Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada expanded on his vision for international cooperation on Tuesday, outlining how nations can safeguard their mutual interests following a “rupture” to the world order by the United States and China.
“This is, in many respects, a time that comes once or twice every century,” Mr. Carney said during a news conference at the United Nations in New York, were he was attending the General Assembly. “What comes ahead, it’s not wishful multilateralism, which defends only the status quo, nor a cold realpolitik that dismantles the status quo altogether.”
He added: “The alternative that Canada and many others are pursuing, is values-based realism, an approach that’s both principled and pragmatic.”
In a highly publicized address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January, Mr. Carney called on the world’s “middle powers” to band together to protect their interests from the decline of the “rules based order.” But he offered little detail what form that might take.
Until he was delayed by air traffic control disruptions on Monday, Mr. Carney had been scheduled to join leaders from the European Union and six other nations to launch an initiative he called “Partners for Multilateralism.”
“This is not a bloc or a bureaucracy,” he said in French on Tuesday. “It is a new forum that looks at universal institutions, practical coalitions and capacities that exist outside of governments in order to build trust and bring people together.”
He added: “The real choice is not between trying to preserve an international order established after the Second World War or abandoning it.”
He said that the plan acknowledges the impossibility of consensus among nations and suggested that alliances formed through the new group will be ad hoc and with changing memberships.
“Groups formed around problems rather than geography or size,” Mr. Carney said. “Not as an alternative to multilateralism, but as an instrument of it.”
Mr. Carney cited Canada’s work with France and Britain on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, as well as Canada’s participation with other nations on preserving ocean environments as examples.
Such groups, Mr. Carney said, would bring their solutions to multilateral organizations, like the U.N., “to be strengthened, to be broadened and to be scaled.”
As he has suggested in the past, such a system demands that Canada and its traditional allies work pragmatically alongside nations with differing views.
“Put simply: we’re in a position where we need to pursue calibrated alliances, integrating deeply with those countries who share our values, remaining open-eyed with those who do not,” he said.
Mr. Carney’s remarks followed a similar message he delivered to the European Parliament where he called for a pact between Canada and the E.U. to help to secure sovereignty and independence for his country at a time of poor relations with the United States.
Mr. Carney will not address the U.N. General Assembly because of a scheduling conflict, but he is meeting with other leaders over several days in New York. Reflecting Mr. Carney’s rise on the world stage, he received more requests for meetings than his schedule could accommodate, said senior Canadian government officials.
Mr. Carney did not directly respond to questions about possibly meeting President Trump, saying: “I find that when you have 160 leaders come to New York that it’s most valuable to meet those who you don’t normally see.”
When asked about Mr. Trump’s threat to annihilate Iran, made in his address earlier on Tuesday, Mr. Carney replied in French: “There is a war underway, and he’s speaking the language of war.”
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