O. D. Skelton Memorial Lecture – Bruce Jones, December 2, 2024

Lester B. Pearson Building, Ottawa, Canada

Thank you.

I am very pleased to be here, to reconnect with many old friends and colleagues, and honoured to participate in a series of lectures that has featured some of Canada’s great foreign policy thinkers and leaders since its inception.

Et je suis ici, entre autres, pour célébrer la longue tradition de la diplomatie canadienne.

Throughout my career, I’ve been privileged to have as friends and intellectual partners several of the best of this generation of Canadian diplomacy. My time at the UN and in Washington has been richer for them. People like Elissa Golberg, Heidi Hulan, Leslie Norton, Louise Frechette; and, yes, some men as well – people like David Angell and David Malone and David Morrison. These people have served Canada with distinction and helped to shape the international arena over the past 30 years, exhibiting the best tradition of diplomacy married to innovation. They – and the generation that follows them – will be called to do so again; now, and with urgency.

For to be frank, the situation in front of us is serious. And while there are opportunities for Canada and for Canadian diplomacy, the risks ahead – not just for Canada alone, but for the West as a whole – are real and substantial. To succeed in the decades ahead will require Canada to look unflinchingly at the elements of its past strategies, and current investments, and assess without sentiment or attachment the best pathway ahead. I hope to contribute to that effort in some modest way today by laying out what I see as the nature of the challenges in front of us, and some initial thoughts about the elements that might contribute to effective Canadian strategy.

I will to do so in four parts – by reflecting briefly on the evolution of Canadian diplomacy; by elucidating the nature of the historical moment in which we find ourselves; by outlining some of the competing instincts that will shape the actions and inactions of that most consequential actor, the United States; and then by suggesting some principles and areas of focus where Canadian strategy might find opportunity and leverage.

Continuity in Canadian foreign policy strategy

On the first, I’ll be very brief – you do not need me to travel up from Washington to talk to you at length about the traditional elements of Canadian foreign policy. And it’s worth noting that the O. D. Skelton lectures themselves provide an insightful guide both to what remains constant and what has evolved in Canadian diplomacy. They are worth re-reading, even for those of you involved in the daily warp and woof of Canadian strategy.

Re-reading them and thinking back on the major speeches and initiatives of Canadian leaders in recent decades, leads me to the following four observations.

First, we can see that the most important source of continuity in Canadian strategy is the giant fact to the South – the fact and force of the United States, and the way it shapes Canadian trade, Canadian security, and Canada’s options on the world stage. Perfectly summed up by the inaugural speaker in this series, Allan Gotlieb, in these terms: “In the drama of Canadian foreign policy, the U.S. is always the principal actor; at the table where Canadians prepare the ingredients for their foreign policy, the U.S. is always the principal guest; when Canadians assemble to discuss their needs and destiny, the specter of the U.S. is always there to dominate their thoughts.” As it will be today, in my remarks, though hopefully adequately balanced by some thoughts about the other consequential actors in today’s world.

Second – while the term is surprisingly sparsely used, Canadian strategy is vitally nested in the concept and dynamism of the West. In key Western institutions like the G-7, in which Canada’s Sylvia Ostry – one of my personal heroes – played such an essential, shaping role; like NATO, to which I’ll return; and like that most essential and least talked about institution, Five Eyes. It’s hard to separate the question of Canadian strategy from the wider question of the viability and vibrancy of the wider West.

Third – that multilateralism is both a constant theme in Canadian foreign policy, and the sphere of greatest evolution. This started with an approach during the early part of the Cold War wherein Ottawa sought to use the multilateral arena both to tie Washington down to a predictable international regime, and to express its independence. Evolved during the latter, more dangerous parts of the Cold War to the role played by Ottawa, alongside other middle powers (both western and non-western), in helping to animate the UN as an instrument of crisis management and as a tool to help the U.S. and the Soviets manage and de-escalate crises that threatened to entangle them.^{Footnote 1} Then, in the post-Cold War world, Ottawa has been one of the most important drivers of the expanding liberalism of the multilateral order – from the role of Maurice Strong in laying the foundations for the UN’s role in global climate change; to Louise Arbour and other Canadian diplomats’ role in the forging of the International Criminal Court; to Lloyd Axworthy and the articulation of the responsibility to protect; to the effort by Michael Ignatieff (inter alia in this lecture series) and other diplomats and Canadian scholars to make human rights and democracy central to Canada’s strategy abroad.

And fourth: that all three pillars of traditional Canadian strategy – the U.S., the West, the multilateral order – are in flux, under pressure, or in crisis.

Canadian strategy is going to have to rethink these issues from the ground up.

The world around us and the closing of the great lacuna

To do so starts with a clear-eyed assessment of the world around us, and the risks and opportunities it affords Canada.

So, what is the nature of the world in front of us?

