There’s a fatal flaw in Mark Carney’s grand foreign policy designs: the world has only one Mark Carney.
asserted
world → ’ → Carney
That’s bad news for his plan to build out a bulwark against the great powers — “the hegemons,” as he calls them.
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he → ’ → them
With liberal internationalist leaders losing power by the day, this work is only getting tougher.
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work → lose → day
Absent a plan to clone himself, Carney is doing the next best thing: he’s assembling a Voltron of aligned nations.
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he → clone → nations
It is tasked with nothing less than revitalizing the United Nations, creating an alliance of middle powers and overhauling global finance.
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It → task → finance
Carney and his fellow liberals call it “Partners for Multilateralism” (P4M).
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Carney → call → Multilateralism
“The postwar world is long gone, but the underlying logic that justified multilateral co-operation is more evident than ever,” Carney wrote last month in the Financial Times, along with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Kenyan President William Ruto and European Council President António Costa.
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Carney → go → Silva
Climate change, global conflict, pandemics, maritime disputes — all rising, as that postwar system of international co-operation proves hopeless in reversing the trend.
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system → rise → trend
“No country, however powerful, can manage these challenges alone,” they write.
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they → manage → challenges
When they brought the band together for the first time last month, 23 nations — plus the European Union and the Council of Europe — signed up.
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nations → bring → Europe
P4M will see “small groups formed around problems, rather than geography or size,” explained David Lametti, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations.
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Lametti → see → Nations
(Carney couldn’t make the inaugural meeting.)
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Carney → make → meeting
Talk of multilateral institutions can cause eyes to glaze over.
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eyes → cause → institutions
But we are, daily, experiencing the costs of these institutions’ failures.
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we → experience → failures
The UN was once a key figure in pushing Israel and Palestine toward a two-state solution.
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UN → push → solution
Today, however, Israel continues to bombard Gaza while Israeli settlers rampage through the West Bank as Israel annexes more land.
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Israel → continue → land
The Palestinian Authority has just delayed elections yet again, in part due to Israel’s refusal to co-operate.
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Authority → delay → refusal
Civil wars in Yemen and Sudan have killed hundreds of thousands in recent years and put millions more at risk of starvation.
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wars → kill → starvation
Instability in the Sahel region has worsened, providing ample space and resources to regional and global terror groups.
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Instability → worsen → groups
The UN has tried to engage itself in mediating these conflicts, even sending peacekeepers, but its efforts have been marred by indecision and indifference from participating countries — Canada included.
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Canada → try → countries
In the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea, international maritime law has taken a backseat to whoever can fire the most rockets and drones.
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whoever → take → rockets
The UN was formed as a logical and effective means of resolving regional disputes and establishing global rules and norms — and Canada’s serious involvement in making it a reality has long been a source of pride.
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it → form → pride
Over the years, however, inertia has crept in and the globalist body has become an afterthought, at best.
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body → creep → years
Carney’s modus operandi is often to do an end-run around things that don’t work.
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that → do → things
But in P4M, he (and his fellow liberals) seems to be recognizing that it would be easier to fix the UN than to live without it.
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it → seem → it
That doesn’t mean renovating the UN’s globalist infrastructure will be easy.
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renovating → mean → infrastructure
(It also carries considerable sway in deciding the next Secretary General, who is due to be elected this year.)
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who → carry → General
The five permanent seats at the council were meant to put the wartime Allies — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — in charge of managing the world.
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seats → mean → world
That means it excludes Germany, Japan and India; it also has no permanent representation from Africa, Oceania, or Latin America.
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it → mean → Africa
The council’s permanent members have extraordinary power to stymie efforts to promote peace — stopping Moscow’s war against Ukraine, for example — but they can also block any efforts to change the structure of the UN.
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they → have → UN
And in recent years, Moscow, Beijing and Washington have all thwarted plans for reform.
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Moscow → thwart → reform
U.S. President Donald Trump, a buffoonish critic of international diplomacy, even tried to set up a rival organization, the Board of Peace.
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Trump → try → Peace
The good news is that most of the countries on the planet want to fix the UN, even if past efforts have hit a wall.
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efforts → want → wall
Seven years ago, France and Germany introduced the “Alliance for Multilateralism,” which the usual suspects signed up for — Canada included.
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Canada → introduce → which
That initiative had all the same buzzwords, too: great powers threatening the rules-based order, adapting to new challenges, global network of like-minded states, balancing self-interest with global good, a focus on climate change, reforming institutions and so on.
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initiative → have → institutions
In 2024, plans for reform crystallized into the Pact for the Future, which laid out a suite of broad pledges aimed at shaking the UN out of its dysfunction.
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which → crystallize → dysfunction
Those reforms were criticized by unrepresented members as too vague, then pooh-poohed by Russia as “very dangerous” in “presenting the desirable as possible.
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reforms → criticize → desirable
Unfortunately, most of the major reforms — limiting the veto, for example — would require amending the UN Charter and could therefore be killed by any Security Council member, even if it has the support of a majority of the General Assembly.
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it → limit → Assembly
That makes most efforts a non-starter.
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efforts → make → ?
So Canada, in hoping to fix the UN itself, is wading into a dense bog — but there are real solutions to be pursued.
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Canada → hop → bog
…and 34 more, not listed.
The Aporia
