Much of what is achievable is harmless, and may even bring a modest good; that which is actively dangerous is fortunately unlikely to be achievable. how can we have control if we are part of another union? Generally I think it’s a good thing but not nearly comparible to EU membership which is much much larger. “A narrative of derring-do and imperial nostalgia derived from Ladybird’s Adventures From History series may make a subset of middle-aged Brexiteers go weak at the knees”. beloveds, i thought brexit was about taking back control? of China, Russia and Turkey, Kilcoyne claims that the CANZUK nations are themselves a civilisation-state, with that civilisation being globalised capitalism. The CANZUK blogosphere asserts so, but — as is a recurring pattern here — this very much depends on which shifting definition is used. As a proposal to amplify Britain’s diplomatic reach, it is worth considering, though in any case it is Australia and Canada who have more to gain from sharing our UN seat than we do. The historians  Michael Kenny and Nick Pearce note in Shadows of Empire, their recent book on the Anglosphere, that “it is advocates of a free market, neo-liberal future for the UK who remain its most enthusiastic champions”, and that as the UK’s attachment to Europe soured, “the gravitational pull of the Anglosphere on the political imagination of neo-liberal Eurosceptics intensified”. Only remainers, sorry, rejoiners seem to know of people that are desperate for the return of a British Empire. Would Australia send jets to defend the North Sea from Russian incursions? Also in regards to FoM: half the UK would pack it's bags the moment such a thing came into being and I doubt the other countries would be interested in a sudden influx of Brits. Political news and debate concerning the United Kingdom. Trade with the EU isn't going to end, canzuk isn't a replacement in that regard, although it would bring different opportunities for british people and business. Yet the flaws of this argument are obvious. This is, after all, precisely the worldview most Brexit voters were casting a defiant vote against. CANZUK works because of how history played out. Far from an Anglospheric superpower, a CANZUK along these lines would be simply a transcontinental suicide pact. I think anyone who's finished school should quite easily understand that's not even close. It is being lobbied by the advocacy group CANZUK International and has gained support from think tanks such as … As always, the simple matter of geography trumps the affective bonds between far-flung kith and kin, whatever their emotional appeal. They are useful only to show how far Whiggish fantasies have penetrated into British conservatism; and how bereft the ideologues are, perhaps fortunately for the national good, of meaningful or achievable ideas. , that “in eschewing the type of institutional set-up that characterizes the EU, the success of the Anglosphere appears to rest on the existence of a constellation of like-minded politicians in English-speaking countries”. Similarly, Australia’s former leader Tony Abbott has expressed support for free trade and free movement among the CANZUK nations, and again, is silent on the wider geopolitical aspects. Furthermore, the European Union consists of 27 member nations, most of whom have majority Caucasian populations. Korean Australians ? Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts, We wanted the best but it turned out like always, ⏩ EU + UK Federalist | Social Democrat | Lib Dem, http://www.canzukinternational.com/our-mission. More bold claims for a united CANZUK foreign policy have been offered recently by Matt Kilcoyne of the neoliberal Adam Smith Institute, who argues that “common language, common political systems, common history, common sense of purpose, translate into a sheer force of fact re-emergence of a global role that has eluded the mandarins in the Foreign Office for far too long.” Explicitly echoing the civilisation-state rhetoric of China, Russia and Turkey, Kilcoyne claims that the CANZUK nations are themselves a civilisation-state, with that civilisation being globalised capitalism. In any case, what good would it do us if Australia sells huge quantities of raw materials to China, or Canada agricultural produce to America, if the UK exchequer doesn’t benefit from it? This is a vision of Anglo-Saxon civilisation purely reducible to swashbuckling free trade on the high seas previously made only by Napoleon or Oswald Spengler at their most cynical and dismissive, though here represented as a positive trait. On the strategic level, the MP Bob Seeley, in a report for the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society thinktank, proposes “a mutual defence clause, akin to NATO’s Article 5”. The Scottish National Party leader complains vociferously about Scotland being taken out the EU against its will. when Iraq is successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed from where they have been hidden by Saddam’s henchmen”. Perhaps it is for the best that they are distracted by such a fanciful project, as long as it prevents them from doing more damage to this country than their