A chance for international system change

Seventy-five years to the month after they defeated the Nazis in Europe, the United States and the United Kingdom are numbers 1 and 2 respectively when it comes to coronavirus deaths. At the same time, the U.S., U.K., Canada and all our democratic allies face the real prospect of prolonged economic uncertainty, the likes of which nobody alive today has experienced as an adult.

Just as it was a decade before the Second World War, during the Great Depression, we are also facing the very real potential of another major global conflict. To safeguard against another bloodletting, the post-war architects addressed the tangible causes of war head-on, not the least being the breakdown of international trade that accompanied the Great Depression.

Victory in that epic struggle between good and evil was also a victory for the creation of international structures that maintained peace and brought prosperity, order and good governance to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Every democratic country — Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. included — benefits from an international system that works.

But as strong as it once was, nothing lasts forever and the international system, along with the global institutions that were built to underpin it, was faltering long before “coronavirus” and “social distancing” entered our shared vernacular. The challenge — for the democracies that are up to the task — is to modernize that system, so it can continue to maintain a safe and stable world in the future.

Ironically, although it is an aging system that needs a renovation, we may need to start with an approach that is even older than the system itself.

U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 “Four Freedoms”

speech served as an inspiration throughout the war and in the creation of the new international system. It most certainly can inspire us today.

Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms included: freedom of speech and expression, everyone’s freedom to worship God in their own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear. That template can serve to guide three things that democracies can do this year to modernize the international system.

First, stop pretending. Every generation, good and well-intentioned people have to learn the same lesson: trust in authoritarian regimes of any stripe does not work. For this generation, that realization probably should have come sooner than the arrival of the deadly virus from China. But now that the coronavirus is here, let us learn once again that in order to increase security and prosperity, democracies must co-operate with each other. This type of deep co-operation can only be successful between nations with shared values. The democracies should stop pretending otherwise.

Second, meet. Democracies have only one choice: work together to create a strong set of norms for all countries, including China, to adhere to. Governments from democratic countries, together with influential democratic-minded individuals from academia, business, civil society and journalism, should meet as regularly as possible to exchange experiences and ideas for modernizing the international system.

Third, start succeeding. There is truth to the maxim that nothing succeeds like success. The world’s major democracies have been knocked down before. Yet history dictates that it is folly to count them out. Indeed, it is the democracies that share a special responsibility to help modernize the international system they largely created and make it work for a new generation. It will take some time, but as Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. demonstrate their resilience in the face of a crisis, they will again expand the greatest strength they have: the power to attract.

“That is no vision of a distant millennium,” president Roosevelt told Congress in 1941. “It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.”

Seventy-five years ago, the Second World War served as the impetus for creating an international system that worked for a very long time. Instead of another major conflict, let us use this current crisis as the impetus for modernizing the international system today.

AS STRONG AS IT ONCE WAS, NOTHING LASTS FOREVER.