Diplomats call it “thought leadership”: the triumphant achievement of being the first to propose a plan of action for an urgent international problem.
And no problem could be more urgent than how we survive in the pitiless world of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, with raw power politics trampling upon rules and laws.
The unlikely “thought leader” on this question turns out to be Mark Carney, the new prime minister of Canada. “The old order is not coming back,” he said, in a highly acclaimed speech at Davos. “We should not mourn it.”
