Western leaders navigate a lonely world

FOR MID-SIZED liberal democracies, 2026 threatens to be a lonely year. Western leaders are menaced and mocked by an America whose protection they need for now, like courtiers enduring the taunts of a king turned old and cruel. To make their solitude complete, China, today’s other great power, neither will nor can become the West’s alternative friend.

Mark Carney, Canada’s prime minister, issued a call for middle powers to stand and work together in coalitions of the willing, in a frank speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 20th. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he declared. He accused the strongest states of using economic, financial and supply-chain dependencies as weapons. “In a world of great-power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: compete with each other for favour,” or form like-minded groupings to defend themselves and manage risks, Mr Carney said. In his case, that means reducing economic dependence on America. He noted strategic partnerships that he has signed with China and Qatar.

Mr Carney did not claim that China is a cure-all for dependency on America, though. China’s interests-led, values-scorning ways appeal to transactional middle powers in such regions as the Persian Gulf. But for countries that aim to uphold fundamental values, respect human rights and be “principled and pragmatic”, to use Mr Carney’s words, China offers only a partial hedge.

Visiting China from January 14th to 17th, Mr Carney said that Canada would import 49,000 Chinese-made electric vehicles on preferential terms. That breaks with America’s strategy of keeping Chinese EVs out of North America with 100% tariffs, a policy that Canada signed up to in 2024, bowing to America’s leverage as the buyer of more than two-thirds of Canada’s exports. In return for Mr Carney’s concessions, China signalled it would buy more Canadian farm produce and fossil fuels, among other commodities. It showed a readiness to warm relations that were icy for much of the past decade.

There has been facile talk, including among conservative commentators in America, that Mr Carney was taking sides with China, against Mr Trump. Yet China’s welcome for Mr Carney stopped a long way short of a new grand bargain. While in Beijing, Mr Carney thanked China for a partnership “that sets us up well for the new world order”. His warm words were not reciprocated by China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who tersely advised Canada to forge ties based on respect. Chinese official media ventured that past bilateral tensions had revealed important “realities” to Canada.

Another middle power, Britain, is due to send its prime minister to China in late January. Though no British head of government has visited China for eight years, ambitions for Sir Keir Starmer’s mission are low. In Whitehall there is talk of Sir Keir flying the flag for British business (expect cheery announcements about Scottish whisky or salmon) and generally normalising the notion that British leaders should engage with the world’s second-largest economy. Quietly, he may seek deeper co-operation on life sciences and green tech, though Chinese investments have to date been limited by American lobbying and by home-grown debates about whether Chinese wind turbines or other technologies imperil national security. British officials are braced for press headlines about “Kow-tow Keir” sucking up to “Chinese tyrants”.

In a foretaste, opposition politicians on January 20th accused the government of “surrender” for approving a long-delayed project for China to build a large embassy near the Tower of London. Conservative politicians and news outlets have thundered about China using a “mega-embassy” to tap into communications cables that run close to the site, or to attack British-based dissidents, perhaps locking some in basement rooms spotted on the plans.

To be sure, security services across the democratic world call China’s agents and hackers an unrivalled threat, whether they are stealing secrets, suborning politicians, snooping around critical infrastructure or subjecting Chinese citizens overseas to surveillance and harassment. But panic over a “super-embassy” is misdirected and feeble. China does not need diplomatic premises to try hacking into cables; it can do that from a rented warehouse. Britain’s cyber-spooks are world-class and deem China’s planned complex a manageable threat. For China to lock prisoners in embassy dungeons would be a crazy risk. More simply, it is a mark of confidence, not submission, to allow a big country to build a large embassy. In the late 1930s Britain tolerated Nazi Germany’s use of a palatial embassy overlooking the Mall, though its ambassador, Joachim von Ribbentrop, was loathed for wooing appeasement-minded toffs and giving Hitler salutes at events.

Though domestic politics help explain Sir Keir’s modest agenda in China, low ambitions are structural, too. If Britain hopes to hedge against Trumpian bullying, China is of little help. Britain’s gravest dependencies on America involve such assets as its nuclear deterrent, fighter jets and digital services including cloud computing. Britain, along with other Western powers, is not about to buy Chinese weaponry or data storage. Even in more benign fields, China’s record of weaponising supply chains makes it small comfort to swap reliance on America for dependence on China.

If hedging is hard, might liberal democracies gain geopolitical leverage by threatening to defy America and align more closely with China? A big obstacle is caution in China. In Beijing officials scornfully complain about having believed Western leaders’ boasts about becoming more autonomous from America, only to have watched them fall into line when Washington growled. To Mr Xi as much as Mr Trump, power is what counts. In these lonely times for America’s mid-size allies, China is not a saviour. ■