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Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Afp
La Jornada Maya

Tuesday, April 30, 2019

In our globalized world, the main threats facing humanity cross borders with impunity. Contagious diseases, polluted air, oceans filled with human-generated waste and waves of immigrants fleeing man-made and natural catastrophes all threaten humanity as never before.

Technology has facilitated faster movement of capital where transfers of billions of dollars can quickly destabilize economies. The viral tweet, with its ever-broader reach, is all-pervasive, and can profoundly impact attitudes, relationships and even societies.

In addition, artificial intelligence is going to affect the job market in many countries. Governments must find ways to retrain employees made redundant so that they can contribute to the new economy. In the meanwhile, the recent massive shifts in the job market have fueled frustration, leading voters to consider other options who promise easy answers to complex issues.

Proponents of multilateral co-operation face a dual threat.

On the one hand, they must combat these threats to ensure that mankind is not plagued by one disaster after another. On the other, they must better manage these challenges to avoid having voters turn to nationalist leaders unsupportive of multilateral institutions out of frustration with mainstream political leaders.

Last week, we learned that Canada, France, Germany, and Japan have joined together in an alliance that aims to save the global order from destruction and that proposes to shore up international cooperation.

Canada’s Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, said that “many of today’s greatest challenges are global and they can only be solved when we work together. That is why Canada stands united with its German, French, and Japanese friends”.

While she avoided tying the initiative to recent changes in U.S. foreign policy, French Ambassador to Canada Kareen Rispal did connect this new alliance directly to the failings of the Trump administration. She noted that Mr. Trump doesn’t “like to value multilateralism” in referring to the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. She went on to say that “It sends the wrong message to the world if we think that because Mr. Trump is not in favor of multilateralism, it doesn’t mean that we – countries like Canada, France, Germany and many others – are not still strong believers”.

During a recent United Nations (U.N.) press conference, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian added that the purpose of the Alliance is to “show that the states that support multilateralism, and are attached to the United Nations, remain the majority. It is a majority that has been silent for a long time, because we have long considered international cooperation to be self-evident. However, this is not the case today, and states committed to multilateralism must make themselves known, and join forces and voices.”

Indeed, the apparent withdrawal of the United States from multilateralism and its focus on nationalism under President Trump’s “America First” has left a vacuum in global politics for Russia and China to fill. The U.S. State Department has also, for all practical purposes, been emasculated by the White House with U.S. diplomacy very much on the wane.

Without strong U.S. commitment to multilateral institutions and established rules, the international system that has governed global governance since 1945 risks going the way of the dodo.

Russia and China have never been rules-based nations, and many developing countries have a weak if non-existent commitment to respect for human rights, a free media, free and fair elections, and a commitment to strengthen multilateral institutions. In their view, stronger multilateral institutions will result in greater demands for these countries to democratize, respect fundamental human rights, and allow freedom of expression. All of these go against the fundamental interests of their mostly authoritarian leaders.

So, an alliance by a number of states that believe in multilateralism is a welcome development in an increasingly volatile world.

But is it a viable option over the longer term?

Not if it depends only on the commitment of its four leaders and not if multilateral institutions fail to make much needed, real reforms and seek new sources of funding to replace dwindling U.S. contributions.

Canada’s Liberal government appears to be in trouble in the lead-up to the October federal election facing a strong challenge from a right-wing Conservative party. Canada’s previous Conservative government had little time for multilateralism and reduced Canada’s U.N. footprint considerably.

Germany’s Angela Merkel leaves office in 2021 and it is not guaranteed that her successor will have the national profile to keep her party in power, or the international profile to encourage others to follow Germany’s lead. Indeed, the populist extreme right-wing party Alternativ für Deutschland is the largest opposition party in the German Bundestag. Little is known about that party’s commitment to a working international order.

French President Emmanuel Macron has recently faced often violent confrontations with the “Gilets Jaunes” opposition movement protesting his government’s seeming elitism and its apparent disconnect from popular opinion. His position is not strong, while Marine Le Pen’s National Rally opposition party remains a major player whose ultra-nationalist platform appears to be strengthened by this months-old protest movement. Again, she is anti-E.U. and is not a multilateralist in any sense.

So, it would appear that there is limited time for reforms to be introduced and implemented before governments face the electorate and risk being defeated by parties that don’t share their vision.

The issues facing all nations require strong multilateral discussion and collaboration.

But the major challenge facing multilateral institutions is that the citizens of countries that contribute to their funding are not the beneficiaries of their work. The people of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Japan receive little direct help from U.N. agencies, leaving citizens there to wonder where their tax dollars go.

What is needed to promote multilateralism is a concerted effort by governments that support this process to educate their citizens with respect to the benefits that they derive from the work of U.N. specialized agencies.

Indeed, every day, United Nations specialized agencies work to vaccinate 45 percent of the world’s children, protect 65 million people forced to flee their homes, and feed 80 million people, according to latest figures.

Thus, if this new alliance of multilateralist governments is to succeed, it must work hand in hand with the United Nations and its component parts to get these and similar messages out to the global citizenry.

They must develop communications strategies that reach voters in these countries through their respective educational systems, mass communications networks, social media, and non-governmental organizations.

Finally, the alliance will have to find alternative sources of funding since the United States is reducing its financial commitment to multilateral institutions. No easy task.

Member governments of this new alliance will have to successfully demonstrate to their citizens how multilateral agencies provide humane responses to many of the ills that threaten humankind thereby contributing directly to everyone’s economic and physical well-being. Indeed, as with all current political challenges, leaders must demonstrate “what’s in it for me” to taxpaying voters.

To achieve this, multilateral institutions must be reformed to make them accountable to funding nations and to be more effective and transparent. The apparent gridlock in their political bodies and their focus on macroeconomic objectives rather than microeconomic goals must end if they are to become relevant and convince voters that multilateral institutions make a real difference in their lives.


As well, alliance members are going to have to separate the dysfunctional Security Council from the highly effective specialized agencies in the public’s view. While one is always in the news mostly for negative reasons, others work beneath the surface to achieve many good results for humanity. The work of the highly effective specialized agencies has to be brought to the surface and separated from the failings of the political bodies so that taxpayers have a better appreciation as to why the former should be supported.

The alliance should also focus on bringing together like-minded parliamentarians and political operatives to ensure that if and when leaders are voted out of office, there is still an international political network supporting efforts to sustain multilateralism.

In addition, former diplomats, academics, and journalists can develop solid networks across national borders. They can help formulate strong and effective policies and messages in support multilateralism in order to counteract the impact of negative propaganda aimed at destroying multilateral forums.

Finally, all of this will require funding, and this funding should be seen as an investment rather than as a cost – an investment in the future of the multilateral system with concrete goals and targets. But real reform must come first if member states have any chance to justify increased spending to their voters.

Can this work?

There is no guarantee, but if we want to have an international system of governance that can deliver positive results we must all work together to set the record straight and encourage popular support for these organizations. Indeed, the world needs forums in which countries can discuss solutions to problems.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld once said, “The United Nations was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell”.

Absent strong efforts to reform these institutions and make them more relevant to global society, humanity risks returning to the pre-World War II mindset of rabid nationalism and economic and political isolationism that led the world to global conflagration twice in twenty years.

And that could well be hell.

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