In both policy and academic circles, we are engaged in a debate about whether we are in a bipolar or multipolar world – or more accurately a world of asymmetric bipolarity or a world of asymmetric multipolarity. Alternatively, a polycentric world where power is diffused both across countries and within them. I can make a case for any of these formulations, but I don’t think they help us very much. They are static concepts, and we are in a fluid moment; and the terms don’t really help us to distinguish between those actors seeking to defend the established order, those actors seeking change, and those adapting to the ride, for profit or peril.

Better, in my mind, to understand the world in terms of the course of history, and to locate the strategies of the major players within that wider sweep.

One way to think about the modern moment is to go back in time to the 1840s and the 1850s and the near simultaneous shattering of the Chinese and Indian empires. They were both corrupt and internally rotten to be sure, but each still occupied roughly a third of global GDP. And were both brought to their knees by British naval power and the imposition of open trade. Brought to their knees and reduced to occupying something closer to 2% of global GDP by the last third of the 19^th century.

One of this generation’s best economic historians, Adam Tooze, has described this moment as opening up a “great lacuna,” or great hole, in world affairs – a dramatic contraction of the Asian empires.^{Footnote 2} A lacuna into which British power flowed, as did European power more generally. A world in which Europe came to occupy a hugely outsized role in the global economy and world affairs, relative to population or territory, for the century and a half that followed.

At more or less the same time, we began to witness the rise of America as an economic powerhouse – the one substantial new fact and force of world politics. The United States remains a fact and force of world politics; and I’ll return to it in a few minutes.

But in the rest of the world, I would argue, what we are watching, living through, and have to react to, is a closing of that great lacuna. A return to scale of the Asian giants, and with it a whole series of changes to world politics.

In more prosaic terms, one way to think about contemporary world affairs is to see that there are a series of overlapping forces abroad that all start to constrain the scope and influence of the West.

Let me elucidate those forces now.

Before I do, it’s important to note that in the current struggles, the West has weakened itself – arguably quite badly. Post-war globalization was designed in part to export liberalism; it did that, but also served as a bridge by which to import illiberalism. The outsourcing of manufacturing and the shift to services created far more jobs than it exported but also gave rise to huge inequality. The integration of China and other non-Western economies into the global financial and trading order generated huge gains but also contained the seeds of crisis.

All of this weakened the West as it began to face a series of challenges from concentric circles of pressure – from revisionist powers; from the non-western major and middle powers; and from what we might term the ‘impatient majority’ in the global South.

The revisionist powers

We should start with China –the most consequential power the West has ever confronted.

The closing of the great lacuna has, so far, been above all a story of Chinese economic growth and the consolidation of its power. We’re all familiar with the story and statistics.

The question is – now that China is the clear number two power in world affairs, and will be for the foreseeable future – what is Chinese strategy? I believe the answer is simply put: to displace US pre-eminence in Asia; and to dull US and Western dominance in the international system writ large. To do so by means economic, technological, and diplomatic. To do so without provoking direct conflict with the United States if that can be avoided, but – and it’s a vital but – not shying away from that conflict if China’s goals cannot be met without a clash. And to that end, engaging in the largest and fastest build-up of military forces that any state has undertaken since the Americans after Pearl Harbor.

Under Xi Jinping, Chinese strategy clearly also encompasses the question of compelling Taiwanese integration into mainland China’s political system. Let’s be absolutely clear about this: Taiwan is to Xi Jinping as Ukraine is to Putin. And the risk of direct military confrontation in and around Taiwan, between China and the United States – direct confrontation, not via proxies – is real and high and rising. And comes with a risk of the use of targeted, tactical nuclear weapons – and a risk of wider escalation.

A Taiwan strategy may be high risk for China; but if successful, it would not only consolidate, for Xi, his standing as the third great leader of modern China; it would accelerate the displacement of American power from Asia.

In any event, the rapid growth and consolidation of Chinese power is the first major part of the closing of the great lacuna, and a tectonic shock to the international system.

And the huge gravitational force of China’s economic rise has pulled others up along with it – among them Russia.

Indeed, Russia should be uniquely well placed to profit from three aspects of the closing of the great lacuna – from China’s growth, from which it has profited already; from India’s gathering growth, from which it may profit in the future; and from divisions in the West, which of course it actively stokes, including through increasingly dangerous hybrid tactics. For the core of Russian strategy is, like China, to weaken NATO and weaken the West, en route to restoring its own lost influence in world affairs. And in Moscow’s case, to do so not by avoiding confrontation with the West, but by choosing the terms and mode and location of that challenge.

Here, of course, it remains to be seen – or more accurately, remains to be determined – whether Russia’s first major gambit in this regard, in Ukraine, will prove to be the first in a series of aggressive moves against the West, or a sinkhole for its ambitions.

