«In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with a greengrocer.
Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie”.
The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
And his answer began with a greengrocer.
Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn't believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie”.
The system's power comes not from its truth, but from everyone's willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.
They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty can also be shared.
Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum. And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality – we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.
Now Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.
Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security – that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, has termed “value-based realism”.
Or, to put another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.
So, we're engaging broadly, strategically with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.
We are calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values, and we're prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given and given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.
And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.
We are building that strength at home.
Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast tracking a trillion dollars of investments in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond. We're doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade, and we're doing so in ways that build our domestic industries.
And we are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months. The past few days, we've concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We're negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.
We're doing something else. To help solve global problems, we're pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So, on Ukraine, we're a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.
On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland's future.
Our commitment to NATO's Article 5 is unwavering, so we're working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic Gate, to further secure the alliance's northern and western flanks, including through Canada's unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft and boots on the ground, boots on the ice.
Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.
On plurilateral trade, we're championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we're forming buyers’ clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. And on AI, we're cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won't ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyper-scalers.
This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It's building coalitions that work – issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.
In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.
What it's doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture, on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.
Argue, the middle powers must act together, because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu.
But I'd also say that great powers, great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.
But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what's offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.
This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.
We shouldn't allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them together – which brings me back to Havel.
What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?
First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is – a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests, using economic integration as coercion.
It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction, but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and agreements that function as described. And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion – that's building a strong domestic economy. It should be every government's immediate priority.
And diversification internationally is not just economic prudence, it's a material foundation for honest foreign policy, because countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.
So Canada. Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world's largest and most sophisticated investors. In other words, we have capital, talent… we also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.
Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but.. A partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.
And we have something else. We have a recognition of what's happening and a determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.
We are taking the sign out of the window. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn't mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power.
But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.
That is Canada's path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us. Thank you very much.»
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https://observador.pt/opiniao/marc-carney-do-merceeiro-de-havel-ao-banqueiro-de-davos-coragem-zero-oportunismo-total/
«O discurso de Mark Carney em Davos (20 de janeiro de 2026) foi saudado pela comunicação social liberal-progressista como exemplar, corajoso e lúcido. Não o é. Trata-se da mais recente e sofisticada tentativa do liberalismo progressista de sobreviver ao colapso da ordem que ele próprio erigiu e de que beneficiou durante décadas. O primeiro ministro do Canadá anuncia a morte da “ordem internacional baseada em regras” como se descrevesse um acidente inevitável, uma “rupture, not a transition”, o fim de uma “pleasant fiction”. Na realidade, fala do fracasso histórico do seu próprio projeto ideológico. O liberalismo progressista não caiu por traição; caiu por ter sido aplicado na íntegra. Trump e outros fenómenos são efeitos, não causas.
Aqueles que hoje lamentam a “nova realidade brutal” são os principais arquitetos do desastre. Durante décadas, prometeram globalização regulada, justa, inclusiva e pacificadora. Entregaram desindustrialização, erosão das soberanias, dependências estratégicas letais, fragmentação social, erosão cultural e uma oligarquia tecnocrática cada vez mais desligada dos povos. A “ordem baseada em regras” nunca foi universal: foi hierarquia disfarçada, exceções convenientes para os fortes, e moral seletiva administrada por elites financeiras, jurídicas e mediáticas. Carney reconhece agora que essa ordem acabou, “the old order is not coming back”, mas falta-lhe a honestidade de admitir que foi ela própria que destruiu a credibilidade da regra. A “nova ordem” que acena não é renovação; é a velha ordem a tentar sobreviver num mundo desenraizado, de consumo e espetáculo, que se pretendia homogéneo e incontestável.»
Cont.
