When the woke relic Justin Trudeau resigned as Canada’s prime minister on Jan. 6,  the Liberal Party was polling at a historic low of 16 percent. Yet, in one of the most dramatic turnarounds in electoral history, Mark Carney led the Liberal Party to an April victory over the abject Conservatives, securing 43.8 percent of the popular vote, a 27-point swing.

A huge part of this victory for Carney came from popular Canadian resentment at the bellicose rhetoric of U.S. President Donald Trump, who threatened to make Canada the 51^st state no less than six times between November 2024 and May 2025.

Another part of Carney’s victory was his masterful execution of “the Tony Blair playbook,” which involves strafing right, putting woke politics away, and pretending to be a patriot who will reduce immigration. At times on the campaign trial, Carney almost sounded like a nativist. 

Much more fascinating than the victory itself is how Carney—and Canada more broadly—appear to be completely defying realpolitik. A rough estimate of military capability, even excluding the nuclear arsenal, puts America at almost 40 times the strength of Canada. The U.S. population is 8.5 times greater than Canada’s. The American economy is 13 times larger than the Canadian one. You do not need to be John Mearsheimer to see that Canada is outgunned on nearly every metric. On top of that, 75 percent of Canada’s exports go to the U.S., which represents around 30 percent of Canada’s GDP. Incidentally, the figure the other way around is that Canada makes up 18 percent of U.S. exports and just 1.7 percent of its GDP. 

So, how is Mark Carney completely defying Trump and striking such a belligerent stance? He has pledged to decouple Canada from the United States and “go it alone” as a truly sovereign nation, even if it means short-term economic hardship. Let us call this The Mark Carney Paradox and consider its dynamic more closely.

In theory, the United States could overtake Canada whenever it chooses. The 5,525-mile Canadian border is defenseless against America. If Trump were serious about his threats of annexing the country as “the 51st state,” a military invasion could be over in a matter of weeks. Beyond that, the United States could—again, theoretically—cripple Canada economically by turning the screws on the 75 percent of its exports that come here. Canada may scramble to find new buyers, but no country can replace 30 percent of its GDP overnight.

While anti-American sentiment in Canada has always been strong, it is unclear the extent to which it is a luxury belief, as opposed to something Canadians would defend if there were a serious drop in their living standards or even physical suffering.

To put all this more bluntly, Mark Carney has fought back against Trump with absolutely nothing but a vague moral sense and set of principles. In other words, against the raw machtpolitik of America, Canada only has words and “feels.” Yet—and here is the paradox—those words and feels are winning. Carney is getting his way, and Trump is not. How can this possibly be?

America’s problem is that it has built its empire as a moral superpower. Its legitimacy rests on a kind of American exceptionalism that says something like “we aren’t like those bad empires who bully and exploit, we stand for liberty and justice and human rights, or something.” While wars from Vietnam to Iraq, as well as support for Israel in the face of widespread global condemnation, have somewhat eroded this moral legitimacy, it is still a vital pillar on which American power rests. 

Trump’s critics would say Trump is rapidly diminishing this power, as the White House dwindles from a functioning executive of a first-world democracy to one that pursues the erratic and sometimes flamboyant whims of a dictator.

As always, Trump’s critics go too far, but it would be true to say that America has struggled greatly to transition from the moral preening of the past 80 years to Trump’s almost amoralistic brand of transactional international relations. The world order has been built, in some sense, on moral myths, and it is from these Carney has been drawing, to great effect. 

Carney has calculated that Trump’s threats are bluffs because they can only be bluffs. Why? Well, let us imagine we wake up tomorrow to the news that the United States has actually invaded Canada. It may win such a war, and quickly, but in winning a state, it would lose an empire. It could conquer Canada, but it would lose the world.

So much American power is merely theoretical, and we are seeing that, in practice, it cannot be used without devastating consequences to America’s position in the world. It seems that, even if America opted only to destroy Canada’s economy rather than launch a full military invasion, similar dynamics would be at play, because—in the moral paradigm of Pax Americana—America would be acting like a schoolyard bully picking on a defenseless little disabled kid. So long as this remains the case, The Mark Carney Paradox will remain in effect. 

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/columns/the-mark-carney-paradox/