A New Era of Transactional Diplomacy, The Unmasking of Moral Hypocrisy in Global Governance

A New Era of Transactional Diplomacy, The Unmasking of Moral Hypocrisy in Global Governance

In an era defined by geopolitical realignment and the erosion of long-standing institutions, the recent address by former Governor of the Bank of England and Canadian Finance Minister, Mark Carney, at the World Economic Forum, has ignited a crucial and uncomfortable debate. Framed by many as a courageous and candid assessment of the decaying “rules-based international order,” Carney’s speech instead serves as a perfect diagnostic tool for a deeper malaise: the unravelling of Western moral hegemony and the exposed hypocrisy at its core. His invocation of Václav Havel’s greengrocer—the humble everyman who finally rebels against a suffocating system—is not just an imperfect analogy for Canada’s role; it is a profound misreading of history that reveals the selective memory and moral posturing that have underpinned the liberal international order. This moment is not about the greengrocer finding his voice; it is about the mall owner realizing his lease is non-renewable, and his response, while pragmatic, is a far cry from the moral courage it pretends to be.

Deconstructing the Analogy: From Greengrocer to Landlord

Carney’s core rhetorical device collapses under the slightest historical scrutiny. Havel’s greengrocer was a subject of an oppressive, monolithic system, compelled to display ideological slogans he did not believe in, his compliance a quiet act of survival within a structure he did not design and from which he derived no privilege. To cast Canada, or the collective West, in this role is a breathtaking act of historical revisionism. Canada was not the greengrocer; it was, as critics Swati and Ramesh Ramanathan astutely note, a co-owner and manager of the global mall.

This mall—the post-World War II international order—was architected predominantly in Washington and Brussels, with Ottawa as a steadfast member of the planning committee. Its foundations were NATO’s security umbrella, a financial system anchored by the US dollar, trade regimes like the GATT and later WTO that favoured advanced industrial economies, and a network of development and governance institutions (IMF, World Bank, UN agencies) where Western voices held disproportionate sway. Canada did not silently endure this system; it was embedded within its power structures, enforcing its rules, collecting its rents in the form of secure market access, financial stability, and geopolitical influence. It prospered immensely, accumulating wealth and soft power under a set of rules it helped write. The pain, the sacrifice, the “bargain” Carney obliquely references, was not Canada’s to bear.

The Real “Bargain”: Asymmetric Costs and the Global South

This is the central, unspoken hypocrisy of the old order. Carney speaks of a “bargain,” implying a mutual trade-off. For Canada and its allies, the bargain was straightforward: cede a degree of sovereignty to US leadership within multilateral frameworks in exchange for unprecedented security, economic growth, and a privileged seat at the rule-making table. The gain was clear; the pain was negligible.

The true cost of this order was externalized and borne overwhelmingly by the Global South. Their bargain was stark and often coercive: access to capital and markets traded for dependency, enforced through structural adjustment programmes that narrowed policy autonomy. Sovereignty was compromised by debt discipline and the conditionalities of international financial institutions. Stability was often undermined by proxy wars, support for authoritarian clients, and regimes of sanctions that weaponized economic interdependence. The application of international law and the principle of humanitarian intervention appeared selectively, legitimizing interventions in some contexts while ignoring profound suffering in others. Intellectual property regimes protected Western innovation at the cost of technology transfer and generic pharmaceutical access in developing nations. For these societies, the liberal order was not a neutral framework but an often extractive architecture that shaped—and constrained—their development pathways. Canada, as a beneficiary, was complicit in this system, a “well-paid mercenary” enjoying the rewards while outsourcing the moral and material liabilities.

The Hollow Core of “Values” as a Legitimizing Grammar

Carney, like many Western statesmen, invokes “values” as the moral bedrock of the old order. Yet, upon examination, these values—democracy, human rights, the rule of law—often functioned less as constraining governing principles and more as an aesthetic language, a “legitimizing grammar.” They provided a moral texture that allowed the system’s architects and beneficiaries to view themselves not as victors in a power game, but as virtuous stewards of a universal good.

