The only similarity between the Maple Spring and the events in the Middle East that began last year is that young people were mobilized to protest. Other than that, there is nothing in common. There are, however, a number of key differences.

For one thing, the stakes are entirely different – by orders of magnitude. The people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere have been seeking to overthrow dictators. The students in Quebec want a tuition freeze.

Second, the governments in the Middle East used force early, often, and disproportionately. While Montreal police have unfortunately been responsible for some abuses, those abuses have been the exception, rather than the rule.

The Quebec protests also differ greatly from the Arab Spring in that the democratic/representative credentials of the student protesters are actually rather weak:

• The three major student groups that are protesting represent only one-third of Quebec’s students. Most other students seek to continue their education without interruption.
•  Furthermore, these three groups are hardly unified. In fact, they take advantage of their disunity to disavow any responsibility for the acts taken by others that border on terrorism (such as the smoke bombs that were released in the Metro system).
•  In addition, more than a few of the votes taken by student groups were less than what we expect in an advanced democracy (public shows of hands, questionable quorums, etc.).
•  For the most part, these groups have seemed to maintain that their rights are the only ones that matter. They have even violated injunctions aimed at allowing other students to continue to go to class. Last time I checked, rule of law was a defining characteristic of democracy.
•  Members of the general public have been on the other side, as they do not want Quebec’s already comparatively high taxes to be raised yet again.

In addressing the conflict, the Quebec government’s responses have been more flexible than those of the students. The Government of Quebec, which I scorn on a daily basis, did agree to change the tuition increase of $325 per year for five years to a bit less over seven years. The goal was to move tuition from $2,168 per year to $3,793, which would still leave it among the lowest tuition rates in all of North America, to compensate for more than a decade of tuition freezes followed by very modest increases. The government also promised to provide loans and credits so that the burden of the increase would fall only on a small percentage of students – those with the ability to cover these increased costs.

The student groups, on the other hand, did not offer any compromises in the bargaining sessions – only schemes that would have kept the tuition freeze in place and put the burden of increased fees somewhere else in Quebec.

After months of protests that disrupted traffic, among other things, the Quebec government put forth Bill 78. This bill is a political mistake, but not a legal disaster. I am not a lawyer or legal scholar, but it seems to me that the government’s insistence that protests involving more than 50 people (the original 10-person limit was beyond stupid and quickly revised) register with the police is not far outside the norm for democracies. That Montreal and Quebec seemed to have no rules beforehand for managing, not squelching, dissent seemed most problematic.

Most importantly, the government has not frequently implemented the more onerous parts of this bill. Protests have continued with much police presence and some arrests, but dissent via assembly and speech continue in Quebec.

It seems clear that the bill was an overreaction. What was needed was better enforcement of existing injunctions, not new emergency legislation.

We desperately need some perspective. The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, put Quebec’s responses to student protests in the same sentence as the killing of journalists in Latin America, discrimination against the LGBT community in the former Soviet Union, and the demise of democracy in Hungary. Please. I am all for comparing things, even apples and oranges, but this is a case of apples and chairs. These events are hardly similar, and are entirely unrelated.

Perhaps Pillay felt a need to throw a token western country under the bus so that she would not seem to be imperialist. If that is the case, then she should have picked from a list of real human-rights problems in the West, such as how Canada treats its First Nations, how the U.S. treats its Native Americans, how Europe treats its Roma population (including France trying to expel them), and so on. Indeed, why not focus on the rising tide of xenophobia aimed at immigrants, especially at a time when such people are trying escape Libya, Syria, and so on?

As an American scholar living in Canada, I have no problem criticizing Canada and the U.S., but one needs to choose better targets where rights actually are being significantly infringed, and where humans are at risk. Comparing Quebec’s season of discontent with real, significant, and enduring violations of human rights only serves to make the UN Human Rights Commission look ridiculous, perhaps even more so than when it had Qaddafi’s Libya as a member of the UN Human Rights Council.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

What does this mean?  In any conflict that peacekeepers might enter, there are multiple sides and usually more than one set of actors hostile to the accord. (After all, if an agreement produced consensus, there would be little need for outsiders to intervene.) These “spoilers,” as they are known, may or may not resort to violence, but the threat that they may do so means that the outside interveners must be prepared to be violent themselves. This is basic deterrence logic: You need to be able to threaten to impose costs to deter a potential aggressor, AND you need to use force if deterrence breaks down.

The dramatic failure of the UN mission in Rwanda as the genocide started was partly due to the weakness of the UN peacekeeping effort. The genocidaires chose to be violent, voting for war against the rest of Rwanda. They started it off by killing a number of peacekeepers. As the UN mission was poorly equipped, it did not defend itself, nor did it protect anyone else. Indeed, the lesson drawn by potential spoilers from Mogadishu and Rwanda is this: Start by killing the peacekeepers, who may then flee.

Those nostalgic of past peacekeeping forget the violence the Canadians not only faced in such circumstances, but also deployed. In Croatia, the Canadians battled with the Croatian army, which was engaged in war crimes against the Serb populace. This was the biggest battle Canada fought between the wars in Korea and Afghanistan. History suggests, then, that peacekeeping has always been a violent enterprise, and it is probably more so these days, as spoilers learn from Somalia and Rwanda. 

Yes, Jennifer Welsh is correct that there is less civil war than there used to be, but part of that is due to the interventions that have ended conflicts around the world – in Cambodia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and elsewhere. And less civil war does not mean no civil war. The last year should at least have taught us that there are enough authoritarian regimes still around that repression and civil war are not obsolete. Civil wars in Libya, Syria, and other countries where the Arab Spring was not so successful demonstrate quite clearly that there is still demand for intervention. Supply? Well, that is another story.

In evaluating its current strategy and planning for the future, the Canadian government needs to be aware of several factors:

1. There remain deep splits within countries over how to govern and who is to be governed;
2. Even where agreements are signed, there will be actors who will either be tempted to change the terms or obsessed with doing so;
3. These actors can look to the recent past to see that violence against peacekeepers can work; and
4. Peacekeepers need to be ready to deploy violence. Otherwise, safe havens are neither safe nor havens.

The only way for the Canadian Forces to be deployed without the threat of violence is in response to natural disasters, as in the cases of Japan, Haiti, and the like. While these were good uses of military forces, they were exceptional. In nearly every other case, there will be potential adversaries, who, with their deciding vote, will have the power to choose violence.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Look at it from the prime minister’s standpoint. He needs a minister of defence who can weather the political storm that’s gathering around the department. Projected costs of the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter will probably continue to rise, which is terrible news for the Tories, who have attempted to build their brand on fiscal discipline. As Postmedia’s Lee Berthiaume reported yesterday, however, even the enormous price tag on the F-35 acquisition is dwarfed by the government’s $35-billion shipbuilding plan, which is already behind schedule. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is too smart not to see the great political risks.

John Baird is the toughest minister in Harper’s lineup. Yet, the prime minister’s loyal consigliore has been over at the Department of Foreign Affairs doing … well, it’s not entirely clear what Baird has been doing. His big project – a new Office of Religious Freedom – has been delayed, but will presumably be launched very soon, liberating him to perform more challenging tasks elsewhere.

This would be reason enough for Baird to be considered a strong candidate for minister of defence, but there’s more: Harper seems to think a conflict with Iran is possible, and he surely knows the situation in Syria is unpredictable. If the prime minister believes there’s any chance that the Canadian Forces will go into action in the Middle East, he will want a rock-solid defence minister in place.

Now for the clincher: As foreign affairs minister, Baird has been following the Syrian and Iranian situations closely, and he has been the government’s chief interlocutor with Israel. He would need little preparation to dive into the job of defence minister. If anything, his appointment to the Department of National Defence would communicate continuity in Canadian foreign policy. Critics of the government’s foreign policy would not find comfort in continuity, of course, but from the prime minister’s standpoint, it would make sense.

 So, who would replace Baird as foreign affairs minister? Well, that would require another bet – and one dollar is the most I’m willing to put into this game.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

The Chicago Summit focused on smart defence and Afghanistan’s transition. Both epitomize NATO’s keen ability to make incredible commitments that are not to be believed. Smart defence is an effort aimed at fostering the specialization and pooling of military capabilities so that members can more efficiently spend their defence dollars, which is ever more important in these times of fiscal crisis. The problem is that a more specialized military will have to rely even more heavily on allies to show up on the battlefield with the needed capabilities (helicopters, armour, etc.), and the lesson of Afghanistan is that the allies may not provide help, even – or especially – when it is needed. Canada’s most senior military officer, General Walt Natynczyck said this:

The challenge here is that when things really get tough, key enablers – such as helicopters, or intelligence, or artillery, or unmanned aerial vehicles – they all become scarce. And so we need to ensure that when we go into a theatre, that we have sufficient agility in case things, the situation deteriorates around us, that we have the means by which to be self-reliant on those operations, within reasonable means.

Canadian officers have learned that there are limits to NATO – that allies will disappoint. When asked about the problem of politically imposed restrictions (caveats) interacts with smart defence, NATO leaders essentially said that they will figure that out later – in other words, they kicked that can down the road.

Like smart defence, Afghanistan’s transition is more of a hope than a plan, as members and partners keep revising their departure dates. France’s new president, François Hollande, has announced that his country’s combat troops will pull out by 2013. Australia, too, is on a 2013 pull-out schedule, even though the NATO transition is supposed to be complete in 2014. District after district has been turned over to Afghan responsibility, even if neither the district nor the Afghan government has been ready. For instance, Kabul was supposedly turned over to Afghanistan’s security forces a couple of years ago, but security there is hardly assured. It seems that the transition schedule will be kept even if the various districts and Afghan units fall far short of the conditions that were originally established.

This is not a problem for Canada, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced last week that there will be no Canadian Forces in Afghanistan after 2014. He had been asked to deploy some units (special operations forces) to engage in counterterrorism and training, and the prime minister politely said no, we have done our share. This was uncontroversial both in Canada and in Chicago. It is very difficult for the secretary-general of NATO, or for American officials, to accuse Canada of not doing enough, given the toll taken by five years in Kandahar, as well as Canada’s quick deployment to assist the NATO effort last year in the skies over Libya. While the initial Kandahar decision was more than just about placating the U.S. in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, it is clear that Canada has earned a heap of credit at the alliance bank and in American eyes. As a result, Canada’s reluctance to do anything more for Afghanistan after 2014 does not harm its standing. Of course, the funny thing is that Harper’s promise not to deploy troops may be just as ephemeral as NATO’s promises: The prime minister has already changed his mind on Afghanistan a few times, and a deployment of Canadian special operators would not be visible to the public or to Parliament. 

While I raise doubts about NATO’s smart defence and Afghanistan plans, there is one can that NATO kicked down the road that I am happy to see left alone: the issue of enlargement. NATO’s agreement that an attack upon one is equal to an attack upon all remains essential. That every member of the alliance showed up in Afghanistan to some degree following the attack on the United States shows that this commitment matters a great deal. Extending NATO membership to countries that NATO will not likely defend (i.e., Georgia) is most problematic, so I am glad that the Chicago Summit did not address this idea. Hopefully, when NATO does pick that can up down the road, it will quickly dispose of it.

I am hostile to enlargement precisely because the heart of the NATO is its security guarantees to Canada and to the rest of the current members.  As I discussed previously, this is the biggest added value that NATO provides to Canada.  Going to Afghanistan was as much or more about NATO and this guarantee than it was about the children and women of the country.  Canada did pay greatly for the continued credibility of NATO.  I would hate to see that one essential promise that NATO has credibly committed be watered down with the addition of countries that members are not likely to defend.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The explanations for this correlation between democracy and peace vary, but one strand emphasizes the structural features of democratic states, and how they serve to restrain the recourse to war. The first of such features is the degree of influence that democratic states give to the people – those most likely to personally bear the costs of war (either financially, or by being killed or wounded). The second is the tendency for democratic states to separate legislative and executive power, thereby subjecting leaders to institutionalized constraints that limit their capacity to engage in war (unless they can appeal to a very broad base of their electorate).

