli attacks on Iran, walked back his support a little when he saw the public outrage, and is now trying to weasel-word his way into Canadian troops supporting the fascist US in a war of aggression.
Brookfield has billions of dollars invested in the gulf states like Qatar that Carney is suddenly calling our “partners”, by the way
So Maduro was a good guy? Not a Dictator?
Qatar is bad, but Alberta is ok?
Canada would have been in Iran day 1 with Poilievre, if we weren’t the 51st state already.
It’s a turd sandwich or shit burrito situation, and it’s also impossible to please everyone’s moral center, because there is no right answer in the Gaza.
I count at least three false dichotomies in one comment, that’s impressive!
Sure, it’s 2026, everyone is an anti semite, Zionist, Fascist or tankie to the moral clerics on Reddit/lemmy.
It’s important to remember that Liberal leaders are just harm reduction as we avoid the blue faux-ristocracy. Ideally we would have an orange government or even a strong orange crutch holding up a minority red if we want some progress on things that matter to Canadians.
This guy is here to weather the economic attack from America by strengthening ties with Europe, and build up military and infrastructure so we can survive when America cuts of off from theirs in some fit of juvenile pique.
Yes, all of those actions taken to strengthen Canada economically, and position us to be in a position of future economic power that will give us the ability to enact and shape fairer systems.
You’re bitching and complaining about short term hedging his bets diplomatic moves. Naiively pursuing the most noble action at all time will not lead to a better world, it will lead to good people getting predictably out maneuvered by shitty ones.
What’s interesting about this discussion is that all the “good” stuff Carney is supposedly aiming at is entirely hypothetical and rhetorical, and the bad stuff is very real.
40,000 jobs cut in the federal public sector by someone who promised to “cap, not cut” the public service.
Massive cuts to the CBC by someone who promised to increase their funding.
But we should keep trusting him?
I was told that Carney understood climate change and economics, and then he went and tripled down on the same fossil fuels that are causing the current global geopolitical and economic crisis. Oh, and greenwashing is legal again, which is the cherry on top of that shit sundae.
It’s been over a year of cuts and deregulation benefitting massive corporations. How long are people prepared to cling to their religious-like faith in a man who has only ever been a friend to the Goldman Sachs/Brookfield class?
My fucking god. You expect him to snap his fingers, and have major nation building infrastructure projects complete and profitable within a year?
Short sighted bitching like this is why we can’t have nice things. Get off the internet and go live your life.
No, I expect him to be doing the good things that his supporters keep claiming he will do, rather than doing the bad things he has been consistently doing. But thanks for attacking me personally rather than having any kind of honest discussion, I guess?
Oh wow, now you’re sad for feeling attacked, totally how fascists feel.
Maybe we shouldn’t go around calling everyone we slightly disagree with a fascist?
Buddy, people like you are the reason Canada is falling to fascism. Reap what you sow, keep significantly utilizing American services and appeasing American corporations, that goes for Brookfield as well, major conflict of interest. What products have made Canada unique and respected around the world? Oh right, nothing.
Oh wow, another leftist who is so naiive and righteous that they can’t even get along with people who agree with them but choose a slightly different path.
You’re such a credit to the cause with your quickness to label everyone and everything a fascist! Your attitude totally isn’t why left wing groups always fall apart to infighting.
“We take the world as it is” makes for powerful rhetoric, but is meaningless. There are many stories of how the world is, and all stories of how the world is are a matter of framing the facts. Allow someone to tell you their framing is the one truth, and you’ve submitted to uncritically accepting their theory of action.
Lmfao. No.
That’s fundamentally not how framing / lenses / perspectives work.
You don’t forget a lens or way of examining a situation, just because you learn a new one.
You’re misinterpreting my point. It’s not just allowing them to say it, but accepting it as the one truth. That’s what “the world as it is” rhetoric accomplishes.
But I’ll still ask, do you believe the Carney government is taking the world as it truly is, or is it telling one debatable story, among many viable stories of how the world is, for the purpose of shaping discourse towards political ends?
You can’t have it both ways.
If it’s just one story among many, then the “we take the world as it is” as the whole thesis of his speech is obviously problematic. You’ve got to get into the weeds of what “the world as it is” actually means to Carney and why it’s being framed that way, because it is a choice to frame it one way rather than another and choices reflect perceptions and priorities. All of that becomes highly debatable.
If someone buys into his framing of “how the world is” in some essentialist way, then they may as well be in a cult.
The world as it is, means that it’s more nuanced and subtle then just “do good = good outcome”, which is what you insist.
If your world view is just “every time you don’t go HAM calling out every injustice then you’re a bastard man”, then literally every politician ever, both past and future, will seem like a bastard man to you.
Carney’s literal entire epoint with “the world as it is”, is calling out naiive leftists who think that the road to heaven is paved only with good acts and the road to hell isn’t paved with good intentions.
That’s it? That’s your understanding of the “Carney Doctrine” as a foundation for Canada’s foreign policy?
Wow…
That is pretty, pretty shallow.
Also, I’ll point out that you’re misinterpreting and misrepresenting my position again, which is not “do good = good outcome” lol
I don’t even feel the need to comment on this further if you believe that’s the entire point. I’ll just let it stand that you believe it. Nothing really needs added beyond that, other than maybe to point out the humour in you referring to others as “naïve” while adopting a position that isn’t actually even getting into the details of foreign policy we see in practice because it’s so devoted to faith in the rhetoric of his speech.
Lmfao, you haven’t made a single cogent point.
Go ahead and try to explain precisely how Carney is not living up to his Davos speech. So far, all you’ve said is that he has made some Weasley worded political statements that look aimed to please both sides without saying anything. Congratulations. That’s politics.
Just try to explain what specific actions he’s taken that are not in line with his Davos speech. Be specific and don’t boil things down to a black and white analogy. We’ll wait.