The rockstar banker was a fixture at summits, where he spoke beside business leaders and the political elite, espousing the values of international cooperation and the need for open economies and shared rules. But after less than a year as prime minister of Canada, Carney offered a blunter assessment of the world on Tuesday: the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
There was a time when American power at least felt obligated to explain itself. Even when U.S. military interventions were legally dubious or strategically incoherent, they arrived wrapped in language: humanitarian necessity, international norms, shared security. The explanations were often thin and sometimes cynical, but they served a purpose. They preserved the idea that power was supposed to answer to something beyond itself.
