Thank you for this opportunity.
I wish we were able to meet under more auspicious circumstances, but the fact is that the west, that is, the core of the world's democracies, comprising North America and Europe, is suffering a period of what I would call a democratic sag in self-confidence at the same time that authoritarians around the world—Russia, and in a different way, China—are finding themselves emboldened. This is a period of testing for the west and for our values. Since 1945, and again since 1989, we believed that our values and our interests would advance together or not at all. We built institutions reflecting the lessons we had learned in the first half of the 20th century.
The result was spectacular. It was the longest period of general peace in the west in recorded history, with world prosperity. Despite gaps, mistakes, blunders, hypocrisies and other mistakes made by the U.S. government and all governments, this period was a good one. From 1945 to 1989 we advanced a vision of a democratic world order within the space we had at our disposal. From 1989 we expanded that space and achieved a vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.
That vision is under assault from both authoritarians without and doubts within. The problems that have weakened us have also been of our own making. Economic stresses, massive income disparities in the United States, a prolonged period of economic stagnation in Europe, and enormously high youth unemployment, plus issues of national identity in the face of massive immigration, Latino immigration mainly in the United States, and north African and Middle Eastern immigration in Europe have led to stresses on both sides of the Atlantic and a nativist counter-reaction.
We face a narrative in which the authoritarians, including especially the Chinese, may believe that their time has come and that the authoritarian model is actually more effective. This, in fact, is not new. This is a remake of an old movie we saw in the 1930s. I like remakes no better than the original, and in this case certainly not, but the challenge is not to be laughed at. I suppose the proof that the United States and Europe are part of the same civilization is that we are suffering—I won't speak of Canada, but certainly my country and Europe are suffering—the same kind of political and economic stresses at the same time. Whatever you think of Brexit or President Trump or the Italian government or whatever it is that we call what is happening in some countries in central Europe, we face common challenges.
Now, in the view of the Atlantic Council, at least, and in my own view, it won't do to wring our hands and complain or, being an American, to simply be mad at some of the narratives coming out of the Trump White House about nationalism or the unilateral nature of American foreign policy interests. Instead, the Atlantic Council, along with Canada's Centre for International Governance Innovation, launched an effort to, as it were, plant the flag of values and what we stand for. Madeleine Albright, a former secretary of state; Steve Hadley, a former national security adviser; Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister; and Yoriko Kawaguchi, a former Japanese foreign minister, were leaders and co-chairs of an effort to write and then present a declaration of principles—what it is we stand for. Frankly, we were inspired by the Atlantic Charter, which set out the first set of foundational principles for the post-World War II world. This was not an official effort but an unofficial effort to set out principles for the 21st century.
It has seven statements about democracy, economic freedom and responsibility, about the right to protect and about human rights. I commend it to you. It was a joint U.S.-Canadian production. That is, CIGI and the Atlantic Council worked together on this. At the rollout at the Munich Security Conference in February, the Canadian foreign minister took part of the town hall meeting to explain the document. The purpose of this is to rally the forces of—if I may use the phrase—the free world, rally ourselves and then, when we have consolidated our thinking, find ways to reach out to others.
This isn't a western-only product. Former officials from India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Tunisia, Israel and South Korea have all signed this, as well as a number of Europeans. We want to reach out to countries, democracies around the world, and then reach out to see whether we can develop common ground with countries like China, because we do want China involved in the making of a 21st century system. We just don't want to have to compromise our basic values to bring it on board.
Now there's much more to say about this effort, and I look forward to the discussion, but I will say that your inquiry, Canada's inquiry into the challenges to the liberal world order, is timely and important and we have work to do together.
I will yield the rest of my time to my colleague from the Atlantic Council.