“Nostalgia is not a strategy” — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney

FIFTY years down the road from now, when the world looks back on these turbulent times, one speech, among other things, will stand out. This speech was made by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan 20, 2026, in which he talked about the “rupture in the world order” and “the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality”. He confessed that “We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false”, but “we participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality”. This confession will go down in history as the signpost on a turning point. Mind you, on Jan 20 2026, Feb 28 was still 39 days away.

The subject of my op-ed today is the diminishing of health overseas development assistance (ODA), but I wanted to start with Carney’s speech, as it powerfully sets the larger context.

As for the health ODA, the winds of change had already begun to blow during the last year of Donald Trump’s first term as US president, when on July 6, 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, his administration sent a letter to the UN secretary general, communicating America’s intent to withdraw from the World Health Organisation. The withdrawal could not be effected then, because of the end of Trump’s first presidential term. The retraction of Trump’s letters was one of the first actions of president Joe Biden after taking office. In his second term, one........

© Dawn