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A quick note before I focus on this week’s subject(s). I did want to note that the most recent podcast in ‘Shaking the Global Order’ this with Yves Tiberghien of the University of British Columbia, and currently the Distinguished Professor and Dean of the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science, at National Tsinghua University is now posted at the Global Summitry Project (GSP) website. It is a great podcast, Yves examines the state of geopolitical relations today from Europe to China to the Indo-Pacific. Have a listen, you will enjoy.
Now to this week’s Post. I start with a rather sobering view of the global order brought to you by Mark Leonard, the cofounder and currently the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). Within the community of scholars and policy folk, and indeed political types, there is growing dismay over the disassembly of what was the rules-based liberal international order (RBIO). Early in his remarks at Foreign Affairs, (FA), he recalls Henry Kissinger’s classic statement on the international order:
“U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once asserted that world order rests on two pillars: a reasonably stable balance of power and a set of commonly agreed-on rules about what states may or may not do.”
And as he then goes on to argue:
“Today, both pillars are crumbling, and it is unlikely that they can be fortified or rebuilt any time soon.”
For him, and indeed many others, the global order has fundamentally been altered:
“This moment does not constitute a short interregnum between a U.S.-led order and a Chinese-led one. For some time, the world will be without any order at all—swept by fragmentation, contagion, and strangulation or the temptation to weaponize a wide variety of geographic, economic, and technological chokepoints. Rather than constructing a grand strategy, states will need to develop far more flexible and artisanal responses.”
The United States is still the key player, of course, as he notes but clearly now unwilling to even acknowledge the rules-based foundation or to determinedly protect or even strengthen the elements:
“The United States remains the world’s preeminent military, economic, and technological power. But it is increasingly clear that Washington no longer has the ability to prevent conflicts or ensure the free flow of commerce worldwide; it could not even open the Strait of Hormuz after a militarily hobbled Iran shuttered the waterway.”
“Even before Trump, the alliance system that helped the United States enforce the rules was weakening; China, Russia, and rising powers that didn’t make the rules were pushing against them.”
“Then, Trump launched a rebellion from within against the U.S.-led order, bullying American allies, ditching the World Health Organization, scrapping the U.S. Agency for International Development, and imposing widespread punitive tariffs. His will
to dismantle the order the United States built has been extraordinary.”“But even after his presidency ends, in 2029, it is highly unlikely that the United States will resume its old role. Americans had already lost interest in being the world’s primary provider of public goods, its police officer, and its free-trade champion. And no other power has the ambition to take up the mantle.”
“In dozens of private conversations I have had over the past year with leaders worldwide, the only thing they agree on is that they do not know what will come next. They are struggling to use history or theory to find their bearings. The briefings they get from their intelligence agencies and diplomatic services no longer give them any certainty.”
“The central feature of these conversations is uncertainty, a sense that the world defies conventions and understanding. Episodes of rule breaking always characterized the rules-based order, but they took place within an overall framework that still held. This is the distinction: in a disordered world, actors violate rules they still recognize. In a world defined by what might be called “un-order,” they act without reference to any common framework at all.”
What then is the way forward if indeed this the global order we see emerging? Interestingly, Leonard offers two models of behavior – the architectural and the artisan, as he calls them. The former, he believes attempts to resurrect the RBIO. Here he describes such behavior:
“Architects develop blueprints for order and try to mold the world to their designs, developing universal norms and anchoring security in multilateral institutions.”
“Although they admit uncertainty, leaders in those places fail to grasp the changes they are facing, and their strategies too often propose maintaining the form of the old order without its substance—the legitimacy and enforcement capacity conferred on it by the United States. They are still scrambling to shore up the rules-based global trading system by attempting to build a carbon copy of the World Trade Organization’s deadlocked appeals mechanism and continuing to lodge complaints against U.S. tariffs at the WTO, the equivalent of shouting into the void.”
But artisans have a quite distinct approach:
“Artisans, on the other hand, don’t assume they have the power or resources to build grand structures from scratch. Instead, they use improvisation and flexibility to cope with a world that doesn’t lend itself to sweeping plans. In many ways, China already behaves like an artisan state.”