For, as the Ukraine war has evolved, and China, Iran, and even North Korea have contributed to Russia’s capacity there, it has become our generation’s version of the Spanish Civil War – a test of strength and test of wills between opposing forces. One that so far has been a too-rare moment of unity in the West, if not always of adequate strategy. So far….

With these actors’ collaboration in Ukraine in mind, I’m often asked whether we should describe China and Russia as being in an alliance. The answer is that it is the wrong term – a term that carries with it a series of Western concepts about trust and endurance and institutions. Beijing and Moscow are not allies, natural or temporary. But they are in a concert – a concert of revisionist powers who share the overarching objective of weakening the West. They may not share many other interests – indeed, on several other issues and in several regions, they are each other’s gravest competitor. But the sheer scale of the opportunity to weaken the West occludes those other questions and pulls these players together. With lesser but still consequential actors like Iran and North Korea tagging along for the ride.

The middle game

The two revisionist military powers, China and Russia, may be the most dangerous phenomenon the West confronts. But it’s not the only challenge. The next major challenge comes from a series of other countries that see in front of them a major opportunity from the closing of the great lacuna; an opportunity for growth, and for growing role and voice and influence in the management of world affairs. A group of countries that encompasses the likes of Brazil, Turkey, Indonesia, South Africa – and, vitally, India.

India, above the others, because it appears poised to drive the next phase of the closing of the great lacuna, as its own growth gathers steam. India is poised to overtake Japan and become the 4^th largest economy in the world in GDP terms – already the 3^rd largest, by a huge margin, if measured in PPP. Projecting forward, the vast scale of its population and the opportunity ahead of it to move tens or hundreds of millions into the middle class, could portend an economic shift as large and consequential as that of China’s growth over the past several decades.

And while none of Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey or other actors of this scale will transform the global economy the way India might, they are increasingly influential within their own regions, in multilateral institutions, and in some corners of global diplomacy.

How should we describe the role of these players? They are not revisionists, per se, in the traditional use of that term – they are not seeking a revised territorial disposition or a revised security order. Rather, they seek to profit from the current order. But without doubt they are seeking change.

More than a decade ago, I was talking at length to a colleague in Brasilia – he’s now an influential actor in Lula’s government, so I won’t name him. I asked him about Brazil's strategy and those of other members of the BRICS. He painted to me what I find to be an evocative image, drawing on the game of chess. He noted that at the beginning of the game, the moves are well understood and clearly set out. Towards the end of the game, a series of rapid moves will close to checkmate. But in the middle of the game, the field is wide open. It's unclear how things will end. And players maneuver for position and advantage and to defend their core queen and principal assets.

That, he argued, is the correct image for how countries like Brazil and India and Turkey and others are playing the game of international politics. “We’re playing the middle game,” he said. They don’t know whether China or the United States will end up as the dominant power in the international system at the end of the day, and they’re maneuvering for advantage and to keep their options open. The notion of hedging is accurate here, but I think this image of a middle game is more evocative.

A version of the ‘middle game’ is playing out in the Middle East too, as the regional powers vie for influence in the context of shifting great power dynamics – but there, it’s playing out with precision-guided missiles and proxy war. There is a serious and sustained danger of a wider regional war.

Where does the BRICS mechanism fit in? Does the fact of the BRICS – now, the BRICS Plus – mean that these middle actors are in concert with China and Russia? No, and yes. I’ve written at length about the strategic divisions among the BRICS; strategically, the answer is decisively no, they are not aligned. Within the BRICS – especially with its recent expanded membership – you find several strategic rivals, including India and China. And all the ‘middle game’ players in the BRICS are keeping their options open with China (and to a lesser degree with Russia) but each also has vital interests in keeping channels open to the West and seeking specific, tailored deals.

But for all this strategic disunity, they do share one essential objective – to weaken the West’s hegemony over the global financial and economic order.

At the outset of this section, I talked about the outsized role Europe and the West had come to play in the management of world affairs. As both mechanism and symbol, IMF voting shares are as good a metric as any of that arrangement. As late as 1999, when there had already been some change, we still lived in a world in which Belgium, population 10 million, had nearly double the voting weight in the IMF as Brazil; Canada, population 30 million, had a greater role than China; and Denmark – with its mighty population of 5 million – had a greater role in the management of the world economy than India’s 1.1 billion souls.

No surprise, really, that the objective of weakening the West’s controlling hand is a powerful one.

The impatient majority

In this, these middle players are in broad alignment with the “global south” writ large.

Collectively, we can start to think of this as “the impatient majority.” I’m talking here about the sixty plus countries who grew from low-income status to lower middle- or middle-income status during the post-Cold War era. Countries who – let’s be clear-eyed here – are fully aware that the primary driver of that growth was not western aid policy or the Millennium Development Goals, but the Chinese-led commodity boom. An import-led commodity boom which saw them able to export raw materials at high prices for nearly two decades, generating growth.

