January 22, 2026 – Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney made an interesting and powerful speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He talked about how the post-war international order was over, how it was pretty much an illusion anyway for mid-level countries like Canada, and how these countries need both to work together and to diversify their risks going forward.

Canada has already made a trade deal with China.

US president Donald Trump didn’t like the speech. He called Carney ungrateful and spoke about his plan to build a Golden Dome defense that would protect Canada. I’m not sure how this benefits Canada in any way. Canada could team up with Russia to build a Red Onion defense against the United States. I don’t see that happening, of course, but I say it just to illustrate that Canada is just in the middle between two adversaries.

Countries in the middle need to diversify their risk.

I wish I were a country. That is exactly what I would try to do: diversify my risk. Individuals have limited abilities in this department. As a US citizen, how do you diversify away the risk posed by a hostile US government?

There used to be a way.

The US Constitution endeavored to diversify the risks of We the People. We have a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. We also have the 50 states as independent sources of sovereign power. And we have the Bill of Rights.

Donald Trump doesn’t like any of these things. The only power relation he recognizes is his own personal power over you. If you try to diversify your risk, he’ll try to stop you.

That’s why I wish I were a sovereign nation.

Of course, Donald Trump wants to squash sovereign nations, too, but his power diminishes as you get farther and farther from Mar-a-Lago.

PM Carney, good speech. You brought up some important points. But what’s the deal bringing all this up at a billionaire’s retreat in Switzerland?

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