“Whereas architects seek stability, artisans prepare for chaos and change. Architects might try to reform the UN Security Council or restore the WTO’s appellate body. They would be wasting their time. Artisans follow the course diplomacy is already taking. China is an observer on the Arctic Council. The EU should likewise apply to join BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as an observer.” …
“On trade, an artisanal approach would mean investing in new infrastructure nodes built around corridors and ports, such as the Lobito Corridor, a logistics route connecting mineral-rich central Africa to the Atlantic. These promise greater rewards than sweeping trade deals such as those the EU has sought with India or the South American economic bloc Mercosur, which can take decades to negotiate. And instead of competing to nominate their diplomats as UN special envoys, Australia, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and similar states should seek to contribute to the more unconventional conflict mediation efforts now being spearheaded by countries such as Pakistan and Qatar.”
“Whereas architects see globalization as a means to transform others, artisans worry about the vulnerabilities that interconnectedness creates.”
In a concluding view of the two approaches Leonard suggests the following:
“Perhaps most important, while architects think about security from the outside in, artisans realize a country must be defended from the inside out. European and Indo-Pacific states must salvage what they can from the old security architecture—by, for instance, drawing on NATO’s command structures for military operations—and become far less reliant on the United States as an eternal security provider for their regions.”
Yes, from the inside out but also with small group efforts around specific initiatives. As Evan Osnos suggest sin his very good recent piece in The New Yorker:
“The likely successor to the American order, then, is not a Chinese order so much as what [Mark] Leonard [European Council on Foreign Relations] calls a period of “un-order”: a jungle in which every country hedges, arms, subsidizes, hoards, and searches for choke points to exploit. In the words of Suisheng Zhao, a China scholar at the University of Denver, it is the makings of a “twenty-first-century Hobbesian struggle of all against all.””
This conclusion is possible but I think overdrawn. It remains likely, in my view that states will continue to fashion plurilateral coalitions where collective action achieves greater protection but also economic advancement and indeed interconnectedness. It should not, and in my view likely will not be just “all against all”. There is a positive aspect to this more threatened global order described by Mark Leonard.
And then there is the immediate and ongoing trade conflict with President Trump – topic two. The immediate end of discussions between the US and Canada, it seems – and decision time – is late tonight – Friday. It appears, for the moment, like a trade deal is coming together – he says with some trepidation. As described by Stephanie Taylor and Tonda MacCharles at the Toronto Star there appears to be two battles for the Canadian federal government led by Mark Carney:
“The first battleground is in Washington, where Canadian negotiators met for hours with American counterparts to finalize what the leaders say is an impending agreement with one day to go before a reprieve that Trump granted on new 50 per cent tariffs expires. At stake, Carney’s officials say, is also the future renegotiation of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico deal that covers about 85 per cent of Canada’s cross-border trade.”
And then there is the other, battle that is:
“The other battleground is in Canada, where Carney faces the task of ensuring premiers agree to fulfil one of the central demands of the Trump administration: returning U.S. alcohol to provincial liquor store shelves.
“Ontario’s Doug Ford and B.C.’s David Eby were conspicuously silent Thursday on their decisions, awaiting more detail on what Canada is giving up in return for accepting lower but still harsh tariff levels on major sectors like steel, aluminum and autos, while Manitoba’s Wab Kinew vented his frustration.”
What appears to be a reality – that is slowly leaking out, is that this difficult tariff battle with the President is critical to the trilateral USMCA. Again as described by the two reporters in the Star piece:
“What became clearer Thursday is that the Carney government is cautioning would-be critics to realize no deal on Trump’s latest additional tariffs would put any chance at getting a renegotiated CUSMA in jeopardy.”
What’s at stake. Well, quite a bit:
“A senior federal official, speaking on condition they not be named in order to discuss the sensitive talks, told the Star that “it’s easy” for Kinew [Premier of Manitoba] and others to say Ottawa should keep fighting, but that the Carney government is weighing more than the impact of Trump’s latest threatened tariffs. The section 338 tariffs would affect not just five per cent of Canadian exports, but some 56,000 jobs according to a government analysis of the data, and $28 billion worth of goods in sectors that the official suggested don’t necessarily have the same ability as steel or aluminum sectors to pivot to new products and markets.”
“More important, the Carney government sees the proposed deal on the table as securing a “pathway” or agreement by the Trump administration to engage in a renegotiation of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), and acknowledgment that CUSMA is in the economic interest of all three parties, weeks after Trump said his country didn’t need CUSMA and might do only side deals.”
“The official added “part of the realistic world” the Carney government is looking at is that the latest tariffs would hit five per cent of trade now “and if we lose CUSMA entirely, it’s 85 per cent of trade” that could be affected.”
There is much at stake. And while I worry it could all fall apart, I am still – optimism is too strong – of the view a deal will be struck. Then the question will be how to mitigate the damage that will accompany the agreement to contain the Trump tariffs. More on that after the announcement.