The story of our shabby foreign policy
Gordon Gibson
National Post
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
nationalpost.com
I see a new poll finds that only 15% of Canadians think we should give military assistance to a unilateral American war with Saddam. Another 62% would be ready aye ready -- but only with the United Nations' blessing. Eighteen per cent disapprove under any circumstances. My guess is the remaining 5% support Sheila Copps in her leadership campaign. Her position probably has something to do with bringing Toronto Culture and the CRTC to Baghdad, but one has to draw the rules of civilized warfare somewhere.
Now, after one suppresses a giggle at the cosmic irrelevance of a Canadian view on matters military given the Liberals' defence policy of guns and butter -- the latest Mark 4 butter knives to arm the troops and gun registration for the common people -- it is worth parsing this remarkable information to see what it tells us about ourselves.
The implications are clear. A great majority of us think the UN has definitive legitimacy to confer in international affairs. A few of us think war is for other people, not us. And many, perhaps most, are more afraid of the United States than of Saddam Hussein. Each of these positions is wrong.
First to the UN. Many people think of it as some kind of world government. It is not. The UN is simply a talking shop of great powers pursuing their own selfish interests and minor powers peddling sanctimony. The UN is not transparent, accountable, representative, governed by the rule of enforceable law. Nor has it any of the other important attributes that give legitimacy to the real democracies.
Canadians may be forgiven this misperception. After all, our central government is itself notably lacking in any appetite for transparency, accountability, representativeness and respect for the rule of law, but at least our Constitution and a few centuries of British inheritance help contain the Ottawa four-year elected dictatorship.
Any organization that could even contemplate, let alone make Gadhafi's Libya the head of its Human Rights Commission is seriously lacking in gravitas. The UN was unable to get its act together in the Balkans -- the human rights abuses there were dealt with by NATO -- and in most things is nothing more than an intellectual trading post for discredited ideologies. It is worth keeping for the small good it does, but not to be taken seriously as a political institution. Choosing the verdict of the UN over the United States? The U.S. Congress demonstrates more democracy in any given week than has the UN in its entire history.
Well then, what about the second conclusion one might draw from the aforementioned poll -- that Canadians want nothing to do with war, period? Pacifism is a perfectly respectable doctrine, if not really a part of our history. We have shed a lot of blood since Confederation in defence of the free world. But latterly we seem content to be moralizing bystanders, leaving the heavy lifting to others. We will go to the ramparts for medicare, milk marketing boards, multiculturalism, hockey, the Official Languages Act or other splendid aspects of our great civilization, but the challenges of the larger world are, you know, so somewhere else?
Leave aside the military, which of course is exactly what we have done throughout the Chrétien years. The enduring disgrace, the stain on our pretty international party dress, has been our consistent cutbacks in foreign aid. Lacking an army, Canada could at least be a great power in international development -- bankrolling clean water supply for the Third World or any of dozens of other things that bring real improvement to the lives of people.
All in all, however, I think the second explanation fails. Canadians are not wusses. We are just confused.
And so to the third explanation for our national take on the Iraq situation -- which is that we are more afraid of Americans than of Saddam. Here I think we strike paydirt. Saddam isn't going to bother us. But America?
We have had a love-hate relationship with our huge southern neighbour forever. We are defined by our reactions to America. Canada, as a single country, would not even exist had there been three or four countries south of the border. We would have had three or four up here as well.
We love a lot of things about America. We love them as customers and providers of culture. We profit from their technology and from the Pax Americana.
But we hate them for having their act together, defining national purposes in a way that escapes us. We are driven crazy by the fact they don't care about us at all. Above all we hate their success, or many of us do.
Iraq is just the latest in this dependent relationship that troubles us so much, and an apparently low-cost issue on which to call the big guy down from the cheap seats, unlike softwood lumber, agricultural restrictions or border-crossing controls.
But maybe it's not so low-cost an attitude. While Americans generally hardly know we exist, Washington's policy-makers -- who can help us or stick it to us any day on a myriad of issues -- track these things pretty closely.
There is such a thing as paying your way in this world, especially in freedom and international security. We don't have to agree with the Americans on all things, but we have become such a nation of free riders that our opinion no longer matters. To stand Lord Acton on his head, absolute lack of power corrupts absolutely too, and that is the story of our foreign policy. The posture is an increasingly shabby one and it has consequences. But at least we don't lose sleep over Saddam. Lucky us. |
