In the rarefied air of Davos, where platitudes usually suffocate truth, Mark Carney just detonated a diplomatic grenade. The former central banker has declared the death of the American-led order, urging the world’s "middle powers" to forge a new survival alliance against the predatory chaos of a second Trump term.

For decades, the global elite have gathered in the Swiss Alps to congratulate themselves on a "rules-based order" that ceased to exist years ago. Carney’s intervention on Tuesday—a searing indictment of "nostalgia as a strategy"—marks a pivotal psychological break. He explicitly framed the current geopolitical moment not as a transition, but as a "rupture," a brutal new reality where the United States has mutated from the world’s policeman into its most volatile extortionist.

"Living in Truth"

Channeling the Czech dissident Václav Havel, Carney invoked the concept of "living in truth" to shatter the collective delusion that the West still exists as a cohesive political entity. His speech, delivered to a stunned silence that eventually broke into a standing ovation, was a de facto manifesto for the post-American world. He argued that clinging to the "pleasant fiction" of the Atlantic alliance is now an act of self-harm.

"We can no longer pretend that economic integration is benign when it is being used as a weapon of coercion," Carney told the forum, a scarcely veiled reference to President Donald Trump’s recent threat to weaponize tariffs against NATO allies who opposed his renewed bid to purchase Greenland. "The great powers are now unconstrained. If the middle powers—Canada, the UK, Europe—do not band together, we will simply be on the menu."

• The Greenland Ultimatum: Trump’s erratic demand to buy the autonomous territory, half-retracted in a rambling address on Wednesday, has become the litmus test for European sovereignty. His glorification of tariffs as a punitive tool has effectively ended the era of free trade.
• The European Awakening: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen echoed Carney’s darkness, telling the European Parliament that the bloc must build "its own levers of power" in a world defined solely by "raw force."
• The "Woke" Enemy: Finnish President Alexander Stubb offered the most chilling assessment, noting that the MAGA movement now views liberal Europe not just as a geopolitical irrelevance, but as an ideological enemy to be crushed alongside domestic political rivals.

The End of the Affair

The shift in tone is seismic. Emmanuel Macron, long the proponent of "strategic autonomy," has been vindicated. The French President, who was openly mocked by Trump earlier this week, stated flatly that the US is now "openly seeking to weaken and subordinate Europe." This is no longer a diplomatic spat; it is a divorce proceeding.

For the Global South and nations like Kenya, the implications are stark. The "middle powers" alliance Carney envisions would likely bypass the dollar-dominated systems that Washington uses to enforce its will. As the West fractures, the resulting vacuum will likely be filled by ad-hoc coalitions of the willing—a chaotic "Assembly of Middle Powers" trying to hold the line against a superpower that has gone rogue. The "Leader of the Free World" title has been vacated; the scramble to survive the fallout has begun.