But as Peter Singer points out in his discussion of drones, recent transformations in technology are eroding both of these sources of restraint in democratic societies, particularly in the United States. Unmanned drones can spend considerable time observing targets, wait for them to come into clear view, and then deliver lower-yield weapons with a far higher degree of accuracy than other weapons platforms (such as bombers or helicopters). Drones therefore enable their users to 1) kill without being killed, and 2) inflict minimal “collateral” damage on societies that are being targeted.

As a result of this level of precision – and capacity to minimize cost – many American policy-makers, such as counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, have described drones as both ethical and wise. Drones have the added bonus of freeing the executive branch from the constraints of congressional approval, since leaders only need to seek authorization for operations that send their soldiers into “harm’s way.”

As Singer notes, however, such unmanned weapons are not completely cost free. There is growing evidence that drone attacks have fuelled public anger in Pakistan and Yemen, threatening to undermine the internal support in those countries for the West’s antiterrorism policy. The use of drones on the sovereign territory of these countries makes it increasingly difficult to refute militants’ claims that the governments of Pakistan and Yemen are mere puppets of the United States.

It is also debatable as to whether the casualty figures associated with drone attacks are really as minimal as they are claimed to be. A recent article in the New York Times about President Obama’s drone strikes questions his administration’s approach to counting civilian casualties. In effect, it treats all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously which proves them innocent.  While counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic – people in an area of known terrorist activity are probably “up to no good” – some members of the Obama administration are angered by the CIA’s accounting method. According to the Times, one official called it “guilt by association” that has led to “deceptive” estimates of civilian casualties.

Beyond these immediate casualties, there is a long-term cost to the use of drones. They are part of a more general decline in conventional war – and with it the practices of mutual recognition and reciprocity that helped to “hardwire” some restraint into the conduct of war (represented, for example, in some of the provisions of the Geneva Conventions on the laws of war). There are two particular ways in which drones ride roughshod over these ideas of equality and reciprocity.

First, drones allow for a high level of disassociation with the violence that they unleash, thereby eliminating one of the traditional restraints on the conduct of war. Psychological literature shows quite convincingly that people find it difficult to kill their fellow human beings at close range, and that particular training and conditioning is needed to overcome this aversion. Drones do away with these effects of proximity. In so doing, some have argued, they also promote a change in perspective regarding the target of violence. As it becomes easier to kill the enemy, there is a subtle but important shift in the reasoning for that killing: The enemy becomes depicted as criminal and ruthless, and thereby deserving of direct attack. The potential for drones to change how an enemy is perceived, and to reduce the reluctance to engage in violence, was noted by the U.K. government’s own Ministry of Defence Report in 2011: “… one of the contributory factors in controlling and limiting aggressive policy is the risk to one’s own forces,” the report states. By “removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance … we might risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely.”

Second, drones contribute to dissolution of the very notion of a battlefield. The laws of war were designed to try to create a delineated space in which war would occur, thereby protecting the rest of society and civilian life from its horrors. The introduction of air power in the 20^th century eroded this distinction (think back to the fire-bombing of German cities during the Second World War), as did the rise of counterinsurgency warfare. But drones constitute the ultimate next step in this process.

Finally, the use of drones takes a toll on those who operate them. As philosopher and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman has argued in her book, The Untold War, soldiers carry all “the moral weight of war,” exempting the citizens of democratic states from having to do that “heavy lifting.” We might be tempted to think that drone operators, who work from a safe civilian space far away from any battlefield, do not bear the same level of guilt as more formal combatants who engage in killing of the enemy at closer range.

But this fails to acknowledge the difference between anonymous intentional killing of enemy combatants (which is what most soldiers engage in) and the kind of targeted killing we increasingly see through drone attacks today. As lawyer and philosopher Fernando Teson explains, in a targeted killing, the victim is precisely identified – the lethal action is directed squarely at him. And the deliberate killing of another human being, no matter who that person is, is presumably a deeply immoral act. To justify such intentional killing in peacetime situations, Teson argues, there must be a clear and just public purpose, proof that the identified “villain” is the person responsible for creating a threat (or inflicting violence), a strong belief that many innocent lives will be saved through such an attack, and the lack of non-lethal alternatives (such as capture of the targeted individual) (for a podcast of Teson’s presentation, click here). This latter stipulation is crucial, for it is by choosing these alternatives – when available – that governments and their representatives avoid engaging in premeditated, deliberate killing.

The so-called war on terror, as Teson shows, has added complexity to how we make judgments using this basic framework. Those who argue that confronting terrorism is equivalent to confronting crime would argue that targeted killings are always impermissible – that a liberal state has enough lawful and non-lethal means at its disposable to deal with terrorists. On the other end of the spectrum are those who believe that terrorism can only be confronted through the instruments of war – that the ordinary tools of law enforcement are no match for the kind of threat that terrorists pose to innocent life. Thus, terrorists can be killed on sight, without being given the opportunity to surrender, regardless of the threat they actually represent. Members of the Bush administration, who were partial to this second view, effectively treated targeted killing as the same activity as killing in combat.

President Obama, despite his liberal credentials, seems to be operating with a similar mindset. The New York Times article describes how he now leads a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture. But the capture part seems to be more theoretical than real.

Is a middle position between law-enforcement and the war on terror possible? Teson seems to think so, though his resting place is closer to the former position. Terrorism does constitute a special kind of crime, given the level of harm it threatens and the ubiquitous nature of that threat. Therefore, there are circumstances in which targeted killing of a terrorist can be permissible, such as if, in the process, a specific terrorist attack (which threatens a large-scale loss of life) can be avoided. At the same time, however, it does not follow that the war paradigm applies. Even when confronted with terrorists, liberal states cannot be absolved from the need to respect constraints on the use of deadly force in peacetime. Capture of a terrorist cannot simply be the preferred alternative – for Teson, it is ethically required, unless it proves impossible or morally prohibitive.

This judgment about the permissibility of targeted killing rests on the belief that liberal-democratic states must try to act in accordance with the values and virtues they represent. Democratic peace theory seems to suggest that liberal democracies are in some ways exceptional. To permit a broad-based strategy of targeted, extrajudicial killing through the use of drones is to lose some of that essence.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

While NATO is seen as a European institution, we should not forget the NA in the name – North Atlantic. As a member, Canada gains the security guarantees that the rest of the members get – Article V says an attack upon one is equal to an attack upon all. While Article V does not actually require any country to do any specific thing, the reality is that membership provides deterrence against attacks. While some people think that war is becoming obsolete (see recent posts at CIC), that new reality is partly the product of preparedness. NATO’s biggest success story has been deterrence, which is hard to prove, but matters nonetheless. While the U.S. is already committed to defending Canada via NORAD, the doubling of the commitment via NATO solidifies the enduring reality that Canada’s security rests on a combination of its geographic position and its security co-operation with its neighbour. 

NATO gives Canada the means to have influence in a variety of arenas that it could not have by itself. For instance, Canada gained leadership positions in the Afghanistan and Libya missions, so Canadians shaped the way that these important efforts played out. Whatever one thinks of the Kandahar mission, it presented a significant improvement in the ability for Canadians to control the Canadian Forces when operating in a multilateral context. When UN forces are deployed, the Canadian contingents have far less control over how they are used, which has led to some unfortunate situations in the past (e.g., in Bosnia, when the UN’s defence-only rules of engagement required that contingents be put in the line of fire so that the use of force could be permitted). NATO’s rules tend to provide more discretion for countries to operate.  Plus, the more you are willing to provide to NATO, the more influence you have. In Afghanistan, Canada had far more sway than Germany because Canada’s smaller contingent was far more active and far more productive.

Due to its status as a middle power, and due to its own inclinations, Canada relies heavily on multilateralism. Canadians tend to believe that multilateral solutions are inherently better than unilateral or bilateral ones, and that fostering more institutionalized ties binding countries together and collectively working on problems is better than doing otherwise. NATO is the premier multilateral security organization on the planet, despite whatever weaknesses it has, or complaints people may have about it. It cannot be everywhere and it cannot solve every problem, but it has managed the security relations of Europe and is fighting piracy every day. If one buys into the “responsibility to protect” (R2P), then one has to figure out who will carry the hammer when countries are irresponsible. Again, not every R2P situation will attract a NATO response, but Canada cannot compel compliance with R2P on its own. Only via NATO can Canada coerce countries to do what they should be doing anyway.

So, Canada gets security, control over its contributions, influence, and multilateral solutions from NATO. But what does Canada give to NATO? Well, that has varied over time. While the era of CANTBATs (heavily restricted Canadian battalions operating in Bosnia) gave Canada limited added value, more recently, the Canadian Forces have been far less restricted and far more capable than most of NATO’s members. In the early days in Afghanistan, Canadians running the NATO forces had to look to other contingents to be the go-to units when something needed to be done. As Canada moved to Kandahar, a generational change within the CF resulted in a far more flexible force, making it the go-to contingent for quite a while. When the British or Dutch needed help in their sectors of southern Afghanistan, the CF were the ones who were called. Given the shortage of reliable contingents in Afghanistan, Canada went from being a worthwhile member to being an essential one. Despite the withdrawal from Kandahar, Canada’s position as a key member continued when a new intervention arose near and over Libya. Canadian planes flew many strike missions, and Canada’s refuelling planes kept aloft the planes from more than a dozen countries.

At NATO headquarters, Canada is also viewed as reliable. Rather than bogging down discussion based on narrow interests (Greece would be the anti-role model here), Canada has been able to build coalitions to move NATO forward, including fostering a more comprehensive approach in Afghanistan and shaping NATO’s new Strategic Concept. Canada is seen as a voice of reason without any of the baggage carried by other countries, so Canadian Lt.-General Charles Bouchard was named head of the Libyan operation, a choice acceptable to both French and Turks who otherwise found common ground on which to agree.

Of course, there has been much complaining about burden-sharing with Canada among those bearing more casualties in Afghanistan, and NATO is unlikely to ultimately be successful in Afghanistan. The savings from the joint purchase of the F-35 are non-existent. Tussles with various allies make things harder. But what Churchill said about democracy is perhaps just as true about NATO: It may be the worst, save all the others. NATO has endured through a variety of crises (and now two decades beyond its original target – the Soviet Union) because it does provide an important forum for addressing security issues, and gives countries, even relatively small (in defense spending and size of military) and distant ones, significant influence.

It is the second priority that Roland identifies – the ability to contribute highly capable forces to overseas multilateral missions – that needs further discussion and reflection. On the face of it, this seems like a sound approach: Building and maintaining a capacity to take part in collective efforts to enforce international rules, or to maintain fragile peace, is clearly consistent with Canadian interests and values. But we also need to take a hard look at how war and conflict are changing, rather than assuming that what we have seen and experienced will necessarily continue into the future. As I’ve argued in a forthcoming essay in the Literary Review of Canada, war as we know it is undergoing profound transformation.

For one thing, researchers have noted for at least 20 years that there has been a dramatic decline in the incidence of international armed conflict (i.e., conflict between two states). So, for example, while 60 years ago there was an average of six international conflicts per year, there is currently less than one. The reasons for this shift are hotly debated. There are some, such as Steven Pinker (in his highly influential book, The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined), who highlight the impact of norms, institutions, and changes in values. Others take a more pessimistic view about the potential for human beings to learn or evolve, stressing the effects of deterrence (whether through conventional or nuclear arms). And then there are those who, echoing the views of late-19th-century liberals, claim that economic interdependence means that war “no longer pays.” (We can see how well that prediction worked out when the First World War came along in 1914 – but maybe it has a better chance of proving true in today’s international system.)