Not only have they grown economically, but they’ve also grown in diplomatic clout. They’re not the major powers or middle powers, but collectively they have a growing voice in world affairs – especially one in which great powers are vying for influence. And there’s growing impatience in the global South for voice and for scope in the international financial and economic order. This was true even before the Covid shock and the anger it unfurled.

That anger was not aimed at the West per se, but at the deep and fundamental inequities in the international system – a system the West built and runs and profits from. At the West as the makers and keepers of the rules of the international economic order. And so, by transference, an anger at the West’s role in global affairs. In the “rules-based order” that western diplomats of late have touted (tone deaf to its reception in countries that are the recipients of the deleterious effects of many of the financial rules).

That is not to say that the majority of these countries are anti-Western, or that individually or collectively they pose a major threat to western interests. But versus a decade ago, when Western aid, investment flows, and diplomatic ties in the global South far outstripped those of other actors, that picture is rapidly changing. China, and to a lesser degree Russia, India, Brazil, and Turkey, have also substantially increased their economic, diplomatic, and (in the case of Russia) security presence in the global South. This is giving this group of countries choices and diminishing the influence of the West – with potential costs in terms of investment opportunities, access to natural resources and minerals, and votes in multilateral settings.

And: while the global South’s meta-goal of economic growth is not zero sum with economic growth in the west (in fact there’s a substantial win-win opportunity there), the more immediate negotiation over governance power within the international institutions that undergird that growth – the Bretton Woods institutions, multilateral development banks, arguably UN agencies – is a zero-sum game.

Western strategy here has been recalcitrant, even in areas where the West’s interests are marginal at best. At least until the lack of support for the West over Ukraine served as a something of a wake-up call. Unfortunately, whatever progress was made in the wake of that first set of votes has been largely overtaken by the sustained crisis in Gaza, which has fostered a deeper sense of resentment against the West in several quarters.

These actors do not represent a threat to the West, narrowly conceived; and indeed, there are substantial opportunities here, as I’ll come to. But absent serious policy attention and a willingness to open up to some degree the management of global development institutions, they also offer diplomatic opportunities to China and Russia – who are fully engaged in taking advantage.

The revisionist powers, the global middle powers, and the impatient majority all occupy different places in the changing order and have different objectives. But there is a common thread – the desire to see the West play a less dominant role in world affairs.

For some, this takes the form of a serious run at reform of the major global governance institutions – a process already in motion, but with several chapters yet to be written. That’s the most benign version of what we’re seeing. But it’s only one version, and there are other versions of the struggle to constrict the West – more dangerous ones.

A second form, as I hinted above, is also already in play – that is, a replay of the dynamics of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, where the gathering forces of fascism tested their strength and will against the democratic powers, fighting by proxy. A test of strength, of will, of armaments. Clearly underway already in Ukraine; on the Baltic sea-bed; in parts of the Middle East, including the Red Sea; and – at least incipiently – in the vital waters of the Philippine Sea.

A test of strength that could serve as a precursor to the third form this struggle could take – which is of course a general war.

How should mid-sized western powers, like Canada, respond to this concentric set of challenges to the West?

The obvious and instinctive answer would be – in tune with the West writ large. As it has been in Ukraine. And more specifically, in Ottawa’s case, in tune with the Americans, and key Western institutions, and with an eye to the reform of wider multilateralism.

But here we need to pause. Because while several actors in the global West will be relevant here, none more so than the United States. And the United States’ perspective on and potential role in geopolitics is in flux. And not only because of the re-election of Donald Trump to the Presidency.

The evolution of American strategy

I said earlier that the traditional elements of Canadian diplomacy involved the U.S., the West, and the wider tools of multilateralism. But of course, the West itself and the multilateral order are themselves heavily shaped by the United States. So while a fuller exposé of the options ahead would encompass more fully the question of Europe’s approach and the role of America’s Asian allies, given time constraints and given the weight of the issue, I believe it’s more important to focus on the changing contours of American strategy.

Here, I want to be very precise in my approach. Your invitation to me to give this talk came to me some weeks before the U.S. election. And although well aware that the election could be very consequential, I decided to engage in an intellectual exercise, which was to write down then, not after the election, what I thought were likely to be useful directions for Canadian foreign policy. Because in the current moment of debate and flux and division in the United States, for any Canadian policy to be successful it has to be relevant in a range of different American scenarios.

Of course, what direction the United States takes domestically will matter to Canada and to every other Western country. A combination of huge inequality and the displacement of traditional media by its unregulated social cousin is creating fertile ground for populism, both left and right, a drift towards oligarchic politics, and a temptation to play to identity politics and division. There are genuine challenges to the writ and scope of the rule of law. How far any of this will go is yet to be seen; but to be sure, any overarching strategy based on the coherence of the West is going to be more challenging in the years ahead.

