Value-Based Realism: Prosperity and Justice in the New World Order

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney endorsed Finnish President Alexander Stubb’s Value-Based Realism during his speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (Carney, 2026). Stubb has developed this as a new international doctrine for middle power countries that, ostensibly, will enable them to retain both autonomy and their principles in a developing world order which behaves according to the realist national interests of would-be hegemons like the US, China, or Russia (Stubb, 2026). The first principle of this new doctrine is the epiphanic awareness that the rules-based world order is crumbling, and that Western democracies ought not expect the rest of the world to adopt their values. Proponents of the doctrine accept that to be a Realist requires working with those who do not, and will not, share one’s principles. They argue that such an attitude is vital for the principled to promote the improvement of the human condition without hegemonic power. Still, questions remain about how far the Value-Based Realists are willing to bend and whether middle powers can truly escape the yoke of great power politics.  

Both premiers embrace the new concept amid their entanglement with neighbouring hegemons. Finland's foreign policy is largely determined by its expectations of Russian behaviour. Under an idealist rules-based order, Finland rests easy in the knowledge that international institutions exist to safeguard it from Russian aggression, allowing it to benefit from Russia’s vast natural resources while supporting those institutions to promote liberalisation in Russia via trade incentives and sanctions. This, it is proposed, does not work. Ultimately, international institutions have only as much power as the countries that choose to enforce their values, and Russia can be expected to assert as much power as its own norms and national interests permit, regardless of the views of any other state. For Finland, this means that rather than relying on the hope that Russians will eventually change their norms, it must join more demanding international organisations with the material capacity to support it, such as NATO. Finland’s traditional neutrality has been modified through this Realist perspective (Pakkasvirta and Tuominen, 2024): real, material defence is necessary for security rather than vague ideals about satisfying Russia by maintaining regional balance. Similarly, it means energy independence from Russia by supporting alternative domestic supply and integration with more normatively aligned countries, such as its EU partners (Tynkkynen, 2022). By the same logic, Finland has engaged heavily in supporting Ukraine’s defence (Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, 2025), reflecting the belief that middle powers can unite to resist hegemonic exploitation. Therefore, though simplified, that description of Finland’s current security disposition explains why the current environment makes the defence of normative principles require a Realist perspective. 

For Canada, the same reasoning leads to a different answer. Its neighbourhood dominant power is the US, to which Canada is entirely beholden for both security (Gillies, 2025) and the economy (Statistics Canada, 2025). The recent behaviour of the US, which has pursued radical tariffs on its closest trading partners, only to massively scale them back before once again making economic threats (Brown, 2026), has made Canada aware that it cannot depend upon the US as a constant trade partner, and that if the US abandons the norm of maximal trade with democratic allies, then Canada ought not act in expectation of that norm. Furthermore, the US’ erratic recent security behaviour is mixed with posturing by the administration regarding the annexation of Greenland (Nicholson, 2026) or even Canada itself (Weissert, 2025). It is easy to consider President Donald Trump a brief exception to a foreign policy tradition that will resume after his term; however, even if ignoring the Republican Party’s general ideological shift, Trump’s new approach reveals how easily the norms on which the international rules-based order is built can be deconstructed. With this in mind, Canada has pursued trade with China for some key industries to reduce its reliance on the US (Yousif, 2026) and has joined the EU’s SAFE defence procurement programme (Barigazzi and Lunday, 2025).

China, which has also received overtures from the UK, Finland, Ireland, Uruguay, and South Korea (Cheng, 2026), is at the centre of much of the economic realignment away from the US by middle-powers seeking diversification. For Carney, dealing with China is insurance against US volatility, but China is also a country which regularly violates the  World Trade Organisation's trading rules (Kine, 2021). Despite the protestation of Emmanuel Macron (2026), for Value-Based Realists, the challenge is to accept that China will do this because it can, and no amount of exhortation will change it, so they must attempt to model more honest practices while making limited agreements where it is of definite benefit to the subject country. More concerning is China’s record regarding human rights, civil liberty, and transnational sovereignty. For Carney, so long as the entanglement is highly specific and limited, Canada must take the world as it is and accept that, as a middle power, it lacks the capacity to change Chinese policy directly, preferring to cultivate a working relationship that leads by example and persuades through direct communication. Carney and Stubb draw on the traditional liberal view that freer trade contributes to shared ideas, benefits both parties, and, over time, advances the overall human condition. However, neither Finland nor Canada would propose the same for Russia, leaving us the question of exactly how far Value-Based Realists would go in stretching their principles for the national interest. The new middle-power diplomats must therefore straddle a fine line between prosperity and justice in this New World Order, and be careful not to lose themselves along the way.

References

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