The Afterglow and the 'Principled and Pragmatic' Slog
Apologies for the delay but I'm working out some technical matters with Alan's Newsletter
Today’s Substack Post is slightly delayed. Apologies. I am working out a more practical, not to mention acceptable way for securing images that can, without concern, be shown at Alan’s Newsletter.
Now on to this week’s Post starting with the afterglow still from Prime Minister Carney’s Davos speech. For those who regularly read Alan’s Newsletter you will remember this recent review - A ‘Davos Moment’: But ‘Where to from Here’. And there are many views expressed of this speech. The PM’s speech spoke hard truths over the fading of the rules-based international order (RBIO):
“It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.”
“We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.”
“Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.”
“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.”
“The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.”
“Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security – that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, has termed “value-based realism”.”
“Or, to put another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.”
Now I and many others were taken by The Prime Minister’s appeal to middle power action in the face of the ‘power play’ especially by the Trump administration:
“We’re doing something else: to help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry. In other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So on Ukraine, we’re a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.”
“Our view is the middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”
“In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in-between have a choice: compete with each other for favour, or combine to create a third path with impact. We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield it together.”
The Canadian Prime Minister (PM) then concluded:
“We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.”
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name realities, to build our strength at home, and to act together.”
Now that is not to suggest that the PM’s statements and actions have existed free from criticism. For example his moves to improve relations with China recently have been closely scrutinized and Trump has warned Carney over closer relations with China. As Emma Ashford who is a columnist at FP and a senior fellow with the Reimagining U.S. Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center has pointed out:
“What has changed in recent months is not American power. Indeed, the United States is still an almost uniquely powerful country in its ability and willingness to project military and financial strength around the world. Carney’s notion that “great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited” would come as little surprise to people living under U.S. sanctions in Iran, Venezuela, or Russia.”
“Nor has the United States suddenly discovered a willingness to make exceptions to the rules for itself. U.S. presidents have always been willing to buck the rules of the “liberal order” when they felt it was in U.S. interests to do so.”
“Carney’s call for “middle powers” to assert themselves and act together is a call for traditional U.S. partners and allies to think for themselves in this new world.”
Such action does not come without serious risk, particularly for a country like Canada so closely integrated with the United States, not to mention sitting athwart the United States along an 8,891 kilometers (5,525 miles) unmanned border.
As Jennifer Lind pointed out in Blue Blaze:
“Carney’s speech was indeed memorable, and there is much to admire here. But powerful rhetoric notwithstanding, both history and theory (not to mention recent Trump administration policy) tell us that Carney and Canada court disaster if in their efforts to exercise greater independence they cultivate closer political ties with China. As Justin Logan recently wrote, “Canada cannot get too crosswise with the United States, or they risk discovering what the Monroe Doctrine really means.””
I have to believe that Carney and his people are not naive and they seem to have absorbed well the views of the President of Finland Alexander Stubb. As Stubb has suggested and described by Michael Hirsh at the FP:
“What we don’t know is how far this new “rupture” in the global system will go, as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney put it in his era-defining speech at Davos.”
“You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination,” Carney said.”
“As a solution, Carney endorsed the policy of “value-based realism” laid out by Stubb in his new book. “The rules-based world order that the West established after World War II is in tatters,” Stubb wrote, reflecting the new conventional wisdom. “This is our generation’s equivalent of 1918, 1945, or 1989. The next few years will decide the dynamics of the new international order for the rest of the century, or at least for decades to come.””
“Between Stubb’s book and Carney’s now-iconic speech, we can hear a new consensus emerging: The “medium” powers of the world realize they can no longer trust any hegemon, starting with the United States, and they demand a seat at the table so that, as Carney put it, they’re not “on the menu.” And that, in turn, means a complex balancing act, or what Carney calls “variable geometry—in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.””
Again, I think the approach expressed by Carney has valued merit, notwithstanding Canada is next door to the lion. But we need to see ‘variable geometry’ or as expressed by the PM, ‘principled and pragmatic’ in action. Only then will we be able to see whether such diplomacy stabilizes the RBIO and even possibly advances the Global Order. As the PM says:
“Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from genuine cooperation.”
Image Credit: Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash