# The Canadian delusion of ‘soft power’ is dead, and good riddance **By:** David Blair **Published:** 2026-02-08T17:34Z **Source:** [The Telegraph](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/08/the-canadian-delusion-of-soft-power-is-dead/) --- The country’s diplomats had the same misconceptions that weakened Britain and the rest of Europe and carried them to even greater extremes David Blair Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator David Blair was a foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years, reporting from 60 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He then joined the Foreign Office and later No10, where he wrote speeches and advised three Foreign Secretaries and one Prime Minister. He returned to The Telegraph as Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator in 2025. The unlikely ‘thought leader’ turns out to be Mark Carney, Canada’s new prime minister Credit: Anadolu David Blair Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator David Blair was a foreign correspondent for nearly 20 years, reporting from 60 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He then joined the Foreign Office and later No10, where he wrote speeches and advised three Foreign Secretaries and one Prime Minister. He returned to The Telegraph as Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator in 2025. Diplomats call it “thought leadership”: the triumphant achievement of being the first to propose a plan of action for an urgent international problem. And no problem could be more urgent than how we survive in the pitiless world of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, with raw power politics trampling upon rules and laws. The unlikely “thought leader” on this question turns out to be Mark Carney, the new prime minister of Canada. “The old order is not coming back,” he said, in a highly acclaimed speech at Davos. “We should not mourn it.” I certainly won’t. But as I heave a sigh of relief over the return of realism to Western foreign policy, I cannot help marvelling at the fact that Canada, of all countries, is trying to light the way. In the old world, Canadian diplomats embraced exactly the same delusions that weakened Britain and the rest of Europe and carried them to even greater extremes. I listened to Canada’s foreign ministers and officials on plenty of occasions during nearly eight years at the Foreign Office and Downing Street. The experience drove me to wonder if Canada might be the most annoying country in the world. They were running a “feminist foreign policy”, whatever that might be, as if there could be a specifically feminist response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Their foreign ministry was called “Global Affairs Canada” because they seemed to dislike the word “foreign”. And, in a hotly contested field, their ministers could outdo any European counterpart in sanctimony and self-righteousness. Canada was forever promising to increase defence spending and then always avoiding a timetable for when this might actually happen. At a Nato summit in 2014, they signed up to invest a minimum of 2 per cent of GDP; seven years later, they were still bumping along at 1.3 per cent. Putin’s onslaught against Ukraine in 2022 made no difference: the following year, Canada’s defence budget was resolutely flatlining at 1.3 per cent. Only in 2025, apparently terrified by Trump, did Canada finally hit the 2 per cent mark, 11 years after their original pledge and following two Russian invasions of Ukraine and the onset of Europe’s bloodiest war for 80 years. While dodging its Nato promise, Canada was a “thought leader” in comfortable delusions: that soft power was a substitute for firepower, investing in international development could bring security, Western foreign ministers might spend valuable time campaigning on worthy issues over which they had virtually no power. The latter idea proved as contagious as impetigo. It seems incredible now, but British Foreign Secretaries used to mount “campaigns” on subjects like media freedom, religious liberty, wildlife conservation and sexual violence, as if countering Russian aggression and Chinese ambitions for global power were not enough to fill their time. They would call conferences on these issues and drum up attendance by striking preposterous deals with their counterparts: if you come to my event, I’ll attend yours. Listening to these phone calls, I would silently recite the words of Julia Stitch in Evelyn Waugh’s Scoop: “Why would I go to Viola Chasm’s Distressed Area party; did she come to my Model Madhouse?” This reached its apogee in 2018 when Boris Johnson, as Foreign Secretary, slogged 5,000 miles to Vancouver to join his Canadian counterpart’s conference on the Korean Peninsula, in return for her promising to attend his event on saving elephants. In fairness, that was the year when Canada expelled four Russian diplomats in solidarity with us after the Salisbury poisonings, showing they could be tough when needed. And some (not all) British diplomats needed no encouragement to fall for delusions. Even in 2024, two former ambassadors, Tom Fletcher and Moazzam Malik, wrote a magnificently other-worldly report proposing what amounted to the Canada-fication of British diplomacy, including renaming the Foreign Office “Global Affairs UK”. Perhaps they hadn’t checked the unfortunate acronym: GAFUK. Behind this cast of mind lay the most complacent dream of all: that America would always be willing to defend free-riding allies, even as they dismantled their armed forces, spent the money on soft power and international development, and made a GAFUK of their diplomacy. So thank heavens that Mark Carney has spoken some hard truths. But how depressing that Canadian (and some British) diplomats succumbed to delusions in the first place.