Canada’s proposed new relationship with the EU opens the door to a much bigger idea: a trade and cooperation bloc spanning Europe and the Asia-Pacific, built around the rule of law, democratic consent and stable international agreements.

The proposal that Canada could become an associate member of the European Union is an historic moment and something of which Australia should take heed.

The geopolitical tectonic plates are shifting for good reason. An axis of autocracy has arisen. Trump, Xi, Putin and Netanyahu have in the past decade at least inflicted profound suffering on their own people and the people elsewhere that they seek to subjugate to their will.

The world would be a better place if they had never been born or if they had all died before they had turned 30. The same sentiment was rightly expressed about Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Tojo.

Right now, Europe is the vanguard against this new axis of autocracy. Autocracy has grown out of the circumstances of each state. The four autocrats have not formed any formal alliance, but they are joined in a common purpose of supporting autocracy and undermining democracy and the rule of law.

Autocrats Trump and Netanyahu have acted in a way that has galvanised China, Iran and Russia into active collaboration with each other. Trump’s immoral withdrawal of support from Ukraine has emboldened the Russian autocrat.

The EU, on the other hand, stands for the rule of law, free trade, and government by consent. Its remit should not be restricted by the Treaty of Rome’s requirement that a nation has to be in the geographic ambit of Europe to join. It would be great if other rule-of-law, free-trade liberal democracies could join it in a rule-of-law alliance to crush the axis of autocracy so that millions more human beings can live lives with freedom from........

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