This article originally appeared in the Canadian Affairs.
By Stephen Nagy, Mar 20, 2026
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent address at Australia’s Lowy Institute offered a comforting vision for Canadians.
He spoke of a coalition of middle powers operating through “variable geometry” — whereby subsets of nations work together on specific issues of mutual interest without full alignment on other matters. He described a “values-based realism” that could collectively shape the international order.
It is an elegant diplomatic framework. Unfortunately, it is also fundamentally detached from the geopolitical realities of the 2020s.
Carney’s strategy rests on three flawed premises: a misunderstanding of what a middle power can actually achieve in today’s bipolar system, a misdiagnosis of Donald Trump as the primary source of Canada’s strategic woes, and a dangerous naiveté regarding the nature of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
If Canada is to survive the coming decades, it must abandon the comfortable mythology of its Pearsonian past and confront the harsh structural realities of the present.
First, Carney’s reliance on a middle-power coalition to counter superpower hegemony is an exercise in multipolar delusion. As international relations scholar C. Raja Mohan notes, the idea that power is diffusing into a manageable multipolar order is a mirage.
The international system remains strictly defined by the comprehensive power of the United States and China. While Carney correctly notes that the combined GDP of Europe, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada rivals that of the U.S., this economic weight does not translate into unified geopolitical gravity.
As I have argued, middle powers are currently trapped in a classic prisoner’s dilemma.
When faced with American tariffs or Chinese economic coercion, middle powers do not unite in “variable geometry.” They scramble for bilateral accommodations. We saw this when South Korea, Japan and the EU rushed to secure their own tariff exemptions with Washington rather than mounting a coordinated defence.
The notion of 21st-century middle-power independence is increasingly fictional. Without the hard power to back it up, the ability to “convene” and “set agendas” is meaningless.
Second, Carney’s framework subtly scapegoats Donald Trump’s transactionalism for Canada’s vulnerabilities. Dealing with Trump is undoubtedly difficult, but Trump did not create Canada’s problems; he merely exposed them.
Canada’s strategic crisis is entirely self-inflicted, the result of decades of deep-seated complacency.
For generations, Ottawa has coasted on a “security discount” provided by its geographic proximity to the United States.
While Washington underwrote continental defence, Canada allowed its military spending to languish at roughly 1.3 per cent of GDP, utterly unprepared for the Trump administration’s new five per cent “Hague Commitment” standard.
Furthermore, Canada’s vulnerabilities extend to its economic foundations.
As economist Mike Moffatt has highlighted, Canada’s global performance rankings are in freefall, plagued by stagnant GDP per capita and a chronic housing crisis that predates the current U.S. administration.
When Carney warns that “a country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself has few options,” he is inadvertently indicting his own government’s legacy. Canada currently fields a woefully inadequate number of icebreakers to defend its Arctic sovereignty, leaving a gaping hole in NORAD’s northern flank that Russia and China are eager to exploit.
Washington’s pressure on Canada is not merely Trumpian bullying; it is a rational response to an ally that has become a security liability.
Finally, Carney’s assertion that Canada can manage China through “selective engagement” and a mutual understanding of “no surprises” borders on strategic malpractice. As I have warned, Beijing does not view increased trade as a destination; it views it as leverage banked for the next dispute.
To believe that Canada can compartmentalize its relationship with Beijing — cooperating on trade while politely disagreeing on security — is to fall victim to what former Japanese Ambassador Shingo Yamagami calls “China magic.”
The CCP operates under a doctrine of civil-military fusion, where economic policy, internal security, and propaganda are seamlessly integrated. Multiple public inquiries and CSIS intelligence assessments have definitively proven that China views Canada as a permissive environment for cognitive warfare.
Beijing has systematically engaged in transnational repression against diaspora communities, elite capture of Canadian politicians, and the theft of intellectual property from Canadian research institutions. This is the “borrowed knife” strategy in action: exploiting Canada’s openness, multiculturalism, and desire to be an “honest broker” to undermine Canadian sovereignty from within.
Engaging in “friendly consultation” with a regime that operates illegal police stations on Canadian soil and arbitrarily detains Canadian citizens for 1,019 days is not values-based realism. It is appeasement.
If Canada wants to protect its sovereignty, it cannot rely on the variable geometry of middle-power networking. It must practice what I call “hardened engagement.”
This requires massive, sustained investments in defense and Arctic infrastructure, comprehensive foreign influence transparency legislation, and the ruthless elimination of vulnerabilities in our critical supply chains.
Canada’s problem is not that the rules-based order is changing; it is that we have refused to pay the entry fee for the new one. Until Ottawa stops hiding behind diplomatic buzzwords and starts building genuine national capacity, we will remain at the mercy of the giants.
Stephen Nagy is a professor at the International Christian University, Tokyo, a visiting fellow with the Japan Institute for International Affairs, and a senior fellow and China project lead at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. His forthcoming book is titled “Japan as a Middle Power State: Navigating Ideological and Systemic Divides.”
