There are certain global issues that pay no attention to national borders or natural barriers: climate change; the COVID-19 pandemic; nuclear weapons proliferation; and a migration and refugee crisis. These challenges can only be met by collective action.
This demand binds every country to a multilateral system, but the current global framework is showing its age 76 years after the creation of the United Nations. To be sure, the network should keep out no one: even authoritarian nations belong at the table of universal membership bodies. Their role in potential solutions to world threats often intermingles with their tragic record as the source of many of the same challenges.
But democracies need to be at the global decision-making table in force if the world is to confront the existential threats facing humanity. These require coordinated solutions reflecting the inclusion and diversity that self-correcting representative political systems provide.
Nations unite and exert influence under regional banners like the African Union, cultural/linguistic alliances like the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, or religion-based groupings like the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. So, too, should there be a coalition of countries acting as a bloc founded upon adherence to explicitly stated human rights and democratic values.
Fortunately, there is momentum behind a new multilateral structure for the world’s democracies. Whether it’s growing a D-10, or Democracy-10, from the current G-7 as suggested by Boris Johnson[1] or hosting a Summit for Democracy as pledged by President Joe Biden,[2] or people movements like ‘NOW!’ building a league of democracies,[3] these are good steps in support of a values-based energizing of the global system.