This vocabulary succeeded because it was rarely forced into specificity or subjected to pluralistic scrutiny. Pronounced from Western capitals, these terms were presumed to be self-evident, neutral, and universally applicable. Their enforcement, however, was deeply political. This exposes a critical civilizational bias: the Enlightenment-derived lexicon of the West is granted the status of universal truth. Contrast this with India articulating its foreign policy through the prism of dharma, civilizational continuity, social harmony, or duties preceding rights. Would these concepts be received as benign universalism? More likely, they would be met with suspicion, demands for translation into familiar Western terminology, or outright dismissal as parochial. The playing field of moral discourse was never level; one framework was ordained as the standard.

The End of Oligopoly and the Rise of Transactional Honesty

What Carney’s speech truly signals, beyond his personal realizations, is the end of the moral and narrative oligopoly. The unipolar moment has passed. The institutional authority, economic leverage, and media dominance that once allowed the West to universalize its values and frame its self-interest as the global interest are now diffuse. The rise of China, the strategic assertiveness of India, the resilience of Russia, and the collective voice of the Global South have shattered this monopoly.

In this new landscape, the opaque moral language is giving way to a more transparent, if blunter, strategic vocabulary: resilience, hedging, diversification, sovereignty, and national interest. This is what Carney acknowledges when he calls for middle powers to coordinate around shared interests in a transactional world. However, he immediately stumbles into a profound contradiction he fails to resolve. If all nations now act out of naked self-interest, who adjudicates which interests are legitimate? The Ukrainian war provides a stark example. Canada’s support for Kyiv is framed as a defence of values and order. India’s continued purchase of discounted Russian oil—a decision rooted in its developmental needs as a lower-middle-income country with massive energy demands, aimed at controlling inflation and protecting poverty-alleviation programmes—is often framed in Western discourse as moral failing or alignment with an aggressor.

This exposes the persistent “moral gradient” Carney’s new realism does not erase. Western self-interest retains a halo of necessity and systemic stewardship. Non-Western self-interest is too often viewed as deviance, destabilization, or a betrayal of “values.” For a genuinely plural world to emerge, this gradient must be flattened. A transaction is a transaction; its morality cannot be contingent on the actor.

The Path Forward: Beyond Admission to Reconstruction

Acknowledging the old order’s imperfections, as Carney does, is a necessary first step, but it is woefully insufficient. It is the easy confession of a beneficiary after the rewards have diminished. True moral courage would have been to articulate these critiques when Canada was at the height of its influence within the system, “when Canada was still writing the bylaws.”

Building a legitimate post-hegemonic world requires a far more rigorous and uncomfortable project:

1. Historical Auditing: It demands a clear-eyed confrontation with the extractive and coercive dimensions of the old order—not as anomalies, but as features. This means examining the legacy of colonial-era borders, inequitable trade treaties, debt impositions, and the human cost of Cold War proxy conflicts.

2. Civilizational Pluralism in Institution-Building: It requires moving beyond merely adding seats at the table for non-Western nations. It necessitates the foundational integration of non-Western moral, philosophical, and social frameworks into the very design principles of global institutions. Concepts of harmony, community, duty, and different historical experiences of statehood and sovereignty must be allowed to shape new agreements on climate, finance, digital governance, and security.

3. Redefining Universalism: Universal values may exist, but they must be derived through dialogue and consensus, not by fiat from a single civilizational perspective. This process will be messy and contentious, requiring a genuine engagement with difference rather than a demand for assimilation into a pre-existing vocabulary.

4. Interest-Based Coordination with Clear Rules: In the interim, a more honest, interest-based system of coordination can be stabilizing, but only if it operates under mutually agreed, transparent rules that apply equally. This means accepting that other nations’ core interests—like India’s energy security or the Global South’s demand for climate financing and justice—are as valid as Western security concerns.

Conclusion: Prudence, Not Courage

Mark Carney’s WEF intervention is a significant symptom of our transitional age. It reflects the pragmatic adaptation of a traditional middle power to a world where its once-secure franchise has expired. His call for realism and interest-based coalition is prudent and perhaps necessary for Canada’s navigation of the coming decades.