But whatever the reason, it’s hard to contest the data. (The main sources I’ve looked at include those in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program, and the most recent Human Security Report.) Even the most ardent realists, who stress the need for states to prepare for the ever-present possibility of armed attack, have been forced to acknowledge that something pretty interesting is going on here. The scholar Robert Jervis, who is a loyal member of the realist camp, admitted in a December 2011 International Relations article that, while realism tends to emphasize continuity and recurrence, the last 50 to 60 years of international affairs do suggest that cost-benefit calculations, norms, and values can change.

All this is about inter-state conflict. What is even more striking about recent data is that they point to the decline in number and severity of all types of conflict, including civil war. So while 81 internal armed conflicts occurred in the 1990s, there were only 39 in the decade that followed. Moreover, despite the horrific images on our television screens, and the negative long-term effects of conflict, those civil wars that did occur were less severe, for both civilians and combatants, than those of previous periods.

These figures challenge the narrative of the first decade of the post-Cold War period, which predicted that new wars, driven by ethnic hatred, would be the major challenge facing western societies in the 21st century. They also suggest that our current government’s tendency to portray the international environment as full of danger – rogue states, terrorism, etc. – may be the product of a common ailment: the tendency to idealize the past and exaggerate the dangers of the present. (Roland suggested as much in one of his past blog posts.) This problem extends beyond our own prime minister. In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Micah Zenko and Michael Cohen argue that the United States is facing “clear and present safety,” despite the litany of threats that most security analysts present. From the American perspective, these authors suggest, the world today is actually remarkably secure, and the U.S. needs a foreign-policy strategy that reflects that fact.

This all sounds pretty rosy. But we can’t conclude our story, or our analysis of the implications for the Canadian Forces, here. For although we are seeing a decline in international and civil wars as they are legally understood, there is a new category of “generalized violence” that is hidden by these formal categories. According to a 2011 report, The Global Burden of Armed Violence, while (on average) just more than half a million people now die annually in violent circumstances, just 10 per cent of those individuals die in formal conflict settings. Instead, the growing phenomenon of generalized violence accounts for most violent deaths around the world, and is concentrated in a relatively small number of countries, such as El Salvador, Jamaica, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico (where an astonishing 13,000 people were killed last year as part of the so-called drug wars).

These countries do not tend to feature in many discussions about the future role of the Canadian Armed Forces, or our broader foreign policy. They are also not “overseas” in the way that the conflicts of the 1990s that engaged members of the Canadian forces (Somalia, the Balkans, etc.) were. Yet, all of these societies experience widespread, large-scale, and indiscriminate violence – whether through systematic repression at the hands of their government, or through their government’s failure to effectively address drug, gang, or political violence. As such, they deserve our attention and aid. Moreover, some of these countries are connected to Canada in significant ways. (Mexico, for example, is our partner in a free-trade agreement.)

Interestingly, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – the non-governmental organization that has done so much to develop international humanitarian law (the law that applies in wartime) – is now actively engaged in developing a new mandate for action in these “Other Situations of Violence” (the ICRC’s term for these kinds of non-war situations).

Clearly, Canada’s broader set of foreign-policy tools might have something to offer these seemingly intractable conflicts. And yet, we haven’t even begun to think about how. There is little to no chance of anything resembling peacekeeping occurring in these contexts. But does that mean we can’t conceive of other possible vocations for our armed forces? Now that is an interesting and provocative question for a debate on the future of the Canadian military.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

When I ranked “the world” as a higher military priority than the Arctic last week, I should have been clearer that I was talking about priorities, rather than suggesting that the Arctic should be disregarded. Roland Paris was right when he said that Canada cannot simply ignore its own defence. It must do enough to secure its airspace and sea lanes that the U.S. is comfortable with the ongoing deal that is most concretely embodied in the North American Aerospace Command Defense (NORAD) and the joint defence of North America. Finessing our relationship with the U.S. will always be the biggest concern for Canadian foreign policy, not because the U.S. is likely to invade, but because Canada’s security and economy depend on us having a good relationship with our only neighbouring country.

Second to Canada’s commitment to NORAD is its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Canada joined NATO not just to defend Europe, but also because of the first part of the acronym – North Atlantic. The NATO alliance has resulted in Canadian expeditions to Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and, more recently, Libya, but it also has more direct security implications, organizing the defence of the North Atlantic, including Canada, and, just as importantly, fostering multilateral solutions to security challenges.

Unlike the U.S., with its far-flung series of alliances, treaties, and agreements, the list of Canadian defence commitments, as far as I can tell, really ends there. There is no Canadian role in the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) agreement, for instance, and it is not clear how the ending of the Korean War in 1954 really obligates Canada now to the defense of South Korea. So, the core consideration of Canada’s grand strategy (i.e. balancing the country’s capabilities and commitments) really does focus on NORAD and NATO.

Sure, Canada is a member of the United Nations, but that does not imply any defence requirements in the same way that the other two commitments do. Canada can choose to participate, or refrain from participating, in any UN effort, with varying degrees of consequences. It cannot as easily opt out of NORAD and NATO efforts (it can opt out, but with significant costs). Moreover, given that the UN has relatively low standards for the contingents it deploys, the possibility of sending troops on UN missions does not really impose any kind of requirements on Canada, other than to maintain some infantry.

The interesting thing here is that what Canada might need for NORAD and North American defence and what it needs for NATO are not necessarily identical. The kinds of threats to Canada that Roland mentioned as reasons to keep an eye on the Arctic – “potentially dangerous ships, planes, and cargo” – do not necessarily require the most advanced weapons, such as submarines and stealth aircraft. On the other hand, the best argument to be made for Canadian acquisition of the F-35 is that it would facilitate Canadian participation in future alliance operations. (Those who argue that Canada should acquire the F-35 because we may one day need to counter a threat from China are unconvincing.) While Canada could participate in future operations by flying other planes alongside the F-35s flown by the U.S. and various allies, Canadian F-35s would be the most logical and efficient choice. For instance, since the planes would have the same communications systems, co-ordination amongst allies would be very straightforward.

Again, the idea of grand strategy is to connect one’s place in the world – particularly as it defines the relevant threats that you face – with commitments. Those threats and commitments determine the capabilities needed today and tomorrow. Because of its geography, and the resulting lack of existential threats that it faces, Canada has some choice about priorities: It can focus more on self-defence, and on what it takes to maintain NORAD, or it can focus more on NATO and future expeditions. To be clear, this is about focus and priorities, not about picking one at the exclusion of the other. Still, choices must be made, and trade-offs must be faced. Buying the F-35 is such a significant decision because it is so expensive – it will crowd out other defence spending. So, we need to be clear that choosing the F-35 is not really about disregarding the Arctic as a threat, but about making multilateral operations elsewhere the priority. The next move, then, is to figure out affordable (rather than optimal) means of addressing the lesser priority of the Arctic while the main effort is elsewhere.

This notion of focusing main efforts in one place and economies of force elsewhere is hardly foreign to the Canadian military or that of any other country. Such choices are hard to make because they mean that some people lose jobs (perhaps those who drive submarines and those who work near some bases), some politicians will get some heat, and, yes, less capabilities in other areas means assuming some risk. But it is better for a military to make a conscious decision and be aware of the risks associated with various trade-offs than to think it can get everything it wants and find out only later that there is no money for things like helicopters or improved armour.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Steve believes that Canada faces a threat only in the Arctic, because the rest of our coastline and airspace are “quite safe.” He suggests, therefore, that when I argue that continental security should be the top CF priority, that I am actually putting the Arctic first.

In fact, that’s not what I am saying. Although the Arctic will be an area of increasing international competition (given undersea resources and new shipping routes opening up due to melting sea ice), Canada still must be able to identify and intercept potentially dangerous ships, planes, and cargo before they reach their destinations. We know all too well that airplanes can be hijacked, and that ships can be used for mass human trafficking, for example, and we have an immense coastline and airspace to monitor and patrol.

Yet, there is another reason – and one that is arguably more important – for Canada to prioritize continental defence. If we don’t secure our portion of North America, the Americans will do so on our behalf, whether we like it or not. This has been the implicit deal between our two countries at least since the Second World War. Maintaining this deal is a critical political interest for Canada, and, as I mentioned in my previous post, CF priorities should flow from an assessment of our broader foreign policy requirements.

The second priority for the CF, I believe, should be the ability to contribute ground forces to multilateral missions overseas. This, too, flows from our foreign-policy requirements – namely, Canada’s interest in a stable and just international order, particularly at a moment when existing international institutions and systems of rules are under strain.

The pace of global change, and problems arising from this change – from the environment to trade and finance – are outstripping the capacity of existing international institutions to cope with them. As an open country that’s particularly dependent on trade, Canada has benefited from these systems of rules. Just think about how Canada has profited from a measure of stability in the international economy for the past several decades.

Indeed, the greatest challenge we collectively face may be the transition from a U.S.-led international system to a multipolar one. This challenge is not just economic (how can Canada increase its trade with rising economies?), but is also political (how can Canada contribute to the adjustment of international systems of rule, such that these systems can peacefully accommodate the rise of new powers?).

This process of rule-building and institutional reform is primarily a diplomatic one that suits Canadians well. It’s no accident that Canadian leaders and diplomats have traditionally “punched above their weight” in building multilateral institutions, from the United Nations to the International Criminal Court: We have had to develop such skills to keep this fractious country together from the very start of our history. This quality has defined Canada and Canadians.

There are moments, however, when diplomacy isn’t enough and stakes are so high that upholding international rules requires the deployment of military forces to multilateral operations. This does not necessarily mean going to war. In fact, there is a range of possible roles for Canadian military personnel in multilateral operations – from monitoring ceasefires and providing training for national security forces (or to the peacekeeping troops of other countries) to counterinsurgency and combat.

To perform such varied and unpredictable tasks, however, we need ground forces that are capable of adapting quickly to new types of missions and deploying quickly. This means having highly skilled troops that can largely support themselves (with helicopters and vehicles, for example), and that Canada can deliver to the area of operations without having to rent or borrow transport.

A military policy rooted in these two priorities – the protection of our airspace and coastlines, and the ability to contribute skilled and adaptable ground forces to multilateral missions – would provide a strategically founded basis for making tough decisions about equipment purchases as budgets become tighter. For example, how big a blue-sea navy would we actually need if we adopted these priorities? Coastal patrol vessels, including those with the ability to operate in the Arctic, would seem more important than acquiring more destroyers and frigates. And would we really require stealth fighters if their primary task were to intercept threats to our continental airspace?

As you ponder these questions, consider this: F-35 stealth fighters and new ships (including destroyers and frigates) are the most expensive items on Canada’s current list of planned military purchases. What mission, exactly, will they perform?

Photo courtesy of Reuters

In my mind, Canada’s geographic position gives it two distinct options: Arctic or the world. 

Canada is way the hell away from everything except the United States and the Arctic. In the foreseeable future, the U.S. is not a threat, but a partner. Despite the fever dreams of some folks, the U.S. does not intend to invade Canada, and it does not have plans for domination. While they often take it for granted, Americans (especially policy-makers) see Canada as a reliable friend and ally in the world. Do not forget that as much as NORAD is a compromise of Canadian sovereignty, it is also a compromise of American sovereignty. So, the land borders of Canada are quite safe, except from the usual smugglers of booze, cigarettes, drugs, and the like. The main border issue, then, is one of co-operation, not defence.

So, the challenge is really the seas around Canada and the air nearby. Since Canada is pretty far away from the rest of the world’s countries, the air threat is mostly Russian.

