EU leaders would do well to meditate on the seminal lesson that the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, delivered at this year’s World Economic Forum.

In an incisive analysis of the new age of predatory great powers, where might is increasingly asserted as right, Carney not only accurately defined the coarsening of international relations as “a rupture, not a transition”. He also outlined how liberal democratic “middle powers” such as Canada – but also European countries – must build coalitions to counter coercion and defend as much as possible of the principles of territorial integrity, the rule of law, free trade, climate action and human rights. He spelled out a hedging strategy that Canada is already pursuing, diversifying its trade and supply chains and even opening its market to Chinese electric vehicles to counter Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian-made automobiles.

Carney’s clear-eyed recognition that the age of the western-led “rules-based international order” – with all its flaws and inconsistencies – is not coming back contrasts with dithering among European leaders, many of whom still seem to believe they can flatter, bribe and appease Trump into taking their interests into account. Fear of Trump storming out of Nato or abandoning Ukraine to Russian dismemberment has so far prevented them from taking a........

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