LISTEN | Middle power countries gain strength as coalitions building trust:
Ideas54:00Canada’s Soft Power Flex
Canada may not be a superpower country on the international stage but Prime Minister Mark Carney argues our role as a middle power — like many other countries — should be taken more seriously.
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together,” Carney said in a recent speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
He was direct in letting the international world know that middle power countries are not powerless. Carney sees this moment right now as an opportunity to build a new world order by creating coalitions with other middle power countries, based on shared common ground: “respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.”
The “rupture” of international relations, as Carney points out, has been built on a foundation of self-interest and inferiority by great powers using “economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, [and] financial infrastructure as coercion.”
“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
And according to political scientist Jennifer Welsh we can develop and deploy our ‘soft power’ —attracting and fostering relationships with countries drawn to Canadian values, diversity and culture.
Welsh is McGill University’s director of the Max Bell school of public policy and is Canada Research Chair in Global Governance and Security. She spoke with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed about Prime Minister Carney’s speech and how Canada can exert its soft power influence on the world stage.
Here is an excerpt from their conversation.
Before we get deeper into strategy and soft power, I’d like to first hear what your thoughts are on Mark Carney’s speech.
My first reaction is ‘Oh, so much of this needed to be said.’ And there had been, I think, a lot of reticence and fear in some middle powers to say out loud what they were thinking inside and wanting to articulate. So I was very glad that it was set out in such clear and stark terms.
I also think it was for two audiences — it was for an international audience and a Canadian audience. For the international audience it was quite striking that a prime minister of Canada would be talking about how middle powers are coerced, the old order needs to be abandoned. We might have expected that [but] not from a close ally of the United States or not from a rich, developed country. Also, this willingness to say we can’t be nostalgic about the order that is changing, I think also needed to be said for international audiences.
And for Canadians, I felt the speech was a bit of a footnote to our federal election. It was an operationalization, if I can use that word, of a promise that was made by the new government that it was the government to lead Canada in a new era, and that this prime minister was going to be an adult in the room, someone who could operate on the global stage and advance our interests.
‘We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,’ Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney told the international audience at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Jan. 20, 2026. He argued middle power countries need to build coalitions ‘because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.’ (Markus Schreiber/AP)
I’m curious what it says that it was Canada that came with that message to the international community?
It was important because we are so closely integrated with the United States. Coming from Canada which has benefited from its relationship with the U.S., I think was powerful for others to hear, who have been experiencing the impact of a close connection with the U.S., who have been experiencing tariffs, who have been experiencing economic coercion. Someone said recently — it was like the call was coming from inside the house, if you will — that, I think, was so interesting.
‘We are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.– Canada’s PM Mark Carney at WEF meeting
Mark Carney did outline a few concrete strategies when it comes to trade agreements and other kinds of nation-to-nation alliances that could be formed given the current environment. And he pointed to some of this country’s strengths… I’m wondering what kind of space is there for what’s been called soft power?
It’s an excellent question. Soft power is an asset. It’s a form of power that not all countries have, or they have to a greater or lesser extent. It is the attractiveness of their culture, their institutions, their people, their education system.
I guess the way to think about it as an asset in a world that is tougher — where hard power is valued, is that it can make some of this coalition building that we need to do easier because it will contribute, in some cases, to that crucial ingredient which is trust.
Jennifer Welsh is the director of the Max Bell School of Public Policy at McGill University. Her 2016 CBC Massey Lectures are called The Return of History. (McGill University)
If you want to engage with Canada on a set of shared interests, you can trust us. We’re in this for the long haul, we’re reliable, we’re stable. And we have ideas to bring to the table. You know one of the things the prime minister didn’t mention was Canadians are well-educated, connected people. So if we think about that as a soft power asset for our need now to diversify, not just in terms of trading partners, although that’s massively important, but all the things that go along with trade diversification.
It’s not a tap you can suddenly turn on and your exports to other parts of the world are doubled. It takes relationships. It takes working together on other kinds of issues. And then the trade becomes possible. So I think we should see that soft power asset that we have as enabling us to form coalitions and, in some cases, to take some leadership.
Maybe I should take it just a step back here and just ask you what your understanding is of what is meant by the term ‘soft power.’
It’s always contrasted with hard power. It was coined by Joseph Nye from the Harvard Kennedy School who was the great analyst of American power. His argument for decades was that essentially you are mistaken if you think that America’s hegemony or leadership is simply based on the size of its military and economy. The United States is able to do what it does in the world, to co-opt rather than coerce, because of its strong soft power assets.
Harvard emeritus professor Joseph Nye (1937-2025) developed the ‘soft power’ theory in the late 1980s. He authored a number of books including , Soft Power: The Means To Success In World Politics. (Harvard University)
I think what’s interesting about that view of it, which is important for our understanding, is that soft power and hard power work together. So we mustn’t go down the road of thinking we can only rely on soft power.
Canada at the moment is reinvesting in its hard power, as it should, as it must, and it’s also reminding countries in a way I haven’t heard in a long time, of just how much we have that the world needs. We’re being pretty bullish about that right now. We’re saying, ‘we’ve got resources. We’ve got this. We have these economic assets.’ But, the trick now will be to think about how we use all the elements of statecraft and both our soft and hard assets.
Download the IDEAS podcast to listen to the full conversation.
*Q&A was edited for clarity and length. This episode was produced by Nicola Luksic and Nahlah Ayed.