The threat along the seas is where the Arctic comes in. Canada does have heaps of coastline along the other two oceans, but the biggest change in the future is going to be access to the stuff in the North. There are few conflicts (other than the border dispute over Hans Island) along the Pacific or Atlantic that have not been resolved. So, the Arctic is the question. 

The other priority would be dealing with the rest of the world – engaging in expeditionary efforts to peace-keep, to support allies, and to uphold the responsibility to protect (R2P). 

In Tuesday’s live chat, Roland Paris put the Arctic ahead of the world. Reflecting on the discussion, I think I put the world ahead of the Arctic. Why? Because I just don’t think that Canada can really thwart any of the threats to the Arctic (i.e. Russia or the U.S.) with military means. Canada simply cannot/will not invest enough in its military to have enough ships (subs?) and planes (F-35s?) to counter Russian capabilities. To address this threat, Canada will have to settle its Arctic differences with the U.S. and work with the U.S. to deal with the Russian challenge.

On the other hand, Canada does seek to make a difference in the world, and does have a commitment to multilateralism. As a middle power between two great powers, multilateral institutions help give Canada influence via agenda-setting, issue-framing, and issue-trading. This is another reason Canada will remain focused on NATO and not on the Pacific: There are no major security institutions in the Pacific to which Canada belongs. A series of bilateral arrangements is no way for Canada to shape anything. The point here is that Canada can make a difference as it has in the past – with peacekeeping, with the landmine treaty, and with R2P. It helped in Haiti, and it did make a contribution in Afghanistan, even if it was not sustainable.

So, under threats, we have the U.S. and Russia. Under commitments, we have NATO, NORAD, and other arrangements. These should then determine the capabilities Canada seeks. The live chat on Tuesday focused mostly on the capability question, but the questions of threats and commitments are logically prior. Before we ask, “Do we need subs and F-35s?”, we need to understand what they might be for.

Next week, I will delve into the means and big trade-offs that Canada must consider in light of these threats and commitments.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

In recent years, Canadian foreign policy has sometimes seemed to boil down to a military policy. Yes, we have launched free-trade negotiations around the world and promoted religious liberty, among other things. But as Eugene Lang recently observed, aside from trade promotion, the main pillar of our foreign policy appears to be the willingness to provide Canadian military forces to fight in coalition operations.

This fits with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s stated view of Canadian history and world affairs. According to Harper, this history has been defined by a series of momentous struggles between forces of good and ill. He believes that these struggles have shaped the course of world history and defined Canada’s identity.

If Harper were correct, it might make sense for Canada to elevate war-fighting readiness to the very top of our foreign-policy priorities, to highlight looming international threats, and to encourage our allies to take a firm stand in the face of these dangers. It also wouldn’t hurt to remind Canadians about their nation’s history of military prowess – say, by earmarking $28 million to celebrate the anniversary of the War of 1812.

However, we have a problem if this is the premise for our discussion about the future of the CF, because Harper’s stylized rendition of Canadian history and global affairs is dubious. While Canadians have demonstrated bravery and valour in combat, and some of these conflicts have been turning points in our history, we also have a proud tradition as a nation that has learned to avert conflicts through diplomacy, abroad and at home. This is as much a part of our history and identity as martial glory or moral rectitude. Indeed, the ability to work through problems using the tools of diplomacy and multilateralism as opposed to violence may be most central to who we are as a people, and to what we do in the world. At the very least, these qualities have been instrumental in keeping this unlikely country together for the past 145 years.

So, before losing ourselves in debates about how best to equip the CF for the future, I would encourage the contributors in this series to consider the broader purposes of Canada’s foreign policy. Failure to question these purposes may be tantamount to accepting the current ones as given, which today means accepting the primacy of the military as a device for achieving our foreign-policy goals, and the corresponding pre-eminence of DND in Ottawa relative to the two other “international departments”: the beleaguered Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) and the much-maligned Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

This imbalance in our international policy instruments may simply be an artifact of the Afghan mission – where, by necessity, military personnel dramatically outnumbered civilian diplomats and aid officials – but I don’t think so. The elevation of Canada’s war-fighting military as a symbol of patriotism has been more than the result of the bravery or professionalism of Canadian troops in Afghanistan; it has also been a deliberate act of government policy.

The centrality of the CF and DND in Canada’s foreign policy, and in our foreign-policy machinery, is therefore unlikely to change, even as Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan winds down.

I am not suggesting that we should neglect the CF. On the contrary, we need to maintain a multifunctional military that is capable of learning new methods quickly, because the only constant in war is that the next conflict is unlikely to look like the last. Happily, the CF demonstrated its adaptability in Afghanistan, where it implemented a complex strategy in an unfamiliar and very difficult environment. Moreover, although there were equipment gaps (from clothing to transport) at the beginning of the operation, Canada’s contingent in Kandahar arguably ended up being the best-equipped unit in the entire International Security Assistance Force.

No, my point is not that we should neglect the military. Rather, it is that we need to remember one thing before we embark on a discussion of the future of the Canadian Forces: Our military is an instrument of national policy, not the other way around – and it is but one instrument.

The starting point is to consider how the Forces view the effort: as a success.  While Canadians have been wondering what went wrong (see the CIC’s posts of the last week), it is pretty clear that the Canadian Forces saw the Kandahar mission as a success.  How can we tell?  Nearly every officer who commanded in Afghanistan has been promoted.  Why do the folks in the Canadian Forces think the mission was a success?  Because Canada proved it can do some heavy lifting in a hard place, adapting to the circumstances, and being a better ally than most. 

So, what did the Forces do right in its counter-insurgency fight that it will try to repeat next time?  First, the move to Kandahar occurred at the same time that a new command philosophy was put into place, giving the commanders in the field far more discretion than they previously had.  This, more than anything, reflected a generational change from the post-Somalia affair with the officers who had chafed under micro-management from Ottawa now in a position to delegate more to the field commanders.  This contrasted sharply not only with the CF’s past but with CIDA’s situation and largely that of DFAIT as well. 

Which leads to the second lesson learned from Afghanistan and parallels the U.S. playbook on counter-insurgency: to win a COIN campaign, you need to have close cooperation with the civilian efforts, and if they do not show up, you will have to do it yourselves.  The Canadian Forces did much more outside their traditional lanes than ever before—meeting with local elders, mentoring the series of governors (not matter how much they might have resisted), trying to get assistance dollars via alternative sources (USAID), and so on.  The reforms following the Manley Panel, including the creation of the Representative of Canada in Kandahar [RoCK] were meant to improve “Whole of Government” efforts so that the CF would be in synch with the DFAIT, CIDA, RCMP, Corrections.  While this did facilitate better cooperation, it was not very robust.  When General Jon Vance reacted to the US surge by concentrating efforts in a few model villages as the Canadian Forces no longer had to cover all of the province, this contradicted the plans of the civilian agencies that had drawn up maps of the schools that were to be built all over the province.  In the ensuing bureaucratic tussle, the higher ups in the military stood behind their guy in the field.  The lesson to draw: the military will be more responsive to changing situations in the field than the plans of the civilian agencies in Ottawa.

The third lesson would be, unfortunately, from Donald Rumsfeld: “As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.”  With most of the future Canadian defence dollars to be spent on the F-35 and a bunch of ships, the army will once again find itself short of kit the next time it is sent somewhere dangerous.  While there were many jokes about wearing the wrong kind of camouflage uniforms at first, the shortage of helicopters was far more serious, leading to more convoys on the ground and more risk of casualties due to roadside bombs.  The CF adapted by leasing helos (and tanks) and by buying others via processes that Auditors-General do not love.  Expect more innovative acquisitions when the CF is sent into harm’s way without everything it wants.

In sum, the military’s leadership learned that the Forces could perform well on the battlefield and within the alliance if they give commanders room to make decisions, are willing to work with the civilians when the CIDA and DFAIT folks are cooperative and ignore if not, and are creative as they adjust to the inevitable shortfalls in equipment.  Expect the pattern of less micro-management to continue, but also expect the civilians to react by designing missions that restrict what the CF can do.  The two post-Kandahar missions limited what the CF can do: behind the wire training anywhere but Kandahar and air strikes with no boots on the ground in Libya.  Was this by design?  That a military that is less willing to micro-manage from Ottawa is one that politicians might be more reluctant to deploy?  That is a set of lessons that the civilians in charge of the government must ponder.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

France is hardly unique in this respect. Across the western world, voters are deserting the centre ground of politics for fringe parties and populist movements. The rise of the Tea Party in the United States, the resurgence of Scottish nationalism, even the surprise ascent of Canada’s perennial also-rans, the NDP, all reflect voters’ deep desire for “change” – any change – and an even deeper contempt for politicians, parties and, in some cases, government itself.

Politicians are at least partly to blame. A litany of broken promises, financial scandals, and sexual improprieties, all amplified by a voracious media, has led to a collapse of trust between voters and the politicians they elect. Walter Bagehot, the great Victorian essayist, argued that governments need to maintain a degree of “mystery” in order to preserve their citizen’s respect. Today’s casual familiarity with politicians – promoted not least by politicians themselves through an endless parade of photo-ops, sound bites, and tweets – has only bred contempt. According to a recent Gallup poll, just 10 per cent of Americans have faith in their elected officials – down from 30 per cent a decade ago – and well below even bankers or big business. According to the World Economic Forum, people in Azerbaijan – a quasi-dictatorship and ex-Soviet Republic – trust their politicians more than Americans do.

But the problem goes deeper. For all of the partisan bickering and jockeying for power, there is striking unanimity among most politicians in most countries today about the policies that must inescapably be followed – more austerity, leaner social programs, improved competitiveness, ever deeper regional and global integration. The problem is that these views are not always shared by the man on the street, who’s still reeling from a weak economy, employment insecurity, stagnating incomes, and world seemingly rigged in favour of the richest and most powerful.  It is this growing divide between a discontented electorate – increasingly unhappy with the direction their countries are headed – and a political class – which has no credible alternative to offer – that explains the deep-seated malaise affecting almost every democracy today.

Democracies succeed, not just because political differences can be expressed, but because a deeper consensus makes such differences tolerable and acceptable. The recent French election is yet another sign that this basic consensus – or social contract – is in danger of unravelling. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is right to call the result “alarming”.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

But before moving onward, one key point stands out: Canada was not the only country operating and struggling in Afghanistan. We can blame Ottawa for how Canada handled the operation but responsibility for mission failure, if and when it occurs, lies in the region and at NATO headquarters in Brussels. The focus here is on the Afghanistan question. Considering Canada’s efforts and what we can learn from them is a topic for another day.

So, if the goal was to build a semi-stable Afghanistan, why hasn’t it worked?  In large part because the task was very, very hard.  Afghanistan does not have oil to fund both national and local governments.  The country was broken by the Soviet invasion, the ensuing civil war and the brutal Taliban regime, so the mission’s starting point was quite low.  There were few existing institutions to build on, generations of people with traumatic stress, and not much in the way of resources.

This is then combined with one of the toughest challenges of the 20th and 21st centuries: insurgency, as Bob Bothwell noted in his interview.  Yes, insurgents have been defeated, but most counter-insurgency efforts are long, costly and have low probabilities of success. In 2001, Afghanistan had all of the features that make an insurgency not only likely to occur but to also be quite successful: difficult terrain, abundance of illicit goods to fund the effort (poppies), poverty, inequality, corruption, bothersome neighbours and a weak government.  Fighting a successful counter-insurgency campaign requires many things that were in short supply: patience, cooperative neighbours, and strong indigenous leadership on which to build.

