bout de papier, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2021), pp. 24–25
Only 20 years ago, Canadian diplomacy was at the front end of the post-Cold War effort to design and anchor new inclusive norms for international governance. Do we still have the stuff, the will and ability, to be a key player again?
CANADA HAS AN EXISTENTIAL STAKE in successful international co- Operative outcomes we need to support with robust outreach diplomacy. We can’t just fall into line behind US leadership and hope for the best.
In the last 20 years, the world has vastly changed, optimistic assumptions crushed by events whose residue still disrupts. From the jihadist attacks of 9/11 to the scorched earth landscape of the Trump presidency, the global mood trended to pessimism and identity-based nationalism. Democratic countries have impatiently anticipated the remedial succession of Joe Biden, a welcome multilateralist. President Biden has pledged to address democracy’s global recession. The US will again reaffirm universal human rights as democracy’s building blocks. Canada must commit as well to have the backs of human rights defenders everywhere, consistently.
But expectations of a restoration of American internationalism comes with a hedge. Although the Biden team is reassuringly experienced and outward-looking, it faces an obstinate partisan opposition and the overwhelming domestic priority to manage successfully the pandemic and economic recovery. US allies worry about how much room the new Administration will have for transformative re-building in foreign affairs. Partners are needed to maintain ambition and creative momentum to reinforce international co-operation. Will Canada be in the front rank?
Our age will be defined by the perception of an increasingly fractious rivalry between China and the US for economic primacy. The Biden disposition is to resist calls to “de-couple” western economies from China’s or to promote an allied Cold War “containment” strategy, opting for “competition with cooperation,” especially on vital international issues where progress needs both major powers onside.
Canada joins other Western democracies to press China for fairness, reciprocity and more transparency. But Canada needs a realistic and open-eyed approach to its own relationship with China that is only possible after resolution of our debilitating hostage dispute.
Our main bilateral priority is our critical relationship with the US We have again a partner on whom we can count for civil discussion and negotiation based on shared evidence. But it will be no pleasure cruise. The US is inward-looking and protection-ish. We need to remain in campaign-communications mode toward all levels of the US, to lift the American view of the benefits of North American interdependence, while also working as never before to strengthen global opportunities from a diversity of partnerships around the world.
Multilateral reform remains a Canadian vocation of necessity. Twenty years ago, Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy worked with like-minded middle-rank states and international NGOs to promote via landmark initiatives the acceptance internationally of new human security norms, ending the use of anti-personnel land mines, establishing a Responsibility to Protect to prevent tragedies such as Rwanda and Srebrenica, and creating an International Criminal Court.
Today the United Nations system is bogged down by the fragmentations of our world. We badly need similar like-minded solidarity groups to galvanize institutional reform and positive outcomes for such essential UN activities as peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, poverty, migration, and public health. As Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland encouraged the formation of the Multilateral Alliance group that seeks ways to re-build trust and purpose in multilateral fora.
Canada should be an active protagonist in the COMAX coalition of more than 100 countries to assure equitable, affordable COVID-19 vaccine distribution. On the other over-arching transnational crisis, global warming, Prime Minister Trudeau’s initiative to upgrade Canadian abatement of carbon reinforces Canada’s leadership potential.
Also two decades ago, as Finance Minister, Paul Martin argued convincingly that the world needed a more inclusive forum to deal with trade-offs on such critical global challenges. It became the G20. But it isn’t working. Canada has been trying in the Ottawa group of like-minded internationalist countries to revive and reform the World Trade Organization, which will now be supported by a US return to the multilateral arena that will encourage wider international buy-in.
One exemplary success stands out as a model of international governance — the Arctic Council, an innovative, bottom-up consensus-based organization of the eight circumpolar states and Indigenous peoples that guides the sustainable development and shared custody of the world’s High North.
While in crisis response Canadian performance has been excellent, in procuring PPE or repatriating Canadians during the pandemic, saving NAFTA, and crafting the ground-breaking CETA with the EU, but we need to re-build creative policy capacity. to move forward. We need to revive the creative capacities of the Canadian foreign service and enable the re-energizing of our international public diplomacy. Canada’s has atrophied under recent top-down governments, centralizing PMOs and leaders absorbed by electoral politics and often content internationally to signal our virtues.
The pandemic has made clear that we are all trying to sail in the same roiling sea of challenge. We must help each other to stay afloat. Canadians are globalists. That international rescue and repair work is rightfully our international brand.
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 31, No. 2 (2021), pp. 24–25. Read the rest of this issue →