And I don’t want to understate what a tectonic shock it will be if the second Trump Administration serves, as many fear, to move the United States meaningfully along the spectrum from liberal to illiberal democracy or from representative democracy towards a form of semi-institutional oligarchy.

In foreign policy, where I will concentrate – the instinct to unilateralism in the United States is also becoming more prevalent. However, it’s important not to confuse that with isolationism – as it often is. At least not yet. Rather, what I call “unilateral internationalism” appears to be the emerging through line of American strategy. Broadly, the post-War elite consensus around American leadership of the liberal world is being chipped away. No coherent alternative has yet emerged. But for Ottawa or any other Western power, a starting point for strategy has to be an understanding of the competing strands of policy and politics that undergird U.S. approaches to the geopolitical and geo-economic headwinds that confront it and confront us. These competing strands are evident in both Democratic and Republican politics, albeit in different balance. Elucidating them can give us a starting point for thinking through Canadian strategy.

As with everything in Washington these days, we should start with China.

America’s China strategies

There are several strands of American strategy on China – all of which were represented in Biden’s Administration, and all of which appear set to be represented in Trump’s.

They start with the importance of deterrence in Asia, and especially in the Western Pacific – in the desire to keep pace with China’s galloping military build-up in Asia, which threatens American primacy in the region, threatens American allies, and threatens Taiwan. There are only a few small parts of the American political spectrum that diverge from this consensus view.

There is, though, a debate within the American body politic – and inside Trump-world – about two options for how to contain Chinese influence in Asia.

One is represented by the House Select Committee on the CCP: a view that the U.S. should use every instrument at its disposal – economic, technological, diplomatic, military – to contain Chinese power. Important strands of the Biden Administration’s policy, including the CHIPS Act (Note: 2022 US law to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors), followed this line of argument, albeit with a softer tone of voice and a keener eye to allied reactions.

The second is more targeted – most closely associated with intellectual conservatives like Elbridge Colby. It’s the notion that American power should limit itself to containing the Chinese militarily, essentially by engaging in a swift enough and large enough buildup of military power in Asia as to deter Chinese adventurism, including vis-à-vis Taiwan. This view was represented in Biden’s administration and is likely to be represented in Trump’s.

As is a third – the view that while we should constrain China in some respects, we need to keep doing business there; a view likely to be associated with Elon Musk, but present in the wider technology sector and the financial sector in the U.S. The latter have huge stakes in the Chinese financial markets, and the former have a dilemma – they understand the need to reduce dependence on Chinese technology, but their own R&D, including on AI, draws heavily on Chinese scientists and research labs in Shanghai and elsewhere on the Chinese mainland.

Which of these versions of strategy will prevail is unclear – but a general tendency towards constraint or even containment of China is the gathering preference of Washington’s elites. When combined with China’s strategy and tolerance for risk in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, and Philippine Sea, it suggests growing tension and growing prospects of a clash.

The pre-eminence of China in American grand strategy also influences American thinking about Russia; here, there are sharper divisions between Biden and Trump. Even here, though, there are multiple strands of thinking about Russia that are likely to be reflected in the Trump Administration and may complicate Trump’s own instincts to simply cut a deal with Putin.

The Russia question

On Russia, we find three core drivers of strategy.

One, present in the GOP, and to a lesser degree in the Democratic Party, is essentially a revised version of Nixon to China: that is, faced with an overwhelming challenge from Chinese power, the United States should seek to cut a deal with Moscow, to pull it away from the lure of Beijing. I suggest that this is deeply unrealistic; but this view has been alive and abroad in Washington during the last decade. It was badly undercut by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But it has not gone away and may well find new life under a new Trump Presidency.

It is amplified by a much less discussed but influential strand of thinking on the Christian right – a view that sees Putin’s Russia as a bulwark against progressive identity politics, and the divisive issues issue of transgender sex and gay marriage. As crazy as that sounds, to anyone who knows anything about the realities of modern Russia, this view that Putin is a bulwark against the erosion of Christian marriage and Christian values has become an important line of thinking in certain quarters of the right, including at the increasingly influential Heritage Foundation. There is great sympathy in these quarters, for example, for the way Moscow has amplified anti-gay sentiment in several African countries.

Does the combination of these two views mean that we are likely to see the Trump Administration perform a volte face over Ukraine? And cut a deal with Putin? It might.

But: there’s also third major strand of sentiment within the GOP – what we could describe as residual Reaganism; a dominant view within elite Washington as a whole, and alive even within the MAGA wing of the GOP. Here, Russia is actually still understood as a threat to America and to American leadership. (It is notable that in Project 2025, which serves as a semi-manifesto for the incoming Administration or at least a reasonably reliable guide to its politics, there were only two topics on which the team could not reach a unified position – and one of those was Russia.)