Patience was always going to be an issue given the abundance of democracies involved in the war, all of whom routinely had elections to contend with at home.  Unfortunately, much time was wasted in the war’s early years.  The Americans were distracted by Iraq, so they did not invest sufficient military or diplomatic resources early on, as Roland Paris noted in his interview.  Indeed, the mandate from Bush/Rumsfeld was to do as little as possible so that the forces and resources could be focused on Iraq.  The new ISAF mission, eventually taken up by NATO, only covered Kabul at first and was explicitly not a counter-insurgency effort until, well, very recently.  So, when people say “we have been doing this for 10 years, we should have something to show for it,” it ignores the reality that NATO has only being engaged in counter-insurgency since 2006 and only a properly resourced COIN campaign for about two or three years.

The second problem is Pakistan.  Not only did the Taliban and Haqqani networks find it safe to operate, recover, train, and plan within Pakistan, but NATO’s opponents also received significant material assistance from Pakistan.  Arms, supplies, information and more came from a country that is supposed to be an American ally.  As Bill Graham noted in his interview, the role of Pakistan is crucial here for giving the Taliban life when it was near death and then abetting the insurgents once they had recovered from the American intervention in 2001.  To be sure, neighbours often tolerate insurgents residing on their territory for a variety of reasons and Pakistan had limited control over these regions, but Pakistan went beyond tolerating and condoning the Taliban to fostering and facilitating them.

The third problem has been President Karzai.  To be fair, the man has long been in a difficult spot.  He had to rely on warlords across the country to have any influence outside of Kabul.  Corruption was a key means to keep these folks on board.  So, we cannot blame Karzai for every failure of the Afghan government.  What we can blame Karzai for is never owning the war.  Yes, the war was run by NATO and the Americans, but the war has been fought on behalf of his government.  Instead of standing in front and arguing why the war was necessary and why the mistakes made by the strangers must be tolerated, Karzai essentially used the international community for domestic political purposes.  His re-election campaign centered on NATO collateral damage rather than the folks causing the majority of destruction and harm – the Taliban.  Yes, he only did what it took to stay in power, but there were multiple ways to do that and Karzai seems to have chosen those that were most likely to endanger the war effort.  While the West is there for their interests, they are also fighting on his behalf, but he has rarely acted like it.

So, Canadians can and should criticize their government for falling short of expectations, but we need to be fair about what was expected.  NATO is failing in Afghanistan, not just Canada (whose departure from Kandahar did NATO no favors).  Why?  Because fighting an insurgency is damned difficult even if you do everything right.  But the U.S. burned a lot of time during the early stages of the war, making it even more difficult to build a government with leaders barely inclined to actually govern in a country where the neighbours are eager to undermine the international community. When we speak of mistakes, we refer to decisions that could have been made differently.  While fighting in Afghanistan would be hard under any circumstances, the three big bad decisions were for the U.S. to invade Iraq, for Pakistan to support the insurgents, and for Karzai to run against NATO and ISAF rather than with it.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

For one thing, it is a civil war by conventional definitions. All it takes to have a civil war is two sides with the ability and will to harm each other. In the past, Syrian violence fell short of this definition because the violence was all one-sided. Not anymore.

Second, one of the basic arguments about the cause and duration of civil war is the inability for one or both sides to genuinely and credibly commit to a peace accord. This is the problem du jour, and it is on both sides. And even saying “both sides” is problematic, because there is Assad and then there are various opponents to Assad. As the events in Libya have demonstrated since the fall of Gadhafi, there is often much less unity among the opposition than press accounts describe. Studies have shown that conflicts last longer when there are more than two sides in a civil war, and, given what we think we know about the Syrian opposition, it is unlikely that they can form a coherent single front against Assad, and at a bargaining table.

The other, more problematic, side of the credibility issue is Assad himself. There is not much that binds him to his commitments to cease fire. The problem here is largely the same as it was in Libya: When a dictator uses violence and then promises to stop, he either does not stop at all, or he does so but then escalates his use of violence again later. In such situations, the responsibility to protect implies regime change because the international community cannot bind dictators to their promises to behave. One can only protect such populations if the dictator is removed, and even that is not entirely sufficient, as violence in Libya reminds us.

Third, civil wars last longer when international intervention supports both sides or neither side. Only when the international community is relatively united in backing one side can the intervention end the conflict relatively quickly. In the case of Syria, the international community is hardly united. Russia has been supporting the Syrians with threatened vetoes of UN resolutions in New York, and with technical assistance to improve air defences in Syria. NATO is exhausted by the wars of the past 10 years, its members are cutting their militaries in the face of budget crises, and multiple leaders are facing elections where the pressure is to focus on home. As a result, NATO is not going to step up here, even if Turkey asks.

And it is possible that Turkey might ask, as it sees Syrian violence along its border, and aimed against refugees on Turkish territory, but the past few days of discussion about Turkey and Article V (which dictates that an attack upon one equals an attack upon all) overlooks the reality that NATO would need to get enough consensus within the organization to agree that Turkey has been attacked and that NATO should do something. Furthermore, people forget that Article V has an opt-out clause built in – each country is to respond as it deems necessary. So, even if NATO invoked Article V, it would not actually require any member of NATO to do anything at all.

Fourth, intervention would require war. Safe havens would not be safe, as the Bosnian Muslims learned at Srebrenica. One has to use force to create a safe zone, and then have a very credible threat in order to maintain such a zone. That would require using force against Syria and then backing it up with real capability and resolve. As of now, it doesn’t look like either of those things is likely to happen any time soon.

So, we can hope that Kofi Annan’s efforts will make a difference, but hope is not a plan. On the other hand, there are no attractive options given the challenges of fighting a war against Syria.  Maybe the only thing we can do is hope, since there is nothing to plan.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Annan played a critical role in stemming the violence that erupted after Kenya’s disputed national elections in late 2007 (which led to approximately 1,200 deaths and the displacement of over 600,000 people). As the ethnically motivated attacks threatened to spiral out of control, the African Union sent in a number of potential mediators (including former South African bishop Desmond Tutu, and the former president of Ghana, John Kufuor). But it was only when Annan arrived and the international community focused on a single negotiation process that the talks between the two rival political leaders (President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga) finally got underway. After roughly 40 days of hard bargaining – underpinned by threats to impose targeted sanctions and cut off aid – a deal (the National Accord and Reconciliation Act) was reached, which included a power-sharing agreement and the establishment of a justice and reconciliation commission. The key measures that facilitated the accord included sequestering the two sides at a retreat at the Kilaguni Lodge in Kenya’s Tsavo West National Park, Annan’s well-timed interventions with the two principals, and temporarily suspending the talks when negotiations appeared to be deadlocked.

The question capturing minds at present, of course, is whether Annan’s considerable skills and experience (as demonstrated in Kenya) can lead the rival sides in Syria to accept the peace plan – now dubbed the Annan Peace Plan. While plenty of observers, including U.S. Senator John McCain, want more forceful measures to kick into action, others would still like to give diplomacy a chance.

In analyzing why negotiations succeeded in Kenya, the Centre for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University identified a number of more general factors (beyond Annan’s personal qualities) that were crucial to bringing about a peaceful resolution of the dispute: a single mediation process fully supported by the international community; strong engagement by civil society (whose various members came together under an umbrella movement called Kenyans for Peace with Truth and Justice); the division of issues into short-term and long-term categories; a well-planned media strategy; and an understanding of peace as a process rather than an event, among other things.

It’s not hard to see that few (if any) of these conditions are present in Syria. For example, while the international community is less divided than it was two months ago, it is still sending mixed signals to Syrian officials about whether/how the opposition groups in the country are being supported by the outside world. At a more fundamental level, however, the environment for negotiation is less hospitable in this crisis, making it harder to get people to sit around the proverbial “table.” As former British foreign office minister Lord Malloch Brown recently argued on the BBC, the international community is hamstrung by two trends that it has itself fuelled since the beginning of the 21st century. On the one hand, various western interventions have frequently tipped the balance in favour of opposition groups, leading them to think that as long as they have “right” on their side, the outside world will give them unqualified support. On the other hand, after 9/11, western governments encouraged the view that all opposition rebels were “terrorists” who had to be fought to the bitter end, since they could not be negotiated with. The latter narrative is precisely the one being propagated by the Syrian government. Added to these trends is the growing commitment to accountability for the commission of crimes, which makes it more challenging to create a negotiating strategy that disaggregates issues into “short” and “long” term.

Has the international community forgotten how negotiation works? At present, it seems to think that only one man can make it happen. But the problem in Syria may be too intractable – even for the world’s negotiator.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

For any government seeking to control any agency, there is a basic problem: the agency will have more information and more expertise than the people seeking to exert control. This is especially the case when it comes to the military, where secrecy is actually required some of the time, and where the gap in expertise is vast. One can argue that it is the job of the minister of national defence and the folks in DND to oversee the military, and parliamentarians have told me exactly that. The auditor-general’s report shows that this mechanism of civilian oversight of the Canadian Forces is incredibly lacking. There are two other ways that civilians can facilitate oversight: via Parliament, and through improved civilian expertise. Unfortunately, recent events and trends suggest that civilian oversight is going to remain problematic, and even worsen.

I have been telling my students for the past few years that there is no parliamentary oversight over the Canadian military. I would normally say that procurement is the exception to that rule, but the F-35 fiasco suggests that is not even true. Why do I make such a claim?  Because parliamentarians lack the basic requirements for engaging in oversight over the Canadian Forces: interest, expertise, and clearances. Because of the nature of Canadian politics, there is really no incentive for any member of Parliament to dedicate much time and effort to learn about the Canadian military. MPs do not spend much time on the defence committee, so even defence critics lack real understanding of how things work. And even if they did understand, they cannot ask penetrating questions, or even know what questions to ask, since they lack security clearances. They cannot hold the feet of the generals and admirals to the fire, since the officers can say, “We cannot tell you.”

Worse still, the members of Parliament that I have talked to about this accept the situation and prefer to remain relatively ignorant critics rather than informed overseers. This contrasts sharply not just with representatives and senators in the U.S. Congress, but also with the parliaments in Europe. Sure, the Brits, Aussies, and New Zealanders have a similar legacy of ill-informed parliaments, with Question Period with the ministers serving as the only real forum for raising concerns. The problem, of course, is that this is public, and much of what might need to be discussed is private. The Dutch, the Germans, and the other continental European countries hold closed sessions so that their MPs can ask important questions and get real information from their ministers and their military officers. After the fiascos of the detainee investigations and the F-35, the members of Parliament might just consider opening up their imagination about what parliaments can do to supervise the military. Depending on the ministers to do the oversight for them does not seem to be working very well.

Civilian expertise is another important check on any military. The more that the non-uniformed people know about the military, the harder it is for the officers to fool the public.  Before the Second World War, there was relatively little civilian expertise about the military in any advanced democracy. After the war, scholars and experts became important alternative sources of information about modern militaries. In Canada, the Department of National Defence supported this development through two key mechanisms: its own educational institutions and the funding of civilian research.

DND operates the Royal Military College of Canada, the Canadian Forces College, and the Royal Military College of St. Jean. These schools not only educate military officers, but also employ academics who study the military. By providing jobs and funding to scholars who focus on the military, DND is helping to breed knowledge about the Canadian Forces (and militaries elsewhere). However, one-third of the professors working in these institutions are about to lose their jobs due to defence budget cuts. This will significantly weaken civilian expertise at a time when there seems to be a great need for understanding the Canadian Forces and the challenges they face.

The second mechanism, funding of civilian research, was largely done through the Security and Defence Forum (SDF), an agency within DND. SDF supported research by scholars throughout Canada, but is now facing the axe, apparently losing 80 per cent of its funding. This will mean that all the research centres throughout Canada will lose much of their revenue, and will thus be forced to close down or scale back their activities. These centres not only did research, but also transmitted their findings to the Canadian public via media, conferences, and education.

