True leadership is measured by action, not words.
Recently, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney struck the tone of a thoughtful statesman at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
His January speech was met with the kind of reverent approval reserved for leaders who seem serious about global responsibility.
I suspect that Carney’s appearance at Davos was also intended to signal that Canada would be a modest, moderating force in a chaotic and tumultuous world.
He warned of the dangers of brinkmanship. He talked about moderation. He urged the world’s most powerful governments to resist the easy seduction of reckless escalation.
Just a few weeks later, Carney’s speech reads less like a statement of principles and convictions and more like a cynical, throwaway work of bad fiction.
In a predictable turnaround, Carney has endorsed an illegal war that he had implied prudent powers should avoid launching.
The war against Iran – being waged by an emboldened American president and an Israeli prime minister allergic to nuance, diplomacy and moderation – bears all the glaring marks of the impulsive thinking that Carney claimed to distrust.
The flimsy idea that Canada’s prime minister is the nascent guardian of measured statecraft dissolved instantly after he confirmed that, like many of his complacent predecessors, when Washington whistles, Ottawa salutes.
The old, familiar instinct remains comfortably intact.
For a leader who entered politics with a reputation for sober analysis (forged during his time at the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England), this watershed moment reveals an instructive lack of foresight and introspection.
Carney’s admirers described him as a corrective to the ideological reflexes of his petulant Conservative opponent: a technocrat who would replace slogans with evidence and recklessness with deliberation.
However, the decision to support this abysmal war exposes how ephemeral that division really is.
Carney has now shown that he is no serious antidote to the politics of convenience he promised to transcend.
He is simply its most eloquent custodian.
Delivering pleasant speeches is easy.
It turns out that challenging a war championed by an imperious president is much more difficult.
Wars often begin with lofty rhetoric about security and stability. Anyone with even the slightest appreciation of the lethal historical record should know that they never play out so clearly.
War always produces euphemisms – “collateral damage,” “unwanted victims” – but the wavering reality behind those antiseptic phrases is simple. Schoolchildren die.
Schoolchildren who played no role in the nuclear disputes, the regional rivalries, or the madness unfolding once again in the Middle East and beyond.
The murder of 165 Iranian schoolchildren and staff, all reportedly victims of a US missile, should force any government that claims to be faithful to decency and “stability” to stop and think.
Instead, Carney and his obedient company continue to support a war whose human consequences are emerging, day after terrible day, in heartbreaking detail.
The hypocrisy deepens when one considers the essential character of a president whose war Carney has decided to embrace.
Canada is complicit with an erratic demagogue who has openly contemplated erasing the country’s sovereignty while demanding loyalty for his chosen war.
Whether there is a coherent logic behind this lopsided stance is difficult to discern.
Perhaps the calculation in Ottawa is that loyalty today will buy goodwill tomorrow.
If so, it reflects a notable misreading of US President Donald Trump’s political instincts. This is a leader who considers concessions as weakness and obedience as a right. Allies who fall in line rarely earn respect; They invite more lawsuits.
Which makes Canada’s deference to Trump not only morally flawed but strategically naïve.
Refreshingly, not all Western governments have been so eager to bow obediently to America’s surly commander-in-chief.
In Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has, in fact, denounced Trump’s war as a dangerous folly, arguing, persuasively, that it will widen regional instability rather than resolve it.
Sánchez understands that wars inevitably unleash profound and disfiguring consequences that extend far beyond the misleading foundations that supposedly justified them.
Following a reliable signal, Trump responded with threats, warning that the United States could cut off trade with Spain if Sánchez refused to concede.
The tactic was typical Trump: intimidation disguised as diplomacy.
Sánchez did not flinch.
Spain’s decision not to allow US forces to use bases on its territory to launch attacks against Iran represents a rare and welcome expression of defiance within NATO.
In televised statements, Sánchez insisted that Spain would not participate in a war that compromised its values and interests to appease a foreign president.
He framed the decision as an urgent matter of principle: Spain would not be part of more chaos, more death, more catastrophe.
Noting the grim legacy of the Iraq war, he said the international community should avoid repeating those mistakes and the trauma and destruction they caused.
Carney has rejected Sánchez’s wise advice. He has also rejected the same core ideas of the speech he gave in Davos earlier this year.
Instead of opposing violence, he has allowed it. Instead of preaching reticence, he has abandoned it. Instead of defending the territorial integrity of another nation, it has sanctioned its violation. And instead of valuing the lives of Iranian schoolgirls, he has treated their deaths as the tragic cost of acquiescence.
In sharp contrast, Sánchez looked at the remains of old wars and rejected an invitation to join a new one. He vetoed a petition to turn Spain into a springboard for pain. He ignored a bully’s threats and his demands to capitulate. He said no to war when others said yes.
Carney has chosen to follow rather than lead. He has lost consciousness in favor of complicity.
In due time, he will be judged harshly for what he did, not what he said.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.
