An era of 'wrecking ball' politics: What the Munich Security Report says about Canada's moment of reckoning

Almost every foreign diplomat you run across lately simply gushes about Prime Minister Mark Carney's Davos speech, and how his remarks about middle powers banding together went viral in Europe.

As much as the speech represented a wake-up call for Canada and its allies, a new report that sets up the annual Munich Security Conference extends and sharpens Carney's argument and delivers a series of stark warnings. 

One of them is fairly straightforward — if not somewhat uncomfortable — for Canadians.

Where allies are concerned, it's not enough to just show up. You've got to bring something useful.

The report, which serves as the foundation of discussion at the world's largest security conference, suggests going forward alliances require sustained investment, credibility and trust — commodities that must be actively maintained, not assumed.

The conference will be held in the Bavarian city later this week and the report by researchers Tobias Bunde and Sophie Eisentraut argues that countries unwilling or unable to adapt to a more coercive global environment risk being run over in an international system increasingly shaped by power rather than consensus.

"International rules are only as strong as the democratic states willing to defend them," the report says.

For Canada, that assessment cuts close to the bone.

Ottawa has spent decades operating on the assumption that the rules-based order would endure — that institutions would hold, alliances would remain reliable and norms would restrain excess. 

The Munich conference report suggests those assumptions no longer apply and wonders whether we're witnessing the end of an era, rather than the retrenchment of the United States. 

"The new leadership of the United States, the country that has long acted as the guardian of the post-1945 international order, has concluded that upholding that is no longer in America's interest," said Bunde at a briefing prior to the release of the report.

"More than that, it has begun to actively dismantle it, at least in several key dimensions. So when bulldozers tore down the East Wing of the White House in October, we felt this offered a fitting metaphor for the moment we are living in."

Last year's gathering in Munich was marked by a speech from U.S. Vice-President JD Vance, who delivered a scalding attack on European democracies. He said the greatest threat to the continent was not from Russia and China, but "from within."

Eisentraut said, however, the sentiment is not restricted to Washington.