The decline in civilian expertise resulting from these budget cuts is not just bad for professors – it is also bad for Canada. The media will be less able to assess what is going on and communicate it to the public since they rely on experts to help them understand the meaning of ongoing events, the implications of various technologies, and the trade-offs of alternative strategies. It would not be so problematic if the military and current government were transparent, but that is not the case, as the auditor-general’s report demonstrates quite clearly.

I have a great deal of respect for the Canadian military, but the past several years indicate that the current government and military have a strong tendency to smooth over whatever happens rather than being upfront about it. I am convinced that the Canadian military behaved responsibly in difficult circumstances when it came to the challenge of transferring detainees in Afghanistan. But rather than being transparent and clear about the problem as it arose, its tendency seemed to be to deny, deny, deny. That angered the politicians, gave the media the sense that there was smoke and fire, and ultimately distracted everyone from focusing on the really important questions of the day, such as whether the mission was worthwhile and what it was for. The same dynamic has largely been true for the F-35s: Greater transparency would have meant less hostility. As usual, it is not so much the crime, but the cover-up, that is the problem. I don’t mean to say that something criminal has occurred, but rather that the instinct to pour secret sauce on any decision, event, or problem does not do anyone a service, as the truth often does get out, and then it is far more controversial. With the eventual decline in civilian expertise, we may find that the secret sauce gets thicker and penetrated far less often.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

There is one major problem with specialization: If you are on the battlefield and you need an ally to show up with a key capability, such as helicopters, reconnaissance technology and personnel, light or heavy armoured vehicles, etc., there is no guarantee that the ally will show up. The lessons of Afghanistan were not new ones, and they were repeated in the skies over, and the seas near, Libya. Countries always impose varying restrictions upon their own contingents, even as they transfer operational command to the alliance or ad hoc coalition leaders.

In Afghanistan, that meant that Canadian troops in Kandahar got some support from some allies at some key points in time, but other allies either did not show up at all (Germany got the most grief for this), or showed up a day late because they had to call home for permission. In the aftermath of the first prison break in Kandahar, the French unit assigned to embed with a particular Afghan battalion, or kandak, could not move to Kandahar quickly because they had to call home to get permission from French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

For the Libyan effort, only about half of NATO countries bothered to participate at all, and only a handful of them were willing to drop bombs. Others participated in the embargo or the no-fly zone, as these presented less risk and less visibility. Most notably, Germany pulled out of the one truly multinational effort – the Airborne Warning and Control Systems planes – which forced NATO to find other personnel to staff positions in those planes. 

Canadians cannot be too smug about this, as Canada imposed its own restrictions in Bosnia, in the skies over Kosovo, and even in Afghanistan for the first couple of years and again since the summer of 2011.

Canada’s experience with specialization in Afghanistan was unpleasant. Canada sent its army into Kandahar with little in the way of helicopter support, hoping and expecting that the Americans and the Brits would fly them around whenever required. However, helicopters were a scarce commodity, so the Americans and Brits and others often assigned the helicopters to their own efforts. (It could have been worse: Germany and Italy both deployed only a handful of choppers for their sectors, which each represented about one-quarter of the country.) This meant that the Canadians had to spend more time on the roads of Kandahar, raising the risks for the troops. This problem was only addressed as part of the Manley Panel’s conditions for renewing the mission. So, one of the lessons learned from Afghanistan is that dependence due to specialization can be quite costly in lives and, as a result, in support for the mission.

NATO can, and should, encourage as much co-ordination as possible in defence planning, but countries, such as Canada, should – and probably will – remember the lessons from previous missions: Specialization means dependence, and allies are not always reliable, so specialization means increased risk. To be sure, military operations and planning should be about managing and mitigating risk rather than avoiding it entirely. Politicians just need to keep in mind that what they do today in terms of weapons procurement does have consequences for how risk is finessed down the road, on the battlefield, at sea, and in the skies. 

Photo courtesy of Reuters

That assumption is – at best – optimistic. Hard as it is to believe with gasoline prices surging passed $1.30 per litre, the current decade-long commodity boom is a temporary aberration in the otherwise relentless decline in raw-material prices over the past 200 years. This is not the first time in history that commodity markets have soared: Prices rose before the First World War, after the Second, and again in the 1970s. But each great boom was invariably followed by a great bust. And over the long run, the real price of almost every raw material – from oil to iron to copper to corn – has slid steadily downwards.

The explanation lies with the power of technology to outrace scarcity. Economic expansion drives up commodity prices as markets swallow limited resources and demand outstrips supply. But rising prices also increase incentives to invest in new exploration, new extraction methods, new infrastructure, and new, more efficient, ways to use existing (or substitute) resources. Sooner or later, supply outstrips demand and prices tumble again, weakening incentives to explore, invest, and innovate, thus laying the groundwork for the next big resource “crisis.”

The perception that mining, forestry, or farming are low-tech industries – mere “hewers of wood and drawers of water” – couldn’t be further from the truth. (Think vast prairie agribusinesses or the Hibernia oil platform.) But massive productivity and efficiency gains also translate into falling resource prices and declining shares of global output – allowing us to spend more and more of our incomes on cars, gadgets, and holidays abroad. Less than five per cent of North Americans are farmers or miners today, compared to almost 50 per cent a century ago. Our great-grandparents saved for coal, we save for iPads. All signs point to a world economy moving inexorably away from the raw-material age, through the machine age, to the information age.

It’s possible that the current commodity boom is different – that population growth, declining reserves, and the mass industrialization of China and other emerging giants has opened up a yawning gap between rising global demand and finite global supplies that technology can’t bridge, creating a permanent shift in the price structure of resources. Thomas Robert Malthus wasn’t wrong, just premature.

But things have been “different” before. In 1972, at the height of the energy crisis, the Club of Rome gloomily predicted that exponential rates of growth and resource depletion would result in the world running out of gold by 1981, mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, oil by 1992, and natural gas by 1993 – less than a decade before the onset of a 20-year commodity glut. Two centuries before that, Malthus warned that population increases would overwhelm finite food supplies and plunge humanity into starvation. Since then, the world’s population has grown seven-fold and the economy 16-fold.

Already, today’s sky-high commodity prices are spurring a wave of new investment and innovation in the resource sector. Hydraulic fracking technology is an obvious example, responsible for turning the U.S. from a major natural-gas importer to an emerging gas exporter – and slashing prices by two-thirds – in less than a decade. Advances in technology and infrastructure are transforming the U.S. into the world’s fastest-growing oil producer, as well. Just last week, Citigroup analysts offered the startling prediction that the U.S. could eclipse Russian and Saudi Arabian oil production by 2020, and that oil prices would fall. China, too, is responding to its dependence on scarce raw materials by dramatically ramping up its domestic output of coal, nickel, and other raw materials, and by investing massively in oversees oilfields, mines, and farmland. Meanwhile, global output of iron ore, copper, and other raw materials is rising exponentially, giant new oil fields have been discovered off the coasts of Africa and Latin America, and science is coming up with substitute materials, alternative energy sources, and more efficient ways to use them.

Add to this the fact that the tidal wave of speculative capital pouring into commodity markets – the result of huge money supply growth and investors’ search for hard assets – could flow out again just as quickly when supply outpaces demand and prices fall, and some analysts now predict not an endlessly rising commodity market, but the inevitable bursting of a global commodity bubble.

This is not an argument for Canada turning its back on industries where it has a comparative advantage. But it is an argument for saving a greater share of Canada’s resource bonanza while the good times last. Where’s the Canadian equivalent of Norway’s $570-billion Oil Fund, for example, after decades of energy-industry profits? It’s also an argument for focusing more on the supplier, services, and R&D sides of the industry, which is where the main value is added. Why are Chicago and New York, and not Toronto, the main commodity-market hubs? And why are so few of the world’s top mining and energy companies headquartered in Canada?

Above all, it’s an argument for recognizing that – if history’s any guide – this long commodity boom will eventually be followed by a long bust. Canada’s economic future hinges on more than tar sands or pipelines.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

In the wake of the recent Panjwai massacres, I have had a running conversation on Twitter with Roland Paris about the fact that the American media is far more concerned with the shooter, Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, than with his victims. The New York Times and other outlets have been overly curious about Bales’ background, while failing even to list the names of the Afghans who were killed. In fact, the first outlet to list the victims was Al Jazeera English.

Admittedly, covering the Afghans is hard, while researching an American-based soldier is easy. But this tendency to cover the killer rather than the victim is not unique to war – it is the American media’s typical response to criminal coverage in general. Looking back, it seems clear that we know far more about the serial killers – John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, etc. – than we do about their targets, people whose names we know not. I think much of this is driven by the desire to understand the events, where agency lies entirely with the killers. The victims did little to become victims besides being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The killers, on the other hand, are making the choices, and are thus the objects of our curiosity. And this is not just an American tendency: Russell Williams, a former colonel in the Canadian Forces who was convicted of murder and rape, is the object of books featured in Canadian bookstores, and his victims are not.

This sort of response to criminal behaviour is borne in part out of a desire to explain, but also to provide some accountability. Who is responsible for Robert Bales’ crimes? The answer is: Robert Bales. Other soldiers have had similar life experiences – multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, marital problems, and concussions – but only this one has gone on a killing spree. Still, we might also acknowledge individual responsibility and collective mistakes. For one thing, fighting in two brutal wars over 10 years has a variety of costs, including, perhaps, an increased probability that something like this might happen. I do think we are smart and judicious enough to hold the individual accountable via court martial while also recognizing that this massacre would have been less likely to happen had the U.S. not invaded Iraq (the “original sin” for the 21st century). 

While Canada and the U.S. share this tendency to focus on the criminal rather than the victims, I do think there are some differences: I have not yet seen convicted or failed Canadians getting a second act the way Americans have. Perjurer Oliver North gets to be a pundit. Dick Cheney lacks the discretion he should have had to retire into silence. And today, Lynndie England is getting media attention regarding the recent massacre despite serving time for her part in the Abu Ghraib crimes. While we may not want to deprive convicted war criminals of their right to free speech, I often wonder whether they have a right to be heard. Such individuals rarely have messages that enlighten and inform. England’s latest statements, for instance, remind us that some people never learn, which makes it even more important that we do. We need to figure out how to prevent people like her from being shameless advocates of hate in the aftermath of committing war crimes.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

First, while killing 16 innocent civilians is horrible, Americans are not the only ones who have committed significant crimes in Afghanistan. Canada convicted one of its officers, Robert Semrau, for executing a wounded Taliban on the battlefield. The killings last weekend are, of course, an order of magnitude worse than that. Consider another incident: In September 2009, two NATO fuel trucks were captured by the insurgents but then got stuck in the mud. The local German commander called in an airstrike, concerned that the tankers could be used as massive improved explosive devices – truck bombs. The air strikes killed over 100 civilians who were trying to get some of the stolen fuel. This is an order of magnitude worse than last weekend’s shooting. These three events raise questions about what is worse: coldly violating standards of mercy, apparently losing one’s mind, or fearfully making a poor decision? Obviously, the Afghans are probably not going to make such distinctions.

Second, a key distinction can be made between intended and unintended events. The incidents mentioned above were not the products of NATO policies, but violations of policies. This contrasts rather sharply with the modus operandi of the actors causing most of the harm to civilians in Afghanistan over the past 10 years – the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other insurgent groups. These actors have been using strategies and tactics that deliberately target civilians or provoke reactions that put civilians in harm’s way. Again, Afghans may not make this distinction, especially since it is NATO’s job, and the job of the Afghan security forces, to prevent such attacks. Still, it is something to keep in mind.

