An eye to the main chance: The world that’s starting right now

Peloni:  Jennifer provides an important proposal for the future, one in which like minded nations would voluntarily, not thru coercion, cooperate to advance the interests of the strengthening of individual nation-states rather than that of a globalist or collectivist body.   A poignant and thoughtful proposal for a better tomorrow which might replace the failing structures of old, which preferred trans-natioanal organizations and coercive tactics.

In structural failure, opportunity.

J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer, blogs as The Optimistic Conservative, May 7, 2025

President Trump is heading to the Middle East next week for a summit with the Gulf nations, and it doesn’t surprise me that he has a major announcement he plans to make before the summit begins.  (Its dates are 13-16 May 2025.)

He indicated in comments made on Air Force One this week that it will be one of the biggest announcements made in a long time.  I won’t speculate on the subject.  Apparently the announcement fits in a particular category, on which there have been previous developments and/or announcements in the past.  It could be a lot of things.  It won’t necessarily be about the Middle East, at least not in a narrow, specific sense.

It may be about a topic under the umbrella of foreign diplomacy. Presumably it’s about U.S. policy, whatever it is.

But rather than trying to suss it out, I want to take this opportunity to make a very simple point.  It’s this:  the hour we find ourselves in is the one many people, whether professional pundits or engaged citizens, have been looking for.  It’s the time to rethink and reset the framework of international policy arrangements and institutions we’ve been employing since 1945, and move forward with a refreshment of both commitment to our core values, and organization that brings out the best from reality.

It’s realistic, and shouldn’t be controversial, to acknowledge that the following elements of our organizing framework, as they currently operate, no longer serve well the latter purposes.  The elements are the United Nations; its various commissions and enterprises (including the ICC and ICJ, and the IAEA and other monitoring agencies, among others); the G-7; the G-20; and from the U.S. standpoint, the European Union as (increasingly) an obstacle for dealings with Europe; the NATO alliance (i.e., without some reform and a new lease on life); the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the World Trade Organization (WTO, now the guardian successor of the GATT), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

I don’t advocate making ill-prepared announcements about this.  Someone has to see it clear and from the zoomed-out view, but diplomacy in regard to it shouldn’t be a bulldozer showing up unexpectedly in a china shop.

What diplomacy should be, however, is a campaign with a larger end in view.  And this reset is what that end should be.

My first principle for the reset is that it desist from aspiring to global control of the behavior of nations.  It should be a voluntary club that exhibits a set of behaviors, and participating in it should uphold the behavior as an entry criterion.  Like the U.S. Constitution, as inspired by the Declaration of Independence, the framework should hold certain truths to be self-evident, and operating by those truths should be an unbreachable commitment.  The club doesn’t get to change its mind over time.  It’s not there to be a vehicle for forcing undesired change on peoples.  It’s there to protect peoples from that perennial proposition of authoritarian collectivism.

So the commitments must be chosen very carefully.

The second point is that, instead of being sketched out in theory as its first informational move, the club should be assembled through the practical participation of the willing in addressing the crises mushrooming around us.  How do you gain entry?  By showing up to work in good faith on resolving the crises.

Let’s see, for example, what comes of the impending Gulf summit.  The Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC’s) interests are very much invested in the Iran problem, the Syria problem, the Houthis problem, the Gaza problem, and the Pakistan-India problem.  Where do the GCC members come down in statesmanlike approaches to those problems?

On a larger landscape, do they want a world safe for nations like Iran, Russia, and China to be trusted actors in it, rather than being ruthless predators in it?  What is their stance on the essential role of trade and the operation of inevitably trade-pressured global industries?  How do they see the role of national currencies, and policies on labor, regulation, and taxation?

I think, as of today, that they’ll fall on different parts of the spectrum in that regard.  The nations of Europe, Africa, and Asia would do the same.  So would the nations of the Americas.

In my view, there are nations that should take their place in a reformed G-7, which should be the principal consulting body among the nations.  They include India and Brazil, and there are arguments to be made for others as well.

A reformed G-20 should include – upon eligibility – UAE, Egypt, Israel, Poland, Spain, Chile, Thailand, Singapore, Kenya, and Nigeria.  (Look up the G-20 for who’s already in it, if you feel names are missing.  The resulting total could be added to; propose your own.  Fun for all ages.)  Some nations, in my view, require elections that would return them to recent political conditions, to be beneficial to either the G-7 or G-20.

Mere prominence shouldn’t determine who’s in the club.  It has to be about common values, views, and commitments to behavior.

A third point is that the very purpose of this exercise is to preserve global conditions as nation-based.  Breaking up collective schemes isn’t a bug.  It’s a feature.

Nations are what preserve a good life for peoples.  Empires crush peoples, and tribal insufficiency – in protecting borders and ways of life – leaves peoples vulnerable.  The nation-state is the guarantor of liberty, orderly politics, and restrained government.

It’s quite true that nations throughout history have usually been found menacing their own people in that regard.  But the only protection peoples have ever had for those conditions has come from nation-states.  Tribal government can’t afford those protections, and the purpose of empires – and global schemes – is to attack them.

The nation-state needs preserving, and too much of today’s transnational organization has supranational domination in view.  It’s past time to refresh the original commitment of the UN:  to being based on willing member states, not on a collective dedicated to vitiating and forfeiting state sovereignty.  The UN itself is incapable of achieving the refreshment at this point.  The move has to start with a separate group of like-minded nations.

There are many other things to say about this proposition.  But it’s enough for now to state the opportunity for it, at a time when it’s needed.  Breakdowns of brittle, unsupported order, like the one we’re seeing before us, are times of opportunity for the good guys as well as the bad.  We shouldn’t leave the playing field to the bad guys.  My sense is that Trump is a leader who wouldn’t overthink this and get bogged down in divisive obstacles to it, but would actually represent the opportunity needed for the like-minded to join forces for a series of pragmatic purposes, and thereby sort themselves out.

He’d have help from some effective and visionary statesmen emerging from a roiled world.  Just as a couple of examples, El Salvador and Hungary could win entry to the G-20 follow-on through the initiative and vision of their current leaders (Bukele and Orban).  Morocco, in my view, would be on the cusp as well.

We should also root for the restoration to an eligible state of nations with long-term potential, like Venezuela and Colombia, and cultivate, to put names on it, the Philippines, Vietnam, Uganda, and Ghana, for near-term inclusion.

There’s no need to talk it to death now.  My purpose here is to highlight the opportunity.  Showing volunteer coalitions at work, with like-minded viewpoints, for non-military purposes, is the concept.  Global homogenization is not the direction we need to go.  That’s a good thing.  Now is the time to take it and run with it.

Feature image:  Batman movie (1966) screen-cap, final scene; via YouTube.