Carney's call at Davos could be start of a new 'non-aligned movement'
By Koert Debeuf, The EUobserver, 21 January 2026
BRUSSELS - In recent years, the World Economic Forum in Davos has been a soporific spectacle (albeit set against spectacular Alpine scenery). This year is different.
Everyone is talking about Greenland and the possible consequences of American aggression. Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, in particular, gave a speech on Tuesday (20 January) that left people speechless.
He made a brutally honest analysis of the world.
According to Carney, the international legal order has never existed and it is time to admit it. The United States only applied that order when it suited them and always stood above it themselves.
Now that president Donald Trump is starting trade wars everywhere with arbitrary tariffs, it is time for something different. On behalf of Canada, Carney is therefore calling for a new cooperation with countries that have the world's best interests at heart.
He received a standing ovation.
The Canadian PM is rightly opposing the so-called Thucydides trap. This popular proposition from the realist school of international politics states that when an old hegemon loses power and a new world power rises, it always leads to war.
Translated to today, this means that the rise of China will lead to a new world war.
I have always opposed this kind of deterministic thinking, but how can we escape this trap?
The European Union has chosen the path of strategic autonomy. Europe is boosting its defence (under American pressure), trying to strengthen its industry, gain more access to essential raw materials and doing everything it can to make its external borders as impermeable as possible.
At the same time, the Union is concluding trade agreements with other countries and regions, such as the recent agreement with Mercosur (which suffered its own setback on Wednesday, when MEPs voted to send it to the European Court of Justice.)
This is a good programme in itself, but it is primarily a defensive and reactive strategy.
While Europe is trying to keep its ship afloat, it is being torpedoed by Russia and the United States. While Russia is at war with Ukraine, Trump is threatening war in Greenland.
To be clear, Trump's verbal attacks are not just shots in the air. The new American national security strategy literally states that it will help organise resistance to the European Union.
No, the United States is no longer an ally.
I also think that every European must admit that the Atlantic alliance has increasingly become a straitjacket. After the illegal war in Iraq in 2003, the prison in Guantanamo and, more recently, the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, we must ask ourselves whether the so-called free and democratic West still stands for what it claims to stand for. The rest of the world certainly does not think so.
Furthermore, every day we see more evidence that Europe (and many other countries) are being dragged into a major conflict between the United States and China.
Not only Trump but also his predecessors are annoyed by Europe's desire to continue talking and trading with China. In order to force Europeans to submit to their strategy, companies that do work with China are being denied access to the American market.
According to a number of European politicians and experts, this is the right approach, throwing so-called strategic autonomy out the window.
I think the Canadian PM is right when he says that a world of many small fortresses will not be able to stop a major war. In my book Tribalisation, published in 2018, I wrote that in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, there were seven walls between countries worldwide.
Today, there are more than 80.
Globalisation is in decline, while the number of conflicts is growing. Mutual understanding and dialogue between countries is declining, even though there is a greater need for it today than ever before. At the same time, we see that the credibility of international law and of Europe as its so-called guardian has been undermined by the war in Gaza.
Carney's proposal
The inevitable question now is: what is the alternative? Here too, Carney has a proposal. According to him, “middle states”, or medium-sized countries that are not world powers, should work together.
They should not take sides between the United States, Russia or China, but talk to each of them.
These medium-sized countries must still defend free trade and international law, according to a kind of variable geometry or a web of relationships in the areas of trade, investment and culture. This is a nice idea, but the question is whether it is powerful enough to calm the world and restore some order to the chaos.
I would therefore like to make an alternative proposal.
In 1961, under the impetus of Egypt, Yugoslavia, India and Indonesia, the Non-Aligned Movement was founded. It was mainly countries from what was then the Third World, now called the Global South, that joined the movement.
They did not want to participate in the Cold War and did not want to choose sides between the West and the Soviet Union.
Although the initiative generated a great deal of enthusiasm and regularly voiced a different opinion in the United Nations, the movement was unable to really change the world order of the time, for various reasons.
Nevertheless, it was a good idea from which we can draw inspiration today.
Perhaps Europe, together with Canada and undoubtedly many other interested countries, could set up a new movement of non-aligned countries.
It could become an umbrella organisation of countries that oppose the current trade wars and continue to believe that greater cooperation will lead to less conflict.
Countries that believe in international law that applies to everyone and not just to the 'weaker countries'.
It should be a group that still invests in the United Nations, but in a reformed Security Council that reflects the current world rather than the Second World War.
The idea of a new global movement of economic and cultural cooperation with the aim of resolving or at least avoiding conflicts fits perfectly with the identity of the European Union.
Instead of allowing itself to be dragged into a new world war by a so-called ally, Europe can become the driving force behind a movement that can ensure that war does not happen.
Author
Koert Debeuf is professor of Middle East at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB), and chair of the board of EUobserver.
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of the EUobserver editorial team or those of CEMAS Board.