harmful economic dogma has already achieved. Support for the idea even in its most nebulous form is hardly unanimous among the ranks of Australia’s former prime ministers. Economically it can't be equally beneficial because of the size of the market and distances involved. As the political scientists Duncan Bell and Srdjan Vucetic note, , sober analysis of the geographic facts underwriting trade patterns reveals “why Australian exports to Britain have for decades hovered below two percent of its total outgoing trade and why only for New Zealand would a CANZUK pact count as ‘the most important’” This, they note, partly “explains why during the Brexit campaign, the leaders of all of the CANZUK countries supported Britain remaining in the EU. Would there be a shared tax mechanism to convert this notional $6 trillion GDP into something meaningful? Please click here to submit your pitch. Not personally having any beef with FOM per se, I'd say the CANZUK idea is superior as it would bring the economic benefits (which we can take or leave in any case) without imposing an unwelcome federal political/legal structure or a CANZUK travelling circus parliament that moves between Toronto and Wellington because "solidarity". On the strategic level, the MP Bob Seeley, in a report for the neoconservative Henry Jackson Society thinktank. , only a minuscule proportion of the CANZUK nations’ trade is with each other, save New Zealand, an economic satellite of Australia. More bold claims for a united CANZUK foreign policy have been offered recently by Matt Kilcoyne of the neoliberal Adam Smith Institute, that “common language, common political systems, common history, common sense of purpose, translate into a sheer force of fact re-emergence of a global role that has eluded the mandarins in the Foreign Office for far too long.” Explicitly echoing. Canada is enmeshed in the greater North American trading sphere, as are we with Europe, whatever Brexiteers may wish. Australia is a great East Asian trading power, and will remain so. Having handed the world on a platter to China in pursuit of globalisation, we are now told to deepen globalisation to fight China. A liberal approach to CANZUK departs from the belief that Canada, Australia, Britain and New Zealand have a single identity — and this is a good thing. By continuing to use our site you are agreeing to our cookies policy. Instead, we are reassured, this would not be a centralising project like the hated EU; rather. I certainly feel a stronger kinship towards the people of New Zealand and Australia. "Together, CANZUK would have the economic, diplomatic, and maybe even military power to rival the EU and possibly even China and the U.S." In the 19th century, after the Napoleonic wars, Britain distanced itself from European affairs to focus on its empire, which was the largest empire in the world, comprising roughly 25 per cent of the world. Mr Roberts said the alliance would be the fourth-largest economy in the world, ranking behind the US, China and the EU. How long the residual emotional pull of Britain’s political and cultural inheritance will survive the changing demographics of the former dominions is an open question. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. But, after the vote, people started to take it more seriously, as a way to minimize the economic impact of Brexit. But it is as a Trojan horse to smuggle in failed and wildly unpopular economic belief-systems under the banner of imperial nostalgia that CANZUK’s neoliberal fantasies will have to be rejected. the European Union, based on the same reference periods where possible and using the same measurement units. As for what a united CANZUK foreign policy of confronting China would mean in practice, Kilcoyne. That said I do find it funny when people on the left try to justify low paid jobs that you cannot possibly hope to live in while living in the UK and have a decent living standard. A more limited argument in favour of enhanced cooperation among the CANZUK nations could reasonably be made — indeed, it is a common approach of the cheerleaders to elide support for their more realistic goals with that for their grander geostrategic fantasies. On the one hand, CANZUK is a globe-spanning superpower ready to be born; on the other, it is merely a loose grouping of separate national governments, which would, like all national governments, act according to their own interests above all. Perhaps a more useful Churchillian lesson would have been the Chanak Crisis of 1921, when Canada refused to follow Britain into war against Turkey to Churchill’s great disappointment, and which established the principle that the dominions would from then on follow their own independent foreign policies — a principle even more apparent now than it was a century ago. “Politicians, commentators and think-tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute, which had long-established transatlantic ties with Washington counterparts such as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the American Enterprise Institute, began to publish pamphlets, speeches and blogs making the case for Brexit,” they note, which “reimagined Britain as a freewheeling, globally networked economy, striking trade deals with the USA, Canada and an expanded Asian and Australasian Anglosphere.”