With quotes from UofC as a base and incorporating my own contributions. The UofC piece from 2019 was intended to portray Canada’s place in the world oder and given Canadas’ small size and relative strength these comments on change in the world are well captured.

This is a start on a complex topic which brings challenges in what to include or exclude.

Introduction

https://explore.ucalgary.ca/international-democracy-and-canada?aliId=eyJpIjoieVhcL0xGcmZJMkVIMWEyaG8iLCJ0IjoiREN6cmd5VEJWVHVjMmkySTBjRjRcL3c9PSJ9&iesrc=ctr

Considering some positions in 2019 timeframe from University of Calgary.

It’s clear that we are seeing an extraordinary upheaval in the global political status quo, and some additional considerations

• Russia has evolved through social media manipulation, electronic warfare, 2014 small wars (Georgia) tofu scale war in 2022 (Ukraine)
• outlier countries with populist leaders including Brazil, Hungary, Turkey, India assume a noncommittal view toward Russia and US
• America began with Huweii and later computer chips as performs to attack China economically
  
  • results are mixed at best with Huweii still prevalent within western infrastructure
  • Chips will befall the same fate; chips are not homogenous. The 3 nano chip for advanced super computers are a completely different animal to run of the mill chips in washing machines that Ukraine and Russian soldiers extract and reuse in low tech drones and weapon systems.
• Sanctions executed against Russia have merely shifted payments from services to greater spend on natural resources. Further Russia has levered the black market. The end result is nominal change to Russia GDP (Niall Ferguson, Stanford)
• China suffered major economic change with real estate defaults, and exit from DOW and NASDAQ. Ant Financial would have been a Fintech super app behemouth . But Ant was reduced to zero. Belt and Road initiative evolved from foreign investment to one of international collections to recoup counter investments from multilateral partners in support of Belt and Road unfinished investment.
• US hegemony is under threat as a majority of countries outside Europe and even EU itself cold shoulder US following Trump years and his removal of support for multi country institutions including UN, TPP. Mammoth investment from US under Biden is helping to counter that US isolation and regain some (not all) some past power
• China has elevated strategy to one of taking on US hegemony head on
  
  1. New diplomatic players led by Wang Li
  2. Providing apparent support to Russia but eliminated the most supportive words supporting Russia which leaves China as potentially the only country taking the high road.
  3. In meetings with senior western officials at the Munich Security Conference at the weekend, Wang outlined a position paper that China would announce on Friday, the first anniversary of the invasion. (FT position paper )
• These shifts resulted in a strengthened Turkey, India, Israel, and others who previously were quiet or at least quiet supporters of US.
  

Conclusion

In summary here are some bullets to capture current state:

1. Liberal Democracy (rules based democratic order ) laid out since WW2 has lost credibility
   
   1. No longer seen as a safety net
   2. Is viewed as a contributor to the growing economic and belief system disparity between capitalists (small minority) and average people (most people)
   3. The threats to Liberal Democracy leaves a gap in social order which had formed a safety net belief system since the 1960’s
2. China has elevated strategy to one of taking on US hegemony head on providing apparent support to Russia but arguably the only country taking the high road (early days)
3. Outlier countries (India, Turkey, Brazil etc) continue to watch and adjust. Britain is gaining credibility with EU and internal political strength following Sunak elevation to PM.
   

Next steps:

This is a start and more to follow with additional analysis on

• Russia
• China
• Supply Chains
• Economic movements