The Hollow Truth of the Carney Doctrine

The following story is co-published with Luke Savage’s Substack.

Barely two months on from Mark Carney’s widely discussed Davos address, the Canadian prime minister recently had this to say in the wake of the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran — among the first victims of which appear to have been over 100 schoolgirls between the ages of 7 and 12:

Nothing about Ottawa’s position is left ambiguous here, and the language is striking in that it does not even pretend to offer any justification rooted in international law. Officially, Mark Carney and Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand not only endorse the Trump administration’s pretext for the war (only adding in a later statement that Canada’s military will not itself be getting involved) but have also eschewed any pretense that the country’s global posture rests on much beyond the law of the jungle. In view of that, I can’t have been the only one to think about the prime minister’s assertion in Davos that his government would remain “principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the U.N. Charter and respect for human rights.”

On this basis, there is quite plainly no defense of U.S.-Israeli bombing to be made — and, again, it’s notable that Canada’s leaders have not even tried to fudge one. As Lloyd Axworthy, a former minister of foreign affairs and a Liberal, observes in the Toronto Star:

The Canadian government condemns Iran as a destabilizing actor, insists Tehran must “never be allowed” to obtain nuclear weapons, and declares that Canada “supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.” The statement also reaffirms Israel’s right to self-defence. Yet it never once invokes the language that any legally grounded justification would require: self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, or authorization by the UN Security Council.

Under the UN Charter, cross-border uses of force are prohibited except in two narrow cases: collective decisions of the Security Council, or self defence in response to an actual or truly imminent armed attack. Operation Epic Fury, as the U.S. has dubbed it, fits neither. There is no Security Council mandate, and Ottawa has not tried to argue that Washington and Jerusalem are responding to an attack that is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means.” Instead, it supports bombing to “prevent” Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Here, there is a fair bit more that can be said. President Donald Trump himself reneged on his predecessor’s nuclear agreement with Iran during his first term, and insisted after the previous wave of strikes by America and Israel that its nuclear capability had already been destroyed. Again, Ottawa’s refusal to criticize such a clear act of aggression is repellent enough. But its decision to both echo and endorse the justifications offered by Trump, Marco Rubio and Benjamin Netanyahu suddenly lend a very different meaning to Carney’s memorable line in January that “the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient … that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.” Well, indeed. Like Haval’s shopkeeper, it seems Carney has dutifully hung the sign back in the window.

In another sense, however, I think Canada’s support for the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran is perfectly consistent with the idea of “values-based realism,” as Carney described it in Davos. As I wrote at the time, there was a conservative subtext in the speech many seem have missed, one mostly found in its less-discussed second half.

Fundamentally, Carney was saying was that the oft-asserted universalist ideals of liberal order have tended to be more fiction than reality — a claim that resonated because it’s so obviously true. But a progressive internationalism doesn’t necessarily follow from that premise, because Carney’s logic could also mean that states are now free to pursue their own narrow self-interests without even having to pay lip service to concepts like international law and human rights.

I think this is what “values-based realism” largely does mean in practice. Mark Carney might be a liberal who at least abstractly believes in some kind of humane internationalism. But in practice, it was evident from his call to realism (to “actively take on the world as it is, not wait for a world we wish to be”) that the prime minister functionally views human rights and international law as luxuries middle powers like Canada cannot afford to indulge in today’s world. As I wrote back in January:

In [Carney’s] posited clash between enlightened values and the pragmatic pursuit of national self-interest, it’s clear that the second will almost always eclipse the first unless the values in question are anchored on much firmer ground. … Scaled up to an international level, it seems to me, the same logic will almost invariably express itself as conservative realpolitik rather than high principle.

In this case, said realpolitik means condemning aggression when it’s undertaken by a country like Russia, while openly endorsing it when its perpetrators are America or Israel. To do otherwise, Ottawa calculates, would put its real objectives at risk, and pursuit of those means trading any pretense to universalism for something far narrower and more transactional. And here, there will always be Trump officials to placate, new markets for Canada’s energy products to be found, authoritarian governments with whom to broker the sale of Canadian-made weapons, and so on.

That this position makes a mockery of Canadian independence, international law, Carney’s own election mandate and the principles of elementary morality will, I imagine, not find much objection among readers of this Substack.

But, in light of Washington’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Canada and our power and influence relative to the United States, I believe it represents a serious strategic error as well. At this point, after all, what guardrails do we really think exist to constrain U.S. imperial behavior? And, should the White House at some point decide to treat us as it’s treated, say, Greenland or Cuba, to what principles will Ottawa appeal then?

Morality notwithstanding, the law of the jungle works pretty well for superpowers with the means and will to enforce and live by it. But, as Axworthy writes:

In a world where preventive wars multiply and great powers act first and explain later, middle powers like Canada will someday wish they had defended the UN Charter when they still could.

In the days since Ottawa’s endorsement of the war, there have already been some signs of pushback and some indicators it may at least provisionally be working. Taking questions from reporters on Monday, Anand basically tied herself into knots in an effort to defend the government’s initial position while also creating distance from it. Officially, despite having endorsed the U.S.-Israeli pretext for the war, Canada now also “believes in a diplomatic and peaceful solution, and as soon as possible, would like [the] parties to get to the table.”

Since that’s exactly where they were before the U.S. and Israel started bombing, it’s hard to see who that will convince. But, if nothing else, Anand’s triangulation does at least suggest public outrage is already having an effect.