Jim Warren, PhD, is a Regina-based political economist and retired university professor. He is currently a columnist for two online Western Canadian energy publications.The fragmentation of international institutions, including regional trading blocs and treaty organizations like the CUSMA and NATO, may be the way of the future. Moreover, some geopolitical forecasters predict centrifugal forces similar to those eroding large international institutions will lead to the breaking up of large political federations, including the US, Canada, and the quasi-federated EU. The independence-minded in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Quebec may actually be harbingers of a new global trend. In January, UnHerd columnist Duncan Moench proposed that the US is well on its way to a break-up. According to Moench, the likelihood of US fragmentation becomes obvious to Americans when they recognize that “our governing institutions are too large, too centralized, and too culturally incoherent to sustain democratic legitimacy.”Large, centralized, one-size-fits-all government policies are frequently impractical, divisive, and democratically unacceptable in geographically, economically, and culturally diverse countries. Yet, powerful central governments with their Byzantine bureaucratic systems frequently draft legislation which is popular in a favoured region but inimical to the interests of people in other regions. Canada’s electrical vehicle (EV) mandates are a classic example of favoured-region legislation. EVs may be practical for short trips in big, vote-rich urban centres like Toronto and Montreal. But in colder parts of the country where people travel long distances, EVs are impractical, unpopular, and, for many, unaffordable. Policies popular among the Laurentian elite, such as federal gun control legislation, beg for the sort of regional exceptions that Central Canadian decision-makers are incapable of making. Moench’s thesis proposes that habitually failing to match public policy to the realities of regional diversity fuels the centrifugal forces driving fragmentation..Moench writes that “There is a fundamental urge deep in the human psyche to have control over our own localities without the oversight of distant governing bodies.” Ever since the most recent wave of globalization was launched in the 1980s, leaders of wealthy Western democracies and the Davos elite have been convinced that large global and regional institutions were the way to a better future. Many imagined the EU would grow until its membership included all of the countries in Europe; a list which now includes Ukraine. They assumed global trade would be governed under the auspices of institutions such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) supplemented by regional trading blocs like the USMCA and the EU. Monitoring global health and establishing international health management protocols would increasingly fall under the purview of the World Health Organization (WHO). UN subsidiaries like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change would become increasingly influential in setting targets for emissions reduction, and so on.The Davos prophets, including Mark Carney, celebrated the rising power and influence of international institutions like the WTO. They viewed free trade with China as a good thing regardless of the fact that the Chinese were notorious for engaging in unfair trading practices and are gross abusers of human rights. They imagined increased familiarity emanating from closer trade relationships would encourage the Chinese to follow the sterling example set by Western democracies. China and other Asian and African countries would become more like what the Davos set hoped they could be. Combating climate change would similarly become a key goal for all members of the globalized family of nations. Furthermore, worldwide access to an unfettered internet and algorithmically-controlled social media would help foster cultural homogeneity on a global scale. Regional identities would become increasingly inconsequential.One of the requirements of many prominent international bodies is that member countries have to surrender some of their sovereignty to belong. For example, regional trading blocs like CUSMA require member countries to accept the decisions of trade tribunals, which can override the trading preferences of their members. EU institutions create laws, such as those allowing unfettered migration between member states. Local control counts for less when nations surrender power and control to multilateral regional bodies and powerful international institutions..BREXIT represents the ultimate response to the overweening power and scope of centralized EU regulators and tribunals. Brussels was to the UK what Ottawa is to the prairies — what Washington is to Wyoming when the Democrats are in office — or, what Washington is to Minneapolis when Republicans are in charge. One thing Prime Minister Carney may have gotten right in his temporarily famous Davos speech is that the old world order, which he and his fellow travellers at the World Economic Forum celebrated and promoted, is now collapsing. His solution is to create a whole new supranational conglomeration of middle powers to combat coercive hegemons like the US, Russia, and China. The sad irony is that here in Canada, Mark Carney’s government, like every Liberal federal government that preceded it, is the coercive hegemon. Traditionally, Liberal Central Canada has politically dominated and economically exploited the country’s resource-rich regions. This has been especially problematic for the Prairie provinces.Moench is just one of the scholarly commentators on American political culture who’ve figured out there are good reasons to expect fragmentation. Given the recent history of volatile geopolitical events and what they tell us about overly centralized institutions, his insights may not seem all that remarkable. He’s actually late to the party. Alienated Prairie people have had a lot of this figured out for over a century.Jim Warren, PhD, is a Regina-based political economist and retired university professor. He is currently a columnist for two online Western Canadian energy publications.
