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Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, has described the current state of the global rules-based order as experiencing a “rupture” rather than a mere “transition.” On Tuesday, he called for the world’s “middle powers” to collaborate in addressing this significant shift.

While Carney made no direct reference to Donald Trump, his address at the World Economic Forum in Davos received a standing ovation from the attending business leaders. The US President is scheduled to speak at the forum on Wednesday, shortly after his recent threats to impose tariffs on European allies if they do not support his controversial interest in purchasing Greenland.

Carney criticized the “fiction” of a global system dominated by “American hegemony,” suggesting that the era of multilateralism is fading as international institutions like the World Trade Organization and the United Nations lose their influence.

“Canadians understand that our previous, comfortable belief in automatic prosperity and security due to our geography and alliances is no longer applicable,” Carney stated.

“Let me be clear. We are experiencing a rupture, not merely a transition,” he emphasized.

The blunt intervention from the leader of the US’s second-largest trading partner comes as European capitals wrestle with a response to Trump’s belligerence over Greenland and efforts to take control of the Arctic island from Denmark, a Nato ally.

Denmark has sent extra troops to the semi-autonomous territory amid the escalating tensions. The White House has refused to rule out taking the island by force.

The frictions between allies have arisen as Trump seeks to reorder global trade and tests the strength of economic and military alliances that have shaped geopolitics since the end of the second world war.

Carney, whose Liberal Party won an election last year on a promise to defend Canada from US tariffs, has sought to placate Trump as he tries to negotiate a trade deal with the president.

Trump has also repeatedly talked of Canada as a “51st state”, prompting boycotts of US goods by Canadians and a sharp fall in their travel to the US.

Earlier on Tuesday Trump shared a photograph of a map with Venezuela, Canada and Greenland covered with the US flag on his Truth Social account. The US earlier this month captured Venezuela’s leader and claimed its oil industry.

“You cannot ‘live within the lie’ of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” Carney said in Davos.

“Middle powers” including Canada must co-operate with each other because “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”, he said.

“Nostalgia is not a strategy. But we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just.”

Senior European political figures hailed Carney’s comments at the WEF.

“That speech today was real leadership,” Alastair Campbell, spin doctor to former UK prime minister Tony Blair, posted on X. Carl Bildt, co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations and former Swedish prime minister, said it was “very important”.

Carney travelled to Beijing last week for a landmark meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping, the first official meeting in almost a decade, as Ottawa tries to rekindle relations to diversify away from US trade.

He told reporters during the visit that China was a more “predictable” partner than the US and the Canada-China partnership was part of an emerging “new world order”.

The Canadian leader quoted Thucydides and Václav Havel — the former Czech president, poet and jailed dissident — in Davos, saying countries such as Canada must pivot to avoid further “coercion” from powerful actors.

“When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable.”

Canadian commentators also welcomed Carney’s speech.

“This is the best speech by a world leader that I have read in a very long time. Rhetorically, at least, he has met the geopolitical moment,” said Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian diplomat who was detained by the Chinese government for almost three years from 2018.