This viewpoint looks like it will be represented by influential players in Trump’s foreign policy team. Announced appointments like that of Gen. Kellogg as Ukraine envoy and Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor suggest that the residual Reaganite view will at least get a hearing in Trump’s administration. (Senator Rubio at State, too, though whether he will have any influence in the Administration remains to be assessed.) How Trump himself chooses to balance these views is unpredictable. But doubtless he remembers, as we should, that the GOP was willing to stand up to him on Russia during his first term, and while the other forces are stronger now than then, he does not have a simple path on Russia. The bottom line here is that the fear that the United States will simply walk away from Ukraine is perhaps too simple.

Which leads me to NATO. No news in noting that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine did a great deal to invigorate NATO, which was otherwise in the doldrums. Few in Washington telegraph the point – but there’s little doubt that from 9/11 onwards, the past two decades have seen a gradual but real diminishment in Washington’s enthusiasm for NATO as a central pillar of grand strategy. A dynamic that will only grow as the weight of China’s challenge in Asia mounts and gains urgency. But fears that Trump would simply walk away from NATO in his second Presidency also appear to be exaggerated. Both the early announcement of an Ambassador (a Trump donor; not a traditional NATO Ambassador, but someone with Trump’s ear) and the writings on NATO in Project 2025, all suggest that Trump absorbed the reality of his first Presidency, that support for anti-Russia, pro-NATO sentiment within the GOP is too strong for him to simply turn his back on the alliance. That he will increase pressure again on defence spending, and on the balance of effort in Ukraine, is near certain.

America’s India strategy

Then, we can turn to the question of U.S. thinking about the middle game. Here, India looms large.

There are important subtleties that distinguish Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, and Trump 2.0 on India. And certainly, Delhi has its preferences among these. But the through line is a gathering and consolidating sense of alignment around the notion that a deeper U.S. partnership with India is a critical bulwark against China’s rise in Asia. Neither Delhi nor DC are as yet committed to a partnership, and there have been recent setbacks – both in American reactions to the reported involvement of Indian officials in extra-territorial assassinations, and in Delhi’s (rather conspiratorial) conviction that an American hand lay behind the Bangladeshi coup that ousted Sheikh Hasina.

But to be sure, both elites see major opportunities in a potential partnership; and that view will only strengthen as India’s growth gathers speed. So far, though, Washington has failed to grapple with the reality that a security partnership with India is not sustainable without giving at least some ground to India’s wider concern about the management of the global financial system and the global economy. As India’s growth gathers strength, as it becomes the second major chapter in the closing of the great lacuna, this topic will only grow in importance. And the tension between seeking a security partnership with India while pushing back on their global governance ambitions may grew.

Multilateralism

Which of course leads us to multilateralism – and the question of the impatient majority. Here, of course, we see major differences between parties and presidents. But we’ve also seen a general disenchantment with global multilateralism writ large. We’ve watched as both Republican and Democratic President’s increasingly distance themselves from the WTO. Of course, anti-free trade sentiment is much stronger under President Trump than any others, given his fixation with tariffs as a tool of leverage. But at this juncture, neither the GOP nor the Democratic Party are willing to embrace classical American approaches to free trade – even in Asia, where a U.S. embrace of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is the main request of America’s Asian allies.

On the UN – Biden was respectful and engaged, and I suspect Trump will be as well. Despite his rhetoric during his first campaign, he quickly relaxed about the UN – something we must credit in substantial part to deft diplomacy on the part of Antonio Guterres (who otherwise has disappointed). The early nomination of Elise Stefanik to the post of UN Ambassador, and the writings on the subject in Project 2025, again give no reason to suggest a ‘walk away’ strategy. Rather, we will see a forceful advocacy of American priorities, including getting others to pay a larger share of the costs. We will also see continued strong support for Israel, perhaps with more aggressive rhetoric; an issue that could complicate western unity at the UN, already strained.

Then: Republican Presidents are notoriously skeptical of global normative agencies, and President Trump represents the extreme in that regard. But to be clear, there are real limits to the depth to the American engagement with global multilateralism writ large these days, irrespective of party. And his extreme skepticism on the climate agenda could substantially weaken America’s hand.

That’s particularly true when it comes to the demands from the ‘impatient majority’ for voice and votes in the multilateral order. Biden’s team was badly surprised by the depth of this sentiment when it went courting votes around Ukraine – a fact that reflects an abiding and understandable bias in the United States towards the major and regional powers, but one that underestimates the structural change in world politics, and the opportunities afforded by the impatient majority for actors like India, China, and Russia to profit from dissatisfaction with the West.

If there is to be a negotiated accommodation of the non-west in the management of the global economy, it’s not likely to be orchestrated by Washington.

And so faced with three sets of challenges to the West – the revisionist powers, the non-western middle, and the impatient majority; American strategy is in flux. And far away from leading a coherent Western response as a whole.

An option for Ottawa: leveraged cooperation

Against these uncertainties, how should Ottawa respond?

