Many middle powers have been warning of the dangers inherent in the decline of the liberal international order. The time has come for these countries to translate their warnings into concerted action.
Organizing a middle-powers campaign
The examples cited above demonstrate the promise of plurilateral issue-specific coalitions, which should be the motor of any middle-powers campaign to sustain and reform key parts of the liberal international order. What is needed now, however, is a more focused and ambitious set of initiatives, along with a mechanism for their coordination. The following can be regarded as key principles of any campaign:
Which countries should constitute the coordinating group of a campaign to ‘save’ the liberal world order?
- Form should follow function – Each coalition should begin with a small group of states that share a common assessment of the problem at hand and possess the means to do something about it. Once this core group devises a general plan of action, others should be encouraged to join the coalition, contribute to its efforts, and refine its goals. Participation in the coalition should depend on its subject matter and objectives. A group defending liberal values such as media freedoms, for example, would naturally consist of democratic states and relevant non-governmental partners, whereas an arms-control initiative is likely to comprise a more ideologically diverse group of countries.
- Involve non-governmental actors where appropriate – Non-governmental actors can be powerful allies. Canada supported multi-stakeholder campaigns in the 1990s, which led to the establishment of the International Criminal Court and a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines, and, in 2010, when it launched the Muskoka Initiative on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health at that year’s G8 summit. Other examples include the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (both of which were established in the early 2000s), which are prominent public–private partnerships in the global health field. City and regional governments, private companies and advocacy organizations have been important participants in coalitions to combat climate change, as we have seen.25 On matters of financial and business regulation, the involvement of private-sector actors is also vital because of the influence they wield. Plurilateralism, in other words, can accommodate a wide range of actors.
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Campaign-level coordination should be through informal consultations, not a formal body – Regular consultations would permit a core group of states to exchange views on evolving threats to the liberal international order; discuss their respective priorities and undertakings in response to these challenges; coordinate actions across the issue-specific coalitions; and hold each other loosely accountable for their respective commitments. The Human Security Network, an association created by Norway and Canada in 1998, offers an interesting model. Participants in the network (which gradually expanded to comprise 13 countries) subscribed to the shared goal promoting the security of individuals, rather than solely that of states, but the real work of the network took place within the projects that its members led – such as efforts to strengthen the protection of children in armed conflict and respect for international human rights and humanitarian law – often in partnership with other states and non-governmental partners that were not part of the coordinating group.
This raises a potentially sensitive question: which countries should constitute the coordinating group of a campaign to ‘save’ the liberal world order? Limiting the membership to a small number of like-minded countries that possess the diplomatic networks and resources to lead issue-specific coalitions – say, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and the UK – would offer an efficient design. However, this list might strike some as too ‘northern’ or ‘western’, particularly if the campaign’s purpose includes adapting multilateralism to the shifting landscape of international affairs. Expanding the core group to encompass a more globally representative group of middle powers – for instance, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and South Africa – would help address this concern, but it might also yield an unwieldy group of less-than-like-minded countries. At worst, it could reproduce the political frictions that have paralysed aspects of the multilateral system. The purpose of plurilateralism is to overcome these problems, not to replicate them.
Once again, the Human Security Network offers a possible solution: to start with a small group of like-minded liberal states and subsequently invite other countries to self-select as partners, on condition that they (1) subscribe to the goal of sustaining and modernizing the liberal international order, and (2) commit to leading or participating in one of the related issue-specific coalitions. The advantage of this approach is that it focuses attention where it belongs: on the activities of the campaign rather than its loose coordination structure.
Basing an initiative on a core group of liberal democracies offers another advantage. These countries have an interest in adapting the rules-based international system to reflect the interests of emerging powers, but not at the price of abandoning human rights, freedom of expression, open rules-based trade, and the principle that governments should be accountable to the people they serve. Striking this balance will not be easy, but it is essential. Democracies must work together to uphold liberal values in a world of mounting authoritarianism and illiberal populism, while at the same time recognizing that international institutions and rules perform another vital function: enabling countries with different political and economic systems to manage their relations peacefully. Establishing a strong ‘caucus’ of liberal states at the core of a broader middle-powers campaign would help to resolve this issue.
- The campaign should not become a vehicle for anti-Americanism or ‘soft balancing’ against the US – The Trump administration opposes some multilateral institutions but supports others. Even when the White House demurs, powerful actors in the US political system and in its civil society can be important allies. Over the long term, sustaining and adapting the rules-based system will require renewed leadership from the US, not least because it remains the world’s foremost economic and military power. A middle-powers campaign that indulges anti-Americanism would work against this goal. Indeed, it would be a non-starter for countries such as Canada and Japan, which prioritize good relations with the US.
25 Hale, T. (2018), Catalytic cooperation: BSG Working Paper Series, Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2018-09/BSG-WP-2018-026.pdf (accessed 16 Apr. 2019).