«O Canadá integrou plenamente essa ordem dos mais fortes que essa elite agora denuncia com falsa humildade. A ordem liberal-progressista quis submeter o planeta, rotulando de antidemocrática qualquer recusa de capitulação. Implodida, os seus líderes deviam assumir as responsabilidades do poder hegemónico exercido sob disfarce de boas intenções. Carney não lamenta o significado perdido da ordem internacional; lamenta que ela já não dependa da sua ideologia. É verdade que o autor do discurso identifica corretamente a instabilidade crescente, a fragmentação do sistema internacional e o regresso da lógica de poder. O problema é que confunde o diagnóstico do colapso com a absolvição dos seus autores. A proposta de coordenação entre “potências médias”, “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu”, não é solução; é tentativa de salvar o cosmopolitismo tecnocrático sem o nomear. Troca-se o império por um condomínio de especialistas, mas mantém-se a lógica: decisões afastadas dos povos, legitimadas por “valores” abstratos, blindadas contra a política real e protegidas por retórica moral.
O banqueiro de Davos fala de realismo, mas recusa a realidade fundamental: as nações não são meras unidades económicas; são comunidades históricas. A política não é gestão de interdependências; é governo de povos concretos. A soberania não é detalhe técnico; é condição da democracia. A ordem verdadeira não nasce de regras abstratas; nasce de lealdades, limites, tradições e responsabilidade partilhada. O liberalismo progressista de Carney persiste em ver os conflitos globais como falhas de coordenação, quando são choques de civilizações, interesses vitais, identidades e visões morais inconciliáveis. A sua linguagem permanece pós-histórica; o mundo regressou ao trágico. Ao citar Havel e “living within a lie”, o merceeiro que retira o cartaz da montra, o orador aproxima-se da verdade que não ousa atravessar. A grande mentira do nosso tempo foi exatamente a de que o mercado global, a governação técnica e o progressismo cultural podiam substituir política, cultura e moral. Mas o “viver na verdade” de Havel, em O Poder dos Impotentes, não é estratégia geopolítica nem reconfiguração de alianças: é ato existencial, solitário, perigoso, muitas vezes autodestrutivo. O merceeiro arrisca tudo, vida, emprego, família, dignidade. Carney e as elites retiram o cartaz só agora que a “polícia”, a hegemonia complacente, já não vigia nem pune. Isso não é coragem; é adaptação tardia, oportunismo tardio. As referências a Tucídides, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”, e a Havel iludem as lições verdadeiras: os Estados não caem por falta de valores; caem por má avaliação da sua posição real no poder. Os impérios criam regras enquanto lhes convêm e abandonam-nas quando limitam. Carney lamenta precisamente o fim dessa exceção conveniente para o Ocidente liberal. Substitui um cartaz por outro: as “hortaliças” deram lugar ao chavão vazio de “realismo baseado em valores”. Este discurso é emocionalmente apelativo, mas factualmente oco. Não existe “potência média coletiva” como sujeito histórico unificado; existem Estados com medos, horizontes e tolerâncias ao risco díspares. Se Havel fosse vivo, perguntaria a Carney: onde estavas quando a hipocrisia beneficiava o teu conforto? Se a ordem era má, porque viveste nela confortavelmente durante décadas? Quem denuncia a mentira do sistema sem nomear a própria cumplicidade permanece dentro dela. O novo conservadorismo recusa a nostalgia dessa ordem e a ilusão da sua reforma. Ela não colapsou por imperfeição; colapsou por ser antropologicamente falsa: negou limites humanos, dissolveu vínculos, reduziu o cidadão a consumidor, a pátria a mercado, a cultura a produto, a política a gestão, a verdade a narrativa.»
Cont.
«A alternativa não está numa nova arquitetura multilateral desenhada em Davos. Está na restauração da política como destino comum, da economia como instrumento e não senhor, da cultura como raiz, da soberania como responsabilidade e da tradição como continuidade viva. Precisamos de pertença antes da interdependência, identidade antes da coordenação, soberania antes da regra, comunidade antes do sistema. Carney propõe resiliência sem pertença, cooperação sem identidade, ordem sem transcendência. Trump também não é a resposta. O liberalismo progressista quer salvar o mundo da história. O que importa é salvar a história do liberalismo progressista. Apesar da elegância retórica e da lucidez tática parcial, o discurso de Carney não é rutura. É o lamento de uma elite que percebeu a perda de controlo, mas ainda não entendeu porquê.»
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