Be at the table, or on the menu

2026-01-27 - 04:29

CANADIAN Prime Minister Mark Carney finished two significantly ground-breaking visits to Beijing and Davos last week and they hold a message for nations and leaders feeling the heat from President Donald Trump’s insulting and arrogant behaviour with friend and foe alike. And while Carney maintained his country’s relations with the US were multifaceted and far-reaching, he was pleased that his rare talks with President Xi Jinping had set up guardrails for greater predictability in bilateral relations and to keep each other’s interests in mind. He also clarified — perhaps to avoid needlessly poking Donald Trump in the eye — that there hadn’t been a free trade agreement with Beijing even if thousands of electric cars from China would be plying Canadian roads in the coming days. And if this riles the US, so be it. Why is it so difficult for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, representing a no less major power, to speak up like Carney? Holding the BRICS presidency for 2026, Modi is required to host a summit of its increasingly powerful and influential leaders in New Delhi around August. However, when Modi does speak, he usually speaks about a municipal election his party would win or has won, if he is not otherwise threatening to replace this or that opposition government in the coming state polls. The last time one heard him speak on a foreign policy issue from Indian soil was the threat he made (unusually) in English in Bihar about avenging the death of innocent tourists in a terror attack in Kashmir in April last year. It resulted in Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, which apparently served no purpose other than to reveal India’s shocking diplomatic isolation under Modi’s watch. Going by the claims of Modi’s own preferred media, he is a great speaker, a charismatic one, in fact. So why does the prime minister of India get tongue-tied facing Trump, whose presidency he canvassed for in 2020, which for likelier other reasons Trump lost. In Davos, Carney spoke even more boldly about souring ties with the US. He told the ruling elites that the 80-year-old world order under US stewardship had ruptured and that there was a need to rearrange equations. The betterment of humanity and protecting its only known hospitable planet was paramount. “We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically, and we knew that international law applied with varied rigour, depending on the identity of the accused or the victim,” Carney’s message was blunt. “Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Why does the prime minister of India get tongue-tied facing Donald Trump? Carney’s address was backed by the German chancellor and was followed by what seems like a Europe-Canadian pact to shun Donald Trump’s self-promoted Board of Peace for Gaza. Its endorsement by leading Islamic states including Pakistan, Egypt and Turkiye makes it trickier to fathom the true intentions. Imagine the lot working with Benjamin Netanyahu who for his own reasons has enrolled himself aboard. It’s not easy to see how Israel and Pakistan could be in a team that too in the name of alleviating the suffering of Palestinian people! India would have plunged headlong for the plan, but the unstated fear of being seen in the company of Pakistan has perhaps put it in a spot. Trump’s plan, in any case, is widely seen as a half-baked idea that postures to tend to the humanitarian pleas of the victims of Israeli genocide. It’s also hampered by an even greater worry that Trump may be seeing the body as a substitute for the UN itself. It’s in this context that Carney’s call for a new game plan for the “middle powers” finds traction, a group to which India presumably belongs as the world’s fourth largest economy. The call was to collectively negotiate the jostling of Big Powers, which impacts everyone, including the Global South. Thus, Carney not only came close to the BRICS ideal of multipolarity, he surpassed it in his zeal to locate a world without nerve-wracking uncertainties or any more inbuilt inequalities with the US. What did Carney say that melds with the agenda of a multipolar world, which should make India and other BRICS nations take notice? Like them, he spoke of the threat to multilateral institutions, namely the WTO, the UN, COP, the very architecture of collective problem-solving. “When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let’s be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.” In other words, individual deals with the bully are ill-advised. “Hegemons cannot continually monetise their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild 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... . ... Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum.” Carney could be reading from a Xi Jinping script for the coming BRICS summit. Calling the middle powers in particular to act together, Carney cautioned: “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” How could Donald Trump not pace himself in the frame? “China will eat you up,” was his angry response. There are questions nevertheless that flow from a tartly pinpointed speech. Does Carney’s new order propose to regard Palestine, Venezuela, Congo et al as equally violated by the old order? And what would be the fate of Nato, the Five Eyes and other assorted dubious relics of the US-led West? They can’t logically remain intact, can they, in the event of a genuine rupture with the old order? The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi. Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2026