Responding to McPherson’s response to Carney’s speech.

Canada was never in a position to enforce the rules-based international order, and suggesting it failed because we (Canada) didn’t enforce it would be mistaken.

As others have commented, the main point of Carney’s speech was to state that in many ways the rules-based international order was always a myth, and we ‘put our sign in the window’ declaring allegiance to it because it was convenient, but we always knew (or should have known) that the great powers would always dispense with it should they feel the need.

Which they did, often. Examples abound.

Having the ‘sign in the window’ used to protect us to a degree, but it is now apparent that it no longer does, because they have now started to weaponize economic engagement. So it’s time to stop pretending that the great powers are constrained by rules, and to begin to work together to constrain them by other means.

I think the first part of McPherson’s response speaks more to the NDP base than it does to reality. That’s unfortunate.

The second part rephrases Carney, and is more sound: “We must rebuild and strengthen the multilateral institutions we helped create and refuse to let Trump and his coalition of authoritarians replace them with a cartel of impunity.”

Note that multilateral does not necessarily mean global – though we would prefer to see these institutions maintained and strengthened, we can’t pretend that they’re working when they’re not, and when great powers decide to circumvent them, we need to develop new multilateral agreements around them and without them.

And we need to be honest with ourselves – we can insist all we want “on a world where sovereignty is defended, where human rights are universal, where the needs of people and our planet are put ahead of profits,” but as a middle power, our insisting won’t make it so.