By falling back on the traditional planks of strategy – Washington, and multilateralism? Both are in flux, arguably in crisis. Neither are reliable pillars for Canadian strategy.

By adopting the stance that many others will, of ‘sauve qui peut’ and trying to cut a separate deal with Washington? There will have to be some of this, to be sure; but it’s a pathway that leads to greater not reduced vulnerability over time.

By pivoting to Beijing, at least in trade terms, as some have argued? Deeply unwise, as greater trade or manufacturing dependence on China will amplify vulnerability to economic pressure tactics and leave Canada more exposed if U.S.-China tensions result in a serious crisis in the Western Pacific.

None of these is the right approach.

Nor, as I suspect some will argue, is relying on the rhetoric and road-map of the so-called “rules based international order.” As I’ve argued in this city before, that concept is analytically weak, politically empty, and diplomatically counter-productive.

So what should be the guiding principles for a medium-sized western power? One historically and geographically tied to the United States?

They have to start by recognizing that the relationship with the U.S. will increasingly be transactional; that there may be less vibrancy over time in the key Western institutions like the G7 and NATO, both because of flux in U.S. policy, and because of the weight of Asia. And that the cast of characters that can shape global affairs has expanded well beyond the dominance of the West.

In that changing landscape, Ottawa will need to rely more on leverage and less on relationships. None of this means that Ottawa – or similarly-placed powers – should abandon the effort to sustain and adapt a multilateral order that can limit risk and expand win-win opportunities. It just has to take a different approach, with a different mix of partners.

Rather, Ottawa could embrace a strategy of “leveraged cooperation.” That is: it should seek to buttress its own position by concentrating resources and diplomatic efforts in areas that will generate leverage in relations with larger powers. Do so, at times, in collaboration with other actors of similar scale and mindset; and bargain for cooperative outcomes from this vantage point. An approach that still recognizes the value of multilateral and win-win approaches, but acknowledges that the overall domain will be competitive, and leverage will be needed to secure effective outcomes and interests.

That will necessitate a retreat from the most expansive efforts at global, liberal multilateralism; and it will also necessitate an increase in investment in the tools of power, combined with a rigor of focus and concentration.

What would this mean in terms of areas of specific focus?

I say what follows with extreme modesty – these days, I am only a distant observer of Canadian strategy. But it seems to me that there are opportunities for Canada to gain leverage by concentrating its efforts in the following ways.

First: I would urge a major focus on the Arctic. The Arctic is essential to Russian strategy; increasingly important to Chinese strategy; therefore, increasingly important to American strategy; and of major interest to a wider swathe of other countries, from Germany to India. Canada has obvious comparative advantages here, which it has seriously under-resourced in recent decades. I believe a central goal of Canadian foreign policy should be to become a major presence and player in Arctic security, resilience, and economic development. Ottawa should also recognize and emphasize that the Arctic is, strategically, part of the Indo-Pacific, and the one part of the Indo-Pacific geopolitical game where Canada has the potential to deploy serious capabilities and leverage its comparative advantages. This will give Ottawa cards to play in Washington’s thinking about China and Russia – and other key global players.

That has to be resourced, of course – and should be a central pillar in a meaningful increase in defence spending. Spending that should rise, not because there will be renewed pressure for this under Trump 2.0 – though there will, intensively so, and by the way with a clear eye on Ottawa as a major laggard. But because in a world of Russian aggression and Chinese military build-up, any other approach is irresponsible.

In the Arctic, and elsewhere, Canada could also look at joint diplomacy and co-investment with the Nordic/Baltic group – which occupy a similar geography, are challenged by Russia, and have strongly overlapping interests. Canada has traditionally looked to the Americas as its region; but Canada is also a Northern Atlantic country and would find receptivity if it sought deeper engagement and cooperation with the Nordic and Baltic states.

Second – Canada should gather its strengths as a maritime nation. Not for nothing have some of the more important parts of the various tests of wills underway played out in the maritime domain – from the Black Sea to the Red to the Philippine. That is neither accidental nor epiphenomenal. The maritime domain has become absolutely central to globalization and to the West; it’s an area of strength for Russia – especially in the undersea domain; and China has clearly identified maritime power – commercial, scientific, and naval – as the pathway to great power.

No need for Canada to be entirely absent in that game, given Canada’s traditions and access to two oceans, and the proximity of its two manufacturing hubs to sea-lanes (the St. Lawrence and the Pacific.) Huge advances in bulk shipping have so drastically reduced the cost of long-distance transport that the traditional argument against looking for overseas markets – the lower cost and easier logistics of trucking to the United States – have in fact been overtaken by new realities.

Important here also to emphasize the presence in part of Canada – especially in and around Vancouver and Victoria – of companies that have leading technology in maritime issues like deep-sea mining; an area likely to be of real strategic and commercial consequence. The undersea domain is of huge significance to the U.S., China, and Russia – Canada has useful cards to play in this domain and could build up strength here.

