Mark Carney is the unlikely hinge of a world in transition. The prime minister of Canada lives and works in the long shadow of its neighbor to the south, carefully navigating the space that unbalanced relationships create. Carney is also a former central banker, a profession that lends itself to reticence, rectitude and measured utterances that do their utmost to avoid spooking markets and undermining economic activity.
Yet Carney this week offered one of the most unblinking, if not scathing, assessments of the world order, one that stripped away the comforting illusions of continuity and familiarity and acknowledged that we are living through a revolutionary period that demands recognition as such and a response.
¡°We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,¡± he warned, pointing to, without calling out explicitly, the increasingly belligerent rhetoric and disruptive actions of U.S. President Donald Trump. The glitterati of the World Economic Forum were consumed by the prospect of the U.S. ¡°taking¡± ¡ª in a form not determined but also not excluding the military option ¡ª Greenland, the territory of Denmark, a NATO ally and a move that threatened the existence of the trans-Atlantic alliance.
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