. CANZUK evangelists cite the Australian senator Eric Abetz as a supporter, but his explicit insistence that “, this would absolutely not be a political union. Roberts claims that “Churchill would have approved” the CANZUK scheme, but his previous attempts at viewing foreign policy through a Churchillian lens have not been successful. more from this authorCovid has exposed America as a failed stateBy Aris Roussinos. , though again, Australia, the UK and Canada expect to fight wars in very different environments for very different goals, so even here a degree of scepticism must enter the conversation. Perhaps a more useful Churchillian lesson would have been the. Thinking of CANZUK as a sort of alternative to the EU is selling it short – it would be something new. CANZUK evangelists cite the Australian senator Eric Abetz as a supporter, but his explicit insistence that “this would absolutely not be a political union”, and that “I wouldn’t want a CANZUK Human Rights court which would determine what Australia or New Zealand parliaments can legislate”, again shows the limitations of the idea’s appeal even to its own supporters. Indeed, the very survival of the United Kingdom itself as a single political unit is looking shakier than it has at any time since its founding, and CANZUK’s evangelists would do better to worry about the continued existence of their own country before planning unions with other nations on the furthest corners of the globe. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is one of the staunchest opponents of the UK’s departure from the EU. But as a useful thought experiment in this mooted superpower’s foreign policy, what would the CANZUK position on invading Iraq have been anyway? Aris Roussinos is a former war reporter and a contributing editor at UnHerd. could reasonably be made — indeed, it is a common approach of the cheerleaders to elide support for their more realistic goals with that for their grander geostrategic fantasies. In this respect, whilst not a complete novelty, once the pre-existing agreements expand to include Canada and the U.K., they are likely to facilitate some interesting legal developments and perhaps encounter some logistical issues along the way. This utopian map may have inspired George Orwell’s dystopian world in 1984 . CANZUK is a golden opportunity for Scotland. One cannot fault Roberts for the grandeur of his vision, even if the details of how this would actually work are left to others to fill in. Instead, CANZUK will aim at somewhat replicating the Treaty of Rome which created the EU’s predecessor, the EEC. Although most figures use international statistical concepts and definitions, there may be certain discrepancies in the methods used to compile the data; the reader should therefore enhanced cooperation among the CANZUK nations. Geography has never mattered less, which is why CANZUK works (despite its distance) while the EU is disunified (despite its proximity). And a lot of traction at that! The subsequent attempt to remould Britain as a European power acting in concert with its continental neighbours through the European Union was an unhappy marriage, and has ended in a rancorous divorce whose final settlement is still to be determined. Initial attempts to piggyback on the power of our successor as global hegemon, the United States, by acting as a guiding force — a Greece to America’s Rome, in Harold Macmillan’s phrase — faltered due to the total absence of interest ever shown in this arrangement by any American administration. As other critics have noted, only a minuscule proportion of the CANZUK nations’ trade is with each other, save New Zealand, an economic satellite of Australia. I would imagine people think if borders were open people coming over from CANZUK would be mostly descendants of the British colonists, while in fact these countries have massive cultural diversity. Canzuk doesn't exist, so we can't compare any of it beyond the smaller size and much much greater distance. As Bell and Vucetic note, “it is illusory to think that an alliance with Britain would ever again become Australia’s main strategic priority, just as it is illusory to expect that Canada and the UK would re-orient their defence postures away from the Atlantic and towards the Asia-Pacific region. Given the vast disparity between the economic and foreign policy realities and the grand claims of the CANZUK enthusiasts, what are we to make of this sudden reflorescence of ideas first proposed, and then swiftly abandoned as unrealistic, at the height of Britain’s Edwardian golden age? Roberts claims that “Churchill would have approved” the CANZUK scheme, but his previous attempts at viewing foreign policy through a Churchillian lens have not been successful. This is a vision of Anglo-Saxon civilisation purely reducible to swashbuckling free trade on the high seas previously made only by Napoleon or Oswald Spengler at their most cynical and dismissive, though here represented as a positive trait. The CANZUK blogosphere asserts so, but — as