A recent speech delivered by Mark Carney at Davos has prompted renewed debate over the future direction of Canadian foreign and defense policy. For many listeners, the speech carried familiar echoes of moral realism and Cold War dissidence, inviting interpretation through a well-worn transatlantic lens. Yet reading Carney’s remarks primarily as a Europe-focused intervention risks missing the more consequential argument embedded within them.

Carney did not organize his speech around geography or inherited alliances. Instead, he framed his remarks around international structure—how power, vulnerability, and legitimacy now operate in a world where economic interdependence has become a tool of coercion, norms are enforced selectively, and great powers increasingly act without constraint. His concept of “value-based realism” is not anchored to Europe, NATO, or any particular theater. It is a framework for action wherever leverage and exposure intersect most sharply. By that measure, the Indo-Pacific does not sit at the margins of his vision. It is where the framework is most likely to be tested.

The Indo-Pacific is rapidly becoming the central arena in which economic dependence, military escalation, and alliance credibility converge. As China weaponizes market access and trade relationships, interdependence has evolved into strategic vulnerability. At the same time, North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile capabilities continue to compress warning times and intensify escalation risks. Overlaying these dynamics is a United States that remains the principal guarantor of regional security but faces growing constraints as it balances commitments across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia simultaneously.

These are not episodic challenges; they are structural conditions shaping the strategic environment in which middle powers must now operate. For Canada, the implications are significant. Canadian prosperity depends on open sea lanes and stable global trade, both of which are increasingly exposed to disruption in the Indo-Pacific. A crisis in the Taiwan Strait or on the Korean Peninsula—or a simultaneous escalation across both—would not remain geographically contained. Energy markets, shipping routes, and supply chains that underpin Canada’s economic security would feel immediate effects.

In this sense, the Indo-Pacific is no longer a peripheral region of engagement or diversification for Ottawa. It has become a strategic theater where domestic resilience and foreign-policy credibility intersect. This is where Carney’s value-based realism takes on operational meaning. He warned that middle powers weaken themselves when they cling to the language of a rules-based order that no longer functions as advertised, or when they apply norms inconsistently depending on who is exerting pressure. In his formulation, realism requires acknowledging present realities, reducing exposure to coercion, and building institutions that actually work.

Applied consistently, that logic directs attention toward regions where coercive leverage is most acute and institutional stress is most visible. At this moment, that region is the Indo-Pacific.

Among potential partners in the Indo-Pacific, South Korea stands out as uniquely aligned with this framework. It is a frontline state living under persistent nuclear coercion, with a strategic culture shaped by the constant management of escalation risk rather than abstract appeals to norms. At the same time, South Korea remains deeply embedded in the U.S.–ROK alliance and has no interest in overturning the existing international order. Few countries combine such an acute understanding of deterrence with such clear recognition of the limits of unilateral action.

For Canada, cooperation with South Korea should not be understood as symbolic diplomacy or alliance signaling. It is a practical response to shared exposure. Seoul brings operational experience, advanced defense-industrial capacity, and a strategic urgency forged under sustained pressure. Ottawa, in turn, offers energy security, long-term capital, and political legitimacy as a stable, rule-abiding partner. Together, they could reduce vulnerabilities that neither can manage alone.

This cooperation need not take the form of a grand new alliance or highly visible public commitments that invite domestic or external backlash. Instead, it should be internalized within how Canada understands its role in stabilizing the Indo-Pacific. Canada’s navy is unlikely to rival the region’s great powers, but it can still play a meaningful role by focusing on rear-area maritime security and the protection of sea lines of communication that sustain South Korea and global trade. These functions may lack the visibility of frontline deterrence, yet they are indispensable during prolonged crises.

Defense-industrial cooperation should likewise be framed as strategic insurance rather than commercial diplomacy. Canada’s access to energy and critical minerals aligns naturally with South Korea’s ability to produce advanced defense platforms at scale and speed. Integrating these strengths would reduce both countries’ exposure to external economic coercion, allowing them to maintain principled political positions for longer periods under pressure. This is precisely the material foundation Carney identified as necessary for a credible and resilient foreign policy.

Perhaps most consequential is the need for coordination in assessing dual-contingency scenarios. A crisis in the Taiwan Strait would almost certainly interact with dynamics on the Korean Peninsula, stretching U.S. military assets and compressing decision-making timelines. Canada need not be a frontline actor to make a meaningful contribution. Even quiet planning around logistics, maneuver, and crisis management—absent formal declarations—would strengthen collective resilience without forcing premature commitments.

Underlying all of this is an uncomfortable truth that Carney articulated directly: middle powers weaken themselves when they negotiate alone with great powers or compete with one another for accommodation. Collective action does not eliminate risk, but it reshapes the conditions under which risk is managed. Vulnerability, in that sense, can be converted into shared leverage.

Europe will remain an important arena for Canadian security engagement. But Carney’s speech made clear that no region, institution, or partnership retains automatic priority. In a fractured international system, middle powers gain influence not by invoking the order of the past, but by constructing arrangements that function under present conditions while minimizing exposure to coercion. The strategic test of whether middle powers can preserve their agency is increasingly unfolding in the Indo-Pacific. Deepening Canada’s security cooperation with South Korea is therefore best understood not as a pivot away from Europe, but as the clearest application of value-based realism to the world as it actually operates.