Third, to say that this, and other recent events – such as the Koran-burning incident and U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban – represent a turning point in Afghanistan is to focus entirely too much on the most recent news. The reality is that we have already passed the turning point: The publics of NATO countries have lost their patience, the governments of NATO countries have realized that building an Afghan government with President Hamid Karzai’s people in place is akin to building a house on sand, and the neighbours of NATO countries know that NATO is on the way out. 2014, as the time of transition (which means exit for most NATO troops), is already a done deal. The pace between now and then matters, but far less than the reality of this end date. Sure, we do not know yet how many Americans will stick around to advise and to provide special-forces capabilities after 2014, but most NATO countries will have moved the majority of their combat troops out by then. Some may move faster if new governments are elected (i.e. in France), but few are likely to move slower than currently planned.

Fourth, it is quite unpleasant to hear Canadians blame Americans for undoing their work in Kandahar, where so much Canadian blood was spilled. The Canadian Forces left Kandahar, leaving someone – anyone – else to take responsibility for the difficult area. It is mighty smug to leave a difficult place and then criticize those who pick up the slack. Leaving in the middle of fighting season does not give Canada much of a high ground from which to slam the Americans who replaced them. It is, of course, sad for Canadian soldiers to see that the places where they fought and where they bled may now be reversing course, but criticizing the American forces for what one soldier apparently did is a bit much – especially when a Canadian soldier could have easily done the same had the Canadian Forces still been there.

We can, and should, be critical of any country or military operating on foreign land. But before we can accurately assess their actions and behaviours, we need to consider them in context. In terms of the recent shooting spree, for instance, what we currently know is that the incident was not the product of policy, as the individual responsible was violating orders. Still, the situation facing troops in Afghanistan today is the product of a decade of flawed policies that have stressed out the militaries of the U.S. and its allies, produced too little progress on governance, and created more antagonisms between the Afghans and the international community. The news from last weekend is horrendous, to be sure, but let’s take a breath or two before drawing big conclusions or making sweeping accusations.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

Evans, Power, and their “fellow idealists” misunderstand the nature of mass atrocities, de Waal argues. Instead of recognizing that skillful diplomacy can, in some circumstances, achieve political solutions to large-scale violence, “idealists” tend to view perpetrators as insatiable killers who can only be stopped by sending in the cavalry against them. According to de Waal, this tendency to turn to military solutions for mass violence is naïvely moralistic and dangerous.

There is, however, one big flaw in de Waal’s account: He is misrepresenting R2P and many of its proponents. De Waal has been a critic of R2P for years. By now, therefore, he must know that the doctrine favours non-military over military responses. As Gareth Evans wrote in response to de Waal’s op-ed,

Of course it is preferable for political negotiations to stop mass violence before it burns out for want of further victims, if this can possibly be achieved. That is exactly what Kofi Annan did in Kenya in early 2008, while invoking the “R2P” norm, and what he is trying to achieve now in Syria… The whole point of the R2P doctrine is simply to generate a reflex international response that occurring or imminent mass atrocities are everybody’s business, not nobody’s. What the appropriate response can and should be — including diplomatic persuasion, non-military pressure like sanctions or International Criminal Court action, or (in extreme and exceptional cases) military intervention — depends entirely on the circumstances of each individual case.

The paradox, then, is that while de Waal criticizes “idealists” for oversimplifying complex conflicts and demonizing instead of engaging with perpetrators of violence, he himself presents R2P in distortedly simplified terms. Indeed, based on his op-ed and previous writing, he seems to want to demolish R2P rather than to engage with elements of the doctrine that are consistent with his own “pragmatic” approaches to conflict resolution. Kofi Annan’s current shuttle diplomacy in Syria, for instance, is simultaneously an illustration of R2P in practice and an example of the negotiated approach that de Waal prefers.

It is true that R2P countenances the possibility of outside military intervention in extremis – that is, if non-military methods fail and mass killing looms or is under way. However, nothing makes intervention automatic, even under these circumstances. It is worth recalling the R2P principles set out in the 2001 report of the commission that Evans co-chaired, which stated not only that military intervention may be used only as a last resort, but also that,

There must be a reasonable chance of success in halting or averting the suffering which has justified the intervention, with the consequences of action not likely to be worse than the consequences of inaction.

In other words, even in the face of mass atrocities when all other attempts to end violence have failed, military intervention is not warranted if it is likely to make the situation worse.

This important, prudential warning at the heart of R2P is too often forgotten by the doctrine’s critics and proponents alike. R2P is not an automatic licence for military intervention. Any contemplated armed action must be justified, necessary, proportional – and proven to do more good than harm.

On the other hand, de Waal is quite sensible when he warns advocates of military intervention about the danger of forgetting “to ask important questions about what they want to achieve and how.” That is excellent advice – and it should be a central part of the calculation of whether an intervention is likely to result in conditions that are better than those that would otherwise exist if no intervention occurred.

This is also a consideration we must keep in mind in deciding how to respond to the Syrian regime’s current violence against its own people. The images and stories emerging from Syria are heart-wrenching and horrifying. At this time, however, it is not clear that outside military intervention would succeed in making conditions for Syrian civilians better, not worse. Given the capabilities of the Syrian armed forces, an intervention aimed at creating safe havens, enclaves, or protected corridors would likely entail – and therefore require planning for – a full-scale war to defeat the Syrian regime.

This is difficult news to swallow, not least because it leaves many feeling frustrated by the apparent lack of decisive options to save Syrian lives here and now other than continuing to pursue even more assertive diplomatic efforts to pressure the Syrian government and its supporters. This is the unfortunate situation we are currently facing – as I have attempted to explain elsewhere – although circumstances may change and military options may become more viable.

The broader point is this: Contrary to de Waal’s caricature, one of the “responsibilities” in the R2P doctrine is actually that of prudence. Nothing in the R2P principles legitimizes, or excuses, military recklessness.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

The greatest risk to NATO’s policy and investments in Afghanistan is that the country essentially cracks up under the pressure of the transition in 2014.

Understandably exhausted by years of war, the U.S. and its allies have little appetite for such a message.  Yet, Coll argues that NATO policy is on a trajectory that could end in a collapse of Afghanistan’s fragile governing arrangements and an explosion of violence far worse than what we have witnessed in the last decade – and perhaps as bad as, or worse than the civil war that devastated the country in the 1990s.

A principal problem, he maintains, is the short-sightedness of NATO’s political strategy in Afghanistan.  Right now, the U.S. is seeking to negotiate a deal with the Taliban – negotiations that may or may not bear fruit.  In the meantime, however, the U.S. and its allies are virtually ignoring a more fundamental issue:  How will Afghanistan’s political and governmental structures manage the transition to Afghan security leadership, scheduled for 2014?  Coll warns that these structures could “crack up” under the pressures of transition, with terrible effects on Afghan and regional security.

The focus now, he argues, should be on preparations for a peaceful, legitimate, constitutional transfer of political authority to a new Afghan government at the end of President Hamid Karzai’s term of office in 2014.  “Another fraudulent election” in Afghanistan could be the catalyst for collapse.

Yet, with the Obama administration distracted by other issues, including the U.S. presidential election campaign, NATO policy towards Afghanistan is largely on “autopilot,” he says.  Facing up to shortcomings of the current strategy is a “challenge of leadership,” not only for the U.S., but also for other NATO countries that have sacrificed for, and have an interest in, Afghanistan’s stability.

Below is the video of an interview in which Coll makes many of these points.  If you wish to hear more, you can also watch the video of his public lecture in Ottawa, or read Natalie Brender’s summary of his presentation.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

The crisis du jour is that the Canadian Forces were apparently asked to protect Minister of Defence Peter MacKay after news broke about an inappropriate use of a search and rescue helicopter.  Once again, it is not the crime but the effort to ameliorate if not cover up the crime.  Getting a ride on a military helicopter is mildly controversial, but not a very big deal.  But getting the military to be involved in politics by seeking to find information about similar rides by opposition members is very much a big deal.  The former can almost be seen as a perk of higher office—questionable but not too problematic.  Relying on the military to rat out opposition politicians violates a cardinal tenet of civil-military relations in advanced democracies—the military is to stay out of disputes between politicians.

Yes, militaries do get involved in politics even in advanced democracies, mostly to protect their budgets, their preferred weapons systems, and their autonomy.  We see this now as military budgets contract in the U.K., U.S. and elsewhere.  This might violate some people’s ideas of what is acceptable, the reality is that this is considered normal behaviour.  Opposition research is not normal behaviour.  Far from it.

Who is responsible for this breach?  Both members of the Ministry who asked the military to do the research and the officers who agreed to do it, but the blame lies more on the civilian side in this one.  If the reports are accurate, the investigation was at the request of the civilians so they should feel the brunt of the new controversy.  The officers could have said no and almost certainly should have declined to investigate.  There is no obligation to follow an unlawful order, although it may have been unclear that doing some research was tantamount to violating the law.  The enthusiasm reported in the news story suggests that the Canadian Forces need to take a hard look at themselves—that supporting their Minister against the domestic opposition is not their role.  Supporting their Minister as he prepares to meet with Chinese, American, Dutch or Russian officials is their job.  There is a big bright shiny line between the two activities, and they need to remember not to cross it, even if the Defence Minister is facing criticism that they feel is unwarranted. 

Again, the crisis is not about Defence Minister stretching the rules to fly on a helicopter, but relying on the military to find information to undermine the opposition’s criticism of the minister.  The best way to insure accountability is to punish the civilians who asked the officers to go beyond their appropriate rule, and the officers involved should be admonished.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Consider productivity. According to the U.S. Conference Board, China’s productivity growth was the world’s highest last year at 8.7 per cent – a position it’s held since the mid-1990s. In comparison, productivity grew by just three per cent in rich countries in 2010, and will likely come in at 1.6 per cent in 2011. A recent New York Times article describes how, when Apple needed to quickly re-engineer its iPhone screens, it inevitably turned to Chinese factories because none in the U.S. could meet the necessary turn-around time:

New screens began arriving at the plant at midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into bevelled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

A similar story could be told about almost any company outsourcing manufacturing to China.

The U.S. still tops the productivity league table. But it’s competing against Chinese workers who are paid a fraction of what American workers are paid but whose productivity is getting closer and closer to U.S. levels – and, in some cases, exceeding them. The average Chinese manufacturing wage is $3.10 per hour – one-seventh of the $22.50-per-hour average in the United States. A Chinese engineer costs one-third his American counterpart. These basic competitive advantages explain why China was the second-biggest recipient of foreign investment last year – not just in labour-intensive sectors, but also increasingly in high-tech industries and services. The main competition for the U.S. comes not from China’s “state-capitalism,” but from American multinationals – Apple, GE, AT&T, General Motors, Merck, Coca Cola, P&G – that increasingly chase global growth by “outsourcing” production to China, and which, by building factories, transferring technology, and linking China to foreign markets, are further boosting Chinese productivity. The biggest “exporter” to the U.S., for example, is Wal-Mart and its suppliers. Caterpillar, a relative latecomer to the Chinese market, now has three of its four global research facilities in China, and its highest-quality equipment is no longer “Made in the U.S.A.” or even “Made in Japan,” but “Made in China.”

Consider education. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) latest Programme for International Student Assessment results, a comparison of worldwide education standards, placed Chinese high-school students on top in every category, while the U.S. ranked 17th out of 43 countries in reading, 23rd in science, and lower still in math. None of this would surprise anyone who’s spent time in China, where family and state alike place huge emphasis on education, and where schools and universities are teeming with bright, competitive, and exceptionally hard-working students. Nor would the OECD results surprise anyone familiar with the state of the education system in the U.S., where decaying urban public schools – with their drug tests, metal detectors, dispirited teachers, and near-50-per-cent drop-out rates – can resemble penitentiaries more than places of learning. The Obama administration has quietly dropped the goal, under the “No Child Left Behind” initiative, that all students be proficient in reading and math by 2014, because tens of thousands can’t meet it. The U.S. Education Department recently offered the shocking statistic that 32 million Americans – one in seven adults – are illiterate.

