As 2026 begins, there’s a clear consensus emerging among the various nations of the grand umbrella that is the European Union – not to mention other mid-level nations like Canada – that such powers have to be more self-reliant when it comes to defense.
Quite a few students of history would say that it started when Germany burned Europe to the ground in WWII, and other world military powers had to step in and end the terrible reign of the Reich. For whatever reason, though, the modern world has been “geopolar,” with America, Russia, and perhaps China, as the major military powers. Not just that, but the other modern nations have entered into protection agreements like NATO (and, historically, the Warsaw Pact) and, to an extent, outsourced their own security.
We now see those defense fabrics fraying.
“Let me be clear: we want strong transatlantic ties,” said EU diplomat Kaja Kallas at a recent summit in Brussels, as reported by France 24. “The U.S. will remain Europe’s partner and ally. But Europe needs to adapt to the new realities. Europe is no longer Washington’s primary centre of gravity,” Kallas told a defense conference in Brussels.
“This shift has been ongoing for a while. It is structural, not temporary. It means that Europe must step up -– no great power in history has outsourced its survival and survived.”
That last part is interesting – and I’ll return to it later.
Kallas is an Estonian politician and diplomat who is currently the E.U. High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and a Vice-President of the European Commission. She made history as the first female Prime Minister of Estonia from 2021 to 2024.
Kallas is also widely known in European politics for a strong security and defense posture, and outspoken positions on Russia’s war against Ukraine. But hers is not the only voice speaking for a greater sense of European self-reliance.
Mark Carney at Davos
I was present at Davos, hearing from world leaders like Volodymyr Zelensky in the central hall, and in fact, Zelensky made some related comments, too, about the dangers of relying on superpowers for defense. But one of the most watched speeches came from Mark Carney of Canada, who, in response to recent conflagrations of power politics (Greenland, Canada as the 51st U.S. state), had some things to say.
“Today, I will talk about the rupture in the world order,” he began, setting the stage and speaking French, with an interpreter, “the end of a pleasant fiction, and the beginning of a harsh reality of geopolitics, where the large main (powers of) geopolitics (are) submitted to no limit, no constraint. On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, (and the) territorial integrity of the various states.”
Then he switched to English.
“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry,” Carney said, “that the rules-based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”
This, he suggested, is unacceptable. And certainly, a multitude nodded in agreement. It’s not how most of us have been raised to think about geopolitics or other kinds of power.
“There is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along,” Carney continued, “to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety. Well, it won’t.”
The World Green-Grocer
Carney presented a historian’s view of power politics that I want to include in its entirety.
“Every morning, the shopkeeper places a sign in his window,” he explained. “’Workers of the world, unite.’ He doesn’t believe it. No one does. But he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists. Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false. … the system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.”
However, he noted, citing the work of Vaclav Havel, systems like these are a two-edged sword.
“(This system’s) fragility comes from the same source,” Carney said. “When even one person stops performing, when the green-grocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.”
What Happened
From there, Carney launched into an extended explanation of how this current arrangement came to be, what it means for participants, and why it is destined to soon change. I’ll just include some quotes, rather than giving you the whole thing, which you can hear in the video:
“For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions. We praised its principles. We benefited from its predictability … we knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically … this fiction was useful, and American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods. open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes. So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works.”
“Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration.”
“Many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains. … a world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.”
“If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.”
What To Do
Countries looking for change will respond, Carney suggested, by drawing new lines, securing new alliances, building new supply chains, and strategizing their way out of the box that they have been living in. As he named some of the ways that Canada will pursue a new order, the last one has to do specifically with artificial intelligence.
“Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic,” he said. “On plurilateral trade, we’re championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the European Union, which would create a new trading block of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we’re forming buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7, so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. And on AI, we’re cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won’t ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.”
Hegemons and Hyperscalers
That last piece brings me to my three takeaways from this when it comes to the role of artificial intelligence.
First, as Carney mentioned, countries that don’t develop their own AI initiatives will be in thrall to others. This is no time to outsource.
Second, you could presume that, in trying to figure out geopolitics, the input of AI can be helpful, because it lacks all of the emotional confirmation bias of, say, a politician in a hyper-polarized society. If we indeed all have to lay down our arms and work with people who we have written off, the clear-eyed presentations of GPT may be useful. And to be clear, it’s not that people should turn to AI to cede decision-making power. I’m talking about using it as a research tool.
Here’s the last one: I’m brought back to Kallas’s line: “No great power in history has outsourced its survival, and survived.”
But I’m contrasting that with the theory of Geoff Hinton, who knows a few things about AI.
To survive, as humanity, in the AI age, Hinton has vehemently suggested that we need to treat AI like a “mother,” since that mother-child relationship is the only one where a more powerful entity cares for a less powerful one.
Whether that will work is to be determined, but I don’t think anybody would say that this applies to international relations.
Clearly, countries like Canada and many E.U. members have had it with feckless trade partners and security coalition managers. Whatever comes next, we’ll see it, in a sense, through the lens of AI.
