After his speech at the Davos conference last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is being widely hailed in major US and European media as the valiant David confronting Goliath, bully-boy President Trump. But a better reference would be to buffoonish King Lear and his scheming daughters Regan and Goneril.
Carney candidly confessed (almost bragged) that the “rules-based order,” a set of unwritten precepts through which the reigning financial powers endeavor to impose their will on the planet, was always a thinly disguised fraud. How noble of him to admit this, since in his previous incarnation as Bank of England chief, he was one of its key architects!
Under that “order,” the collective West can turn livid over Russia’s “unprovoked invasion” of Ukraine while blithely ignoring, sometimes even cheering, the devastation wrought by the attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria. Countries that grew rich through hydrocarbon-based power systems can piously lecture desperately poor nations to content themselves with solar, wind, and perpetual backwardness. The same person named yesterday as a bloodthirsty terrorist head-chopper can magically morph today into America’s staunch geopolitical ally, as in Syria. Without Carney’s elucidation, who could have possibly doubted the righteousness of this system?
