…which politicians almost never do. It’s fair to say he has risen to the occasion! Some excerpts:

It’s a pleasure — and a duty — to be with you at this turning point for Canada and the world.

I’ll speak today about the rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the dawn of a brutal reality in which great-power geopolitics is unconstrained.

But I submit to you all the same that other countries, in particular middle powers like Canada, aren’t powerless. They have the power to build a new order that integrates our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states.

The power of the less powerful begins with honesty….

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

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 that international law applied with varying rigour 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….

Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.

More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished….

Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.

Meanwhile, today at Davos, the monster child backed off the threat of military force against Greenland. He still wants to acquire it, but says he won’t attack. Why the shift? Maybe some in his inner circle, like Rubio or Lindsey Graham, explained that attacking Greenland, with whom the U.S. is bound by NATO, is not like attacking Venezuela. Maybe the prospect of “boots on the ground” scared him off? Maybe the possibility that the military would view the order to attack a NATO ally as unlawful was brought to his attention. Maybe the fact that even 70% of Republican voters, according to polls, were opposed to military action against Greenland, concerned him? Maybe we’ll never find out.