Third – and related; a strong focus on mining and critical metals and materials in general. Canada has major corporate strengths here, and a long tradition, and the relationships to matter. Demand for critical metals and materials will continue to grow and is an area of intense interest to both the rising and the status-quo powers.

Fourth – on multilateralism. Here, I would urge a two-prong approach. Building on some recent decisions and strengths, I would urge leadership-level investment narrowly focused on the UN humanitarian agencies – combined with assigning Canada’s best diplomats to Ambassadorial and Secretariat/leadership posts within them – something I see has started to happen. Focus on WFP, UNICEF, UNHCR, OCHA, and build up a leading position as a donor combined with deep knowledge of the institutions by leadership level appointments. This will give Canada cards to play in crisis management in general – which will continue to be of interest to the largest players, even as some of the more interventionist approaches wane.

Alongside this, it would warrant the effort for Canadian diplomats and scholars to go study the role of middle powers in the Cold War, and the way that Ottawa – often in collaboration with the Argentines or Brazilians or Poles or Swedes, the various middle powers of the day – helped facilitate UN diplomacy aimed at conflict mitigation, or de-escalation in great power crisis. To reinvent the diplomacy of Lester B. Pearson, in other words.

I’m not blind to the fact that right now, Canada’s ability to do this is weak, with troubled relations with each of Beijing, Moscow, Delhi, and potentially Washington. But that is epiphenomenal. And it can be the basis for deeper collaboration with some of the middle game players – Brasilia would be obvious here, given both the traditions within Itamaraty, and their skepticism about the strategies of several of the great powers, including within the BRICS.

Fifth – it seems more than obvious that Canada needs to diversify its trade relations. That has already been an articulated goal, including by Chrystia Freeland in this lecture series; but very modest progress has been made. An area where more progress can probably be made is in trade investment with non-western middle-income economies – following the arguments laid out by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, at the WTO. Despite my concern about the overall health of the WTO itself, I believe her argument about the path forward for the global economy is the right one: a focus on making investments in middle income economies of the global South, who are impatient to move up the value chain, and could, collectively, do a lot to diversify the current excess dependence on Chinese manufacturing. And in the process could help to create greater trade diversity for Canada (and the rest of the West).

And as part of this, Canada could become a leading voice in articulating a pathway forward for reform of the global financial and economic order in ways that create more space for the impatient majority – a posture Canada has some comparative advantage in, lacking as it does the colonial baggage of Europe or the geopolitical baggage of Washington. But here Canada needs to be clear-eyed: generating the next wave of trade-led growth with new partners won’t be accomplished without giving up some space in the management of the global economy.

There are easy wins here – for example in giving up a very old fashioned and rather counter-productive Western hold on the leadership of UN development agencies.

These ideas are illustrative or indicative more than they are specific – they go to the idea that Ottawa will have to find ways to become less reliant on Washington, less reliant on the West, and less reliant on the existing, traditional multilateral institutions. That will require investment, diplomatic talent, and creativity. Something that Canada has exhibited in the past, in spades.

At the start of my remarks, I said I was here in part to celebrate the tradition of Canadian diplomacy. With your indulgence, I’d like to take one minute as I close to celebrate the life of one particular, creative Canadian diplomat, who recently died – my father, Terry Jones. A diplomat’s diplomat, he joined the department in 1965, and spent his entire career in External Affairs, as he called it to the last. Through him, I grew up in the Canadian foreign service, and in this building – what as a child I called the chocolate layer cake building. Through his eyes I saw Canadian diplomacy operate during the late stages of the Cold War, and through its turbulent end; and I saw Canadian diplomacy adapt and find new space in the post-Cold War moment. He played many roles, all of which he relished – from keeping the High Commission staff safe as Chargé d’Affaires in Ghana during two coups, to leading Canada’s negotiations with Denmark over Greenland issues, to helping orchestrate Tanzania’s first democratic election. All while there was always a creative poem or a Gilbert and Sullivan song ready on his lips. Along the way, he mentored and amplified the careers of many young Canadian diplomats, some of whom are in the room or listening online.

At the end of his career, he was offered the role as the department’s liaison to the Minister’s office – something akin to the modern role of Political Director. I vividly remember talking to him about it over dinner that evening in Manor Park, as he laughed and told me he had no intention whatsoever of doing that job – and instead asked for a desk job in the Africa section. From which platform he used his creativity, his diplomatic nous, thirty years of relationships, and his passion, to help animate and shape the Kimberley Process to regulate the sale of blood diamonds – the completion of which has surely saved thousands of lives and improved the lives of tens of thousands more.

I offer that remembrance, both to honour him, and to remind the generation of younger diplomats in the room and online of how much can be accomplished by Canada when diplomatic talent is married to creativity.

And with that I will close.