is a recurring pattern here — this very much depends on which shifting definition is used. Would we share the same currency? CANZUK isn't an alternative to EU membership. Would avowedly anti-nuclear New Zealand, an essentially pacifist state with barely any armed forces to speak of, demand a place under the UK’s nuclear umbrella, or raise an army to defend Canada’s oil exploration rights in the high Arctic? Certainly, a number of right-wing current and former politicians in Canada, New Zealand and Australia support a free trade agreement among the CANZUK nations, along with some form of free movement between them. Italy is not to Germany what Australia is to Britain. Each does have an Anglo identity, but they all have distinctive geopolitical and cultural ones as well: Canada is North American and also francophone; Britain is a European country; Australia is an Asian country, and so on. Similarly to a CANZUK initiative, it would be unfair to criticise the European Union as a union of “white” countries, as member states are annexed under EU law providing they have positive economic and human rights records. Together with developments such as the US retreat into unilateralism and the rise of the nativist right, the UK’s withdrawal from the EU is spawning new political possibilities and reconfiguring our geopolitical imaginaries. The EU, meanwhile, has showcased its divisions for the world to see. Impossible comparison. As Pearce and Kenny note, “a neo-Thatcherite idea of Brexit, which involves stripping away tariff barriers, reducing labour market and product regulations, and trading at ‘world prices’ remains a potentially toxic position to present to a public weary of austerity, facing years of declining living standards, and increasingly jaded in the face of the economic liberalism associated with the last few decades of government.” Aware of the absolute unpopularity of their ideology with British voters, neoliberals have tweaked their offering by dressing it up in dashing Edwardian garb. The only meaningful economic effect of a CANZUK free trade zone, surely, would be to wipe out what remains of British farming under tides of Canadian wheat, Australian beef and New Zealand lamb. Would avowedly anti-nuclear New Zealand, an essentially pacifist state with barely any armed forces to speak of, demand a place under the UK’s nuclear umbrella, or raise an army to defend Canada’s oil exploration rights in the high Arctic? In any case, is there any meaningful support for CANZUK in its other mooted constituent nations? Will Canzuk just be FOM or will there be a single market? ; This is what the group is proposing http://www.canzukinternational.com/our-mission, Free trade FoM Closer Political and FP cooperation. CANZUK is an acronym for a proposed alliance comprising Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom as part of an international organisation or confederation similar in scope to the former European Economic Community. If the argument is that doubling down on the economic theories which have done so much to destroy British manufacturing and boost Chinese power at the expense of the West will somehow restrain China’s growth, then it is self-evidently absurd. The idea is lobbied by the advocacy group CANZUK International and supported by liberal think tanks such as the Adam Smith Institute, the Henry Jackson So… “Our civilisation needs champions to save it from opponents and challengers abroad, but also nationalists at home,” he asserts (presumably referring to the voters who brought Johnson’s government to power), vowing that “we must defend the gains of globalisation for the whole of the world”. The subsequent attempt to remould Britain as a European power acting in concert with its continental neighbours through the European Union was an unhappy marriage, and has ended in a rancorous divorce whose final settlement is still to be determined. On the wisdom of invading Iraq, I suspect not even the objects of his adulation would agree with his previous assertions that “history will prove George Bush right”, nor that Tony Blair’s “apotheosis” will come “when Iraq is successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed from where they have been hidden by Saddam’s henchmen”. But whether in the realm of economics or security, Canzuk is a no-brainer. as the UK’s attachment to Europe soured, “the gravitational pull of the Anglosphere on the political imagination of neo-liberal Eurosceptics intensified”. But on the matter of defence, again the stumbling block is not the individual fellow-feeling and affection shared between the Anglo-Saxon nations but the differing foreign policy goals of CANZUK’s constituent countries. Here are four countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – which share a language (Quebec aside), head of state and legal system. Easier movement between the CANZUK nations may well be popular, though the significantly differing immigration policies of Canada, New Zealand and Australia would present a barrier, whatever the strength of fellow feeling between the mother country and the dwindling proportion of the former colonies’ citizens who claim descent from these islands.