The Rupture
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My late grandfather often talked of a dream of his, one he never saw fulfilled: to arrive in New York by ship, to see the shining city on the hill as legions of immigrants did, to see Lady Liberty emerge out of the morning mist after weeks at sea, impassive, confident, resolute. For a century or so there was in that green arm held aloft an implicit promise: here you shall find the freedom to pursue a better life. Whether fleeing political persecution, crushing poverty, or simply wanting to gamble on one’s economic fortunes, the Mother of Exiles was waiting to welcome you.
Anyone with any understanding of history can be under no illusion that the United States of America ever held itself to the lofty heights of its ideals. The legacies of slavery, indigenous displacement, and foreign meddling makes such a fiction impossible to sustain. And yet, there was in the Green Lady, in the promises of the Declaration of Independence, in the story America told of itself, a symbol of immense potency. Perhaps there could be a world without Thucydidean empires, without Machiavellian rivalry, without zero-sum economic imperialism. Alas, the illusion — for it was always only an illusion — has now been well and truly shattered.
It is telling that it should be the Canadian Prime Minister to most clearly articulate the realities of the new world we find ourselves in. Friend, economic partner, and for so long, close ally of the United States, it is the Canadians who felt first, and most forcefully, the change in their southern neighbour. Gone are the overtures of peace, cooperation, and goodwill; in are the demands of subservience, the compulsion to gratefulness, the commands to bend the knee.
In his speech at Davos, Mark Carney used Václav Havel’s 1978 essay “The Power of the Powerless” to illustrate the concept of “living within a lie”. Canada, he said, will no longer perpetuate the myth of the “rules-based international order”.
For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
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.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.
This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.
The old world is gone and it’s not coming back. The Great Powers — the US, China, Russia1 — will no longer keep to the pretence of operating within the rules; instead they will do as they please. We will all be the poorer for it, but it does us no favours to mourn the old order; instead we must learn how to act within the new.
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 most to gain from genuine cooperation.
This is the path Britain must take. Like Canada, we are a middle power, far too small and insignificant to compete with the Great Powers on our own. But, by working with Canada, Europe, our Anglo cousins in Australia and New Zealand, we can form a bloc large enough to ensure our safety and security. For far too long this continent has slept at the wheel, has opted out of history, has let our militaries and economies rot, comfortable in knowledge that America will look after us. I hope Carney’s speech at long last wakes our leaders up to the fact that the lie is spent, the illusion dissipated. America is no longer the friend she was.
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