Anne-Marie Slaughter

FLORENCE – “Rupture” is a strong word, defined as “an instance of breaking or bursting suddenly or completely.” Yet it is the term that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney used at Davos last week when he warned of a “rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics… is submitted to no limits, no constraints.”

But Carney’s speech was not a despairing one, because he made a second major point. “[O]ther countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless,” he observed. “They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of the various states.”

What should that order look like? In what now seems like another century (though it was only 16 months ago), United Nations member states concluded “Pact for the Future,” and in preparation for its signing, UN Secretary-General António Guterres convened high-level commissions and boards (including one on which I served) to identify the elements of “effective multilateralism.”

Effective multilateralism refers to cooperation among multiple countries that can get things done: stopping war; enforcing peace; protecting people from manmade and natural disasters and caring for them in the aftermath; and establishing regional or global rules on subjects ranging from digital technology and nuclear weapons to protecting some of the world’s most beautiful and significant places.

Our report, "A Breakthrough for People and Planet," laid out 10 principles – drawn from extensive........

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