However, to mistake this prudence for moral courage is to repeat the old error of conflating Western necessity with universal virtue. The speech is not a brave indictment from a former insider; it is a reluctant adjustment by a stakeholder who has lost his veto. The greengrocer’s rebellion was an act of authentic agency against oppression. The mall owner’s complaint about the new lease terms is merely a negotiation. The world is now filled with former greengrocers who have become stakeholders in their own right, and they are no longer interested in the old management’s rhetoric. They are waiting for a new blueprint, one that is built not on the recycled moral language of a fading oligopoly, but on the genuine, equitable, and plural foundations our shared future requires. That blueprint remains unwritten, and its authors will likely come from outside the old mall owners’ committee.

Q&A on the Unraveling “Rules-Based Order” and Moral Hypocrisy

Q1: Why is the analogy of Václav Havel’s greengrocer so problematic when applied to Canada/West by Carney?
A1: The analogy is fundamentally flawed because it inverts the roles of power and subjection. Havel’s greengrocer was an oppressed individual within a totalitarian system, powerless and compelled to perform ideological compliance. Canada, as part of the Western coalition, was a co-architect, rule-enforcer, and prime beneficiary of the post-war international order. It sat on the “management committee” of institutions like NATO, the IMF, and the WTO, shaping rules to its advantage. The greengrocer sought agency against a system that suppressed him; Canada is adjusting to a system where its agency is diminished because other powers have risen. The analogy obscures the West’s historical position of dominance and frames its current adaptation as a heroic awakening, rather than a pragmatic response to lost privilege.

Q2: What does the article mean by the “real bargain” of the old order, and who paid for it?
A2: The “real bargain” refers to the asymmetric costs of maintaining the liberal international order. For the West, the bargain yielded immense gains—security, prosperity, and rule-writing power—with minimal sacrifice. The actual costs were externalized onto the Global South. Their bargain involved trading policy autonomy for access to capital (via structural adjustment), accepting narrowed development paths due to trade and IP regimes, facing destabilization from proxy wars and sanctions, and experiencing a selective application of international law and humanitarian principles. Countries in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia bore the “pain” of this order—through debt, conditionality, and constrained sovereignty—while countries like Canada reaped the “gain.”

Q3: How did “values” like democracy and human rights function within the old system, according to the critique?
A3: The critique argues that these “values” operated less as binding constraints on Western power and more as a “legitimizing grammar” or “aesthetic language.” They provided a moral veneer that allowed the system’s beneficiaries to perceive themselves as righteous stewards rather than self-interested winners. This vocabulary was effective because it was treated as self-evident and universal when emanating from the West, rarely subjected to scrutiny or required to accommodate non-Western philosophical frameworks. This created a hierarchy of moral discourse where Western Enlightenment concepts were presumed neutral, while other civilizational values were viewed as particularistic or suspect, thus masking the power dynamics inherent in the system.

Q4: The article highlights India’s purchase of Russian oil as a key contradiction. What does this example reveal?
A4: This example reveals the persistent double standard or “moral gradient” in the international system. When Canada or the US acts in its strategic interest (e.g., supporting allies, imposing tariffs), it is often framed as upholding stability or the rules-based order. When India acts in its clear developmental interest—securing affordable energy for its vast population, controlling inflation, and funding poverty alleviation—it is frequently framed in Western discourse as undermining “values” and moral norms. The contradiction lies in Carney’s call for an interest-based, transactional world: if all states legitimately pursue their interests, there can be no inherent moral superiority assigned to one set of interests over another. The Indian case shows that the old mentality, which privileges Western-defined interests as inherently more virtuous, persists.

Q5: What would constitute genuine “moral courage” and a true foundation for a post-hegemonic world, beyond what Carney offered?
A5: Genuine moral courage would have involved a Western leader like Carney critiquing the exploitative facets of the international order at the height of its power and benefit to his nation, not as it declines. For the future, building a legitimate post-hegemonic world requires:

1. Honest Historical Reckoning: Acknowledging the extractive and coercive history of the old order as a systemic feature.

2. Institutional Pluralism: Redesigning global governance foundations to incorporate non-Western moral, metaphysical, and social frameworks as co-equal principles, not just adding symbolic representation.

3. Dialogic Universalism: Deriving universal principles through inclusive civilizational dialogue, not imposing a single normative framework.

4. Equitable Transactionalism: Establishing clear, transparent rules for a world of competing interests that apply equally, flattening the “moral gradient” that paints non-Western self-interest as deviance.
   This is a task of reconstruction, far more demanding than simply admitting the old mall’s management scheme is no longer tenable.