Oct. 23—Many well-intentioned people are being fooled by the elaborate act being unfurled by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Though he portrays himself as a wholesome, principled, and reasonable Western leader who is boldly opposing the old colonial order, he is nothing of the sort. When he spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos this past January, he lamented that “the rules-based order is fading” and that we now live in an era when “the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.” Carney called for the world’s “middle powers” to unite and “live the truth,” sophistically declaring, “The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.” In reality, Carney is the frontman for an effort to rope in nations looking for alternatives to the growing depravity of the U.S. President Donald Trump administration’s overt neocolonial world order by putting a “multilateral” face on the same Western hegemony.
Carney organized the Sept. 21 founding meeting of his Partnership for Multilateralism (P4M) on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. P4M is designed as a safe way for nations to harmlessly let off steam against the unipolar world system, rather than help steer the growing movement among the Global Majority in the direction of stopping the bankers’ speculative looting in its tracks and replacing that bankrupt system with one rooted in cooperation on great infrastructure projects of mutual benefit.
The listed initial co-sponsors of the group are Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, India, and Kenya; its signatories are Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Guatemala, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Moldova, Norway, San Marino, Slovakia, Spain, Türkiye, and Uruguay.
The official Declaration issued after the Sept. 21 meeting reads like a pronunciamento for motherhood and apple pie:
We are concerned by growing polarization, the spread of conflict, violations of international law and the increasing resort to power politics, protectionism, coercion and the threat or use of force. These trends are a threat to international peace and security and harm global cooperation precisely when it is needed more than ever.
The signatories “commit to work together in support of peace, stability, inclusive and sustainable development, shared prosperity, human dignity and rights for all.” They back the UN system while calling for reform. They state that their group is “open to partners from all regions of the world, to foster dialogue, coordination and practical cooperation,” and state that “cooperation, respect for international law, multilateralism and shared responsibility as the foundations of our collective efforts.”
The day before the declaration’s release, London’s Financial Times published an op-ed entitled, “Multilateralism Is Not Idealism, It Is a Necessity.” Carney co-authored the editorial along with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President William Ruto of Kenya, and President of the European Council António Costa. They write:
[W]e are coming together with a new initiative: “Partners for Multilateralism.” P4M is not about creating another exclusive bloc or another international bureaucracy. Its purpose is the opposite: to create a flexible, open framework for countries from different regions and political traditions that are willing to work across divides, to build coalitions for reform and to translate shared principles into practical action.
Whatever the other signers to this association of so-called middle powers may have in mind, Mark Carney is not to be trusted. As his record shows, he intends to divide the world into blocs, expand the current mass-murderous policy of wars, and loot nations in order to feed his friends’ financial bubbles. Do not be taken in by his shallow, innocent-sounding statements.
