Old labels perilous for foreign policy

the Toronto Star | by Graham Fraser

[albertabound]

Old labels perilous for foreign policy

GRAHAM FRASER

OTTAWA—Before Canada announced that it would not support the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham informed Secretary of State Colin Powell of the decision — but assured him that Canada would be respectful.

The next day, to his horror, barnyard rhetoric was flying.

The attempt to carve out a posture of respectful distance from the United States was derailed by a series of insults: the Prime Minister's press secretary calling President George W. Bush a moron, the natural resources minister calling him a failure as a statesman, and Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish saying she hated those American bastards.

Whatever else Paul Martin and his ministers, aides and MPs do in foreign affairs, one can assume that "morons" and "bastards" will not be part of their vocabulary. But those who are trying to fashion a foreign policy for the new Martin government should be equally careful.

Two reports last week gave Martin advice — echoing some of his own foreign policy ideas — and there is a remarkable degree of overlap between the recommendations of the Public Policy Forum and the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute.

Think of it as the new consensus.

The new conventional wisdom is that Canada should end the drift in its foreign policy, improve relations with the United States, and be more strategic. The institute also calls for bringing the Canadian Forces from 50,000 to 80,000, and spending more on the military — something Martin always resisted as finance minister.

The Public Policy Forum report was based on consultations with business leaders. It calls for an immediate, comprehensive review of international policy in all its dimensions: defence, development, diplomacy and demographics (meaning Canada's immigration program and the international resource it represents).

The institute's report, In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy in an Insecure World, is feistier, more impatient with Canada's pious rhetoric and hypocritical refusal to pay the cost of good intentions.

"Canada sided with `old' Europe over Iraq — likely an unwise choice on any calculation of Canadian national interests." the authors write. "The Europeans noticed. Some applauded, and a few hissed, but most did not care ... The idea, once popular in Ottawa, that Europe and NATO could be a counterweight to U.S. power in North America is as dead as the dodo."

When former diplomat Mark Entwhistle read this passage to a conference here last week on behalf of his fellow authors David Bercuson, Jack Granatstein, Kim Nossal and Gordon Smith, some of the audience were taken aback.

When U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ripped off his insult about "Old Europe," he was widely criticized in the United States for the arrogant condescension of the remark. So it was startling to hear Canadian academics adopting Rumsfeld's vocabulary.

One of the conference delegates asked caustically if they thought Canada's future lay with the "new Europe" of Moldova, one of the leading members of the coalition of the willing who joined the U.S.-led invasion. Another pointed out how Turkey resisted $6 billion in payments from the United States because of public opposition to the war, observing that sometimes national self-respect trumps a narrow economic definition of national interest.

One would think that "Old Europe" would already have joined "morons" and "bastards" in the category of "inappropriate words to use to describe allies."

In fact, one of the quiet diplomatic successes of the Chrétien government has been to transform Canada's relationship with France.

For three decades, in Ottawa's view, France represented a threat to Canada. Beginning with Charles de Gaulle in 1967, and with varying intensity over the years that followed, it applauded the independence movement, snubbed Canadian diplomats and gave red-carpet treatment to sovereignist leaders. Despite an initially spiky relationship with Jacques Chirac, Chrétien has dramatically changed that. Canada and France now work closely together, in their mutual interest

Three weeks ago, after several years of work with France, Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps won a significant victory at UNESCO for the creation of an international convention that would settle disputes involving cultural protection.

Those hoping for a restoration of Canada's international role should look at the latest volume of Documents on Canada's External Relations, to be published Tuesday, covering 1957-58. In addition to the crises and negotiations of the day — Cold War tensions, Berlin, Algeria, the Law of the Sea — the documents show striking continuities in the challenges of Canadian diplomacy: consideration of a permanent United Nations military force, U.S. nuclear defence plans, and, poignantly, the problems of the Middle East.

No insults there. The richness and detail of the documents underline and illustrate the importance of a complex and multi-layered diplomacy. Additional articles by Graham Fraser

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[Cicero]

Those insults were certainly annoying, like pesky horseflies buzzing around your head. But everyone will remember that it was Chretien's considered policy to ally himself with Chirac and Saddam.