The U.S. finds consolation in the fact that its elite universities are still the world’s best, and that it continues to lead in technological innovation. But for how long? Two-thirds of the 8,000 PhD engineers who graduated from U.S. universities last year were foreigners (mostly Chinese and Indian), the majority of whom were denied the opportunity to work in the U.S. – and thus “repay” the U.S.’s investment in their education – because of protectionist U.S. immigration laws. Meanwhile, Chinese universities graduated half a million engineers, scientists, and technologists last year – a figure that, even if officially exaggerated, easily dwarfs numbers in the U.S., where engineering and science enrolment has declined steadily since the mid-1980s, as more and more top students pursue business studies and the riches of banking or consulting careers. Almost half of Harvard’s 2007 graduating class, for example, ended up on Wall Street. Not surprisingly, U.S. international patent filings dropped from 51,000 to 45,000 between 2006 and 2010, while China’s filings tripled from 4,000 to over 12,000.

Consider scale. Although the U.S. has faced fierce competition from “newly industrializing” economies before – think Japan, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan – what’s different this time is the sheer scale of the Chinese colossus and the speed of its transformation. China’s economy has grown at a rate of 10 per cent a year – without interruption – for the past three decades, a scale of industrialization that has never been seen before, and that will never be seen again. Giants India, Indonesia, and Brazil are not far behind. But while China’s per-capita income has grown an astonishing 12-fold since 1980, it’s still only a tenth of U.S. levels – roughly where the U.S. was a century ago – illustrating the enormous potential for catch-up. China is already the world’s second-biggest economy, and its biggest exporter, car market, and consumer of grain, meat, coal, copper, and steel. And its “great leap forward” is just beginning. A fitting symbol of China’s vast industrial machine is the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen – aptly named “Foxconn City” – within whose walls almost half a million people work, and a quarter of a million live.

Does China cheat? No question. As does almost every other country – whether it’s promoting “strategic technologies,” “safe domestic banks,” “cultural industries,” “family farms,” or “buy American” products. But cheating is not the main reason China is succeeding so spectacularly. Any visitor to China cannot help but be struck (and even shocked) by the extraordinary work ethic, raw competition, and single-minded drive for material advancement, and not come away with a clear picture of why the country is booming. Just as unsettling is the mirror China holds up to us. The world was once in awe of the West for the same reasons we are now in awe of China – and many of the same values that underpin China’s current success also made the West great (Max Weber labelled it the Protestant work ethic). But today, the rest of the world is more likely to view the U.S. and Europe as geriatric economies destined to fade. When European officials approached China last year to contribute to the euro’s bailout, the chairman of the China Investment Corporation dismissed European workers as “indolent” and “slothful,” more concerned with “languishing on beaches,” and refused to consider rescuing Europe until it reformed its “worn out” labour laws and welfare state.

The good news is that – if history is any guide – China’s competitive edge cannot last forever. Its single-minded focus on making existing products more cheaply – at low-wages, with borrowed technology, in mass factories – is ideally suited to the catch-up phase of economic development. It’s less clear that China is well placed to innovate on its own, to invent the next iPhone or Adele. Besides, Chinese wages are gradually rising, inflation is eating away at its currency edge, and workers are beginning to demand a greater share of the fruits of their labour. One day, China may well resemble France – with a 35-hour work week, two-hour lunch breaks, and month-long congés d’étè on the Riviera. Until then, however, the West should get used to being in second place.

Photo courtesy of Reuters

The fiscal crises facing most advanced democracies have meant countries are having second and third thoughts. The U.S. is changing the pace of deliveries and probably the size of its order.  Australia has already faced the music, deciding to buy planes that will be available sooner, and opting to purchase fewer F-35s down the road. Italy and Turkey have cut their buys, the U.K. is dithering, and the Dutch are pondering. Because the price per plane depends on how many are purchased, the decisions of these other countries impact the Canadian purchase. Yet MacKay (actually Prime Minister Stephen Harper) has refused to reconsider the decision.

It is almost as if thinking is weakness. This purchase is incredibly expensive and will ultimately crowd out spending on other defence systems since Canada has a limited taste for such spending.  There are trade-offs that Canadian leaders seem to be ignoring. I have often challenged my students with the following question: If you can only afford two modern branches of the military – land, sea, or air – which ones do you choose? It is a tough question, but we must confront it at some point. 

While there is much criticism in the U.S. for the choices the Obama administration is making in the face of spending restrictions, the U.S. government is at least giving some consideration to the threats that face the country, and the requirements to meet those threats. As a result, the U.S. is keeping most of its navy intact but cutting its army and the Marines since the country will be focusing on deterring wars with China and not so much on long, gruelling counter-insurgency campaigns.

The question for Canada today, tomorrow, and down the road is this: What are the Canadian Forces for? Militaries have two basic purposes for advanced democracies: security and influence.  One buys armed forces to defend the country and/or to exert influence in the world. The difficult thing for Canada is that what is best for one purpose may not be best for the other. That is, as a country with a lot of coastline and only distant threats, modernizing the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy makes a great deal of sense. If that is the priority, then Canada should significantly reduce its army. Funding a modern army at the same time it is funding the rest of the Forces is simply too expensive for Canada given current fiscal patterns. 

On the other hand, whatever Canada buys to protect its seas and airspace is probably going to be insufficient to thwart the biggest threats – the U.S. or Russia. Obviously, the alliance with the U.S. will continue, so Canada could, and almost certainly will, rely upon the much larger U.S. capabilities to defend North America. Instead of focusing on threats, Canada could design an armed force to maximize its influence, by  providing added value in multilateral military efforts (since Canada will not have enough of everything to operate on its own, except perhaps in the Caribbean).

What kind of Canadian Forces would provide the most influence in alliance or coalition efforts? The Libyan and Kosovo efforts suggest that having advanced, interoperable aircraft would give Canada an important role in allied efforts. Afghanistan demonstrated that the key capability for “punching above one’s weight” is a flexible, adaptable army. Canada’s willingness to serve and fight in the hardest parts of Afghanistan gave it influence not just over operations in Afghanistan, but also at NATO headquarters. Indeed, the Afghan effort almost certainly led to Canada having a leading role in the Libyan operation with Lt. General Bouchard as the operational commander. 

Back to the trade-off: In the future, Canada can pay for either a major role in its own security via investing in the RCAF and RCN or it can exert influence when it provides a significant contribution to alliance efforts. But trying to do both will probably mean being inadequate at both, which is what happened in 2006 when Canada sent its land staff into Kandahar without any helicopters while its submarines remained in dry dock.

Canada is not locked into buying the F-35 despite its leadership’s assertions and behaviour. It is not too late to consider the trade-offs – that making this decision will mean that there will be less money for the land staff. That is OK as long as politicians realize this means Canada will be less able, or perhaps unable, to contribute to efforts where there must be boots on the ground. The choices of today will constrain the decision-makers of tomorrow. 

Photo courtesy of Reuters

The first years of the current government did not bring improvements in economic relations.  In some sectors, Canadian companies themselves built growing momentum.  But it was questionable whether government had taken any steps that fudamentally strengthened commercial ties with China. 

Whereas we once were in the top-10 of China’s trading partners (in the 1980s), by the mid 1990s we had fallen behind not only Australia, but also the Italies of the world.  Sure, the Chinese market mattered to us, with China rounding into our number two trading partner (behind only the US, where we have natural geographical complementarities).

But for the Chinese, we were falling on the radar.  Relative to our competitors.

The more recent exceptions have been, of course, in the energy and natural resource sectors, where they have been coming to us due to their own surging demand for inputs.  But other than in select areas of financial services, the self-driven educational sector, and maybe in transport, the story overall was not onwards and upwards.

For the first four years of the Harper government relations cooled and much of the chatter was over the lack of a Prime Ministerial visit to China.  But PM visits can only do so much.  The hard part is having a sustainable impact after Team Canada leaves Chinese soil.

The Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that was just signed in Beijing is momentous and important.  It was 18 years in coming…

By concluding the Agreement yesterday, Canadians have gained the opportunity to lift the relationship with China, and Asia, to a higher level. 

The Agreement will help to create the “stable” investment climate that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was calling for, at the start of the PM visit.  

The likely result to follow will be more Chinese investment into Canada in the energy sector, and in other sectors as well.

This brings both challenges and opportunities for Canada. We need to think through what the Agreement could mean for our relations with China and Asia. And also with the U.S. 

We are higher on the radar again. 

Now, we need to make sure that we’re ready.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Yesterday, almost a year later, the council was the scene of tension and discord, rather than consensus. In a show of defiance, Russia and China both exercised their vetoes to block passage of a resolution sponsored by western and Arab states, designed to address the ongoing carnage in Syria (the final vote tally was 13 to two). Amid the recrimination that followed, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice dropped any pretense of diplomatic courtesy and claimed that she was “disgusted” by the Russian and Chinese decision. “For months this Council has been held hostage by a couple of members,” she said. “Any further bloodshed that flows will be on their hands.” The British permanent representative to New York, Mark Lyall Grant, echoed this sentiment: “Russia and China have turned their backs on the Arab world to support tyranny.”

On the face of it, there seemed to be very little in this resolution to justify the controversial step of wielding a veto. The resolution was in many respects mirroring the language of a previous statement by the League of Arab States, and endorsed that body’s efforts to bring about a “Syrian-led political transition to a democratic, plural political system.” Earlier drafts of the text had been substantially watered down, stripping from it any calls for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and any reference to the use of force. Indeed, the draft that was put to a vote went out of its way to clarify that only peaceful measures were being considered, stating that nothing in the resolution authorized measures under Article 42 of the Charter (the section that invokes the council’s powers to mandate force). Russia’s worries about an arms embargo were also assuaged (important for Moscow, as it is the main arms supplier to Damascus), as this measure, too, was also negotiated away.

But two Russian objections remained. First, though the text demanded that all parties in Syria, including armed groups, immediately cease violence, it also explicitly requested that government troops return to their barracks. Second, the resolution failed to identify opposition activists in Syria as partially to blame for the violence and instability. According to Russian Ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, these two elements sent an “unbalanced message” to those inside Syria. This aversion to choosing sides was echoed by the Chinese permanent representative, Li Baodong, who claimed that the draft resolution had put “undue emphasis” on pressuring the Syrian authorities and risked prejudicing the result of any national dialogue. 

So what is going on here? It is difficult to fully explain this showdown in the council without understanding the impact of the council’s second resolution with respect to Libya, Resolution 1973 (passed on March 17, 2011). This resolution, which authorized the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya, did not receive unanimous support from the council – it passed with five abstentions (two of which came from Russia and China). At the time, Russia voiced its preference for a ceasefire and political negotiation, as it worried that any use of military force might make the situation on the ground even worse. China also reluctantly abstained, rather than vetoed, articulating unease about what the real endgame in Libya might be and stressing the importance of respecting Libya’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Hence, while Resolution 1973 received a green light, it was not (as some have suggested) the shining moment in which the international community rallied around the principle of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). 

Once NATO’s military campaign began, and a no-fly zone to protect civilians morphed into overt assistance for regime change, the muted concerns of these two permanent members of the council turned into full-scale buyers’ remorse. Authorization for a limited mission to protect civilians had been (in their view) illegitimately stretched – under the banner of R2P – to enable the over-throw of the government of a sovereign state. Mindful of this possibility, Russia and China – in collaboration with other skeptical states, such as Brazil and India – have vowed to “never again” provide an opening like that contained in Resolution 1973.  In fact, during the autumn of 2011, the Brazilian delegation to the UN circulated a proposal called “Responsibility while Protecting,” which was designed to: emphasize the international community’s non-military options for exercising R2P; limit the recourse to military force as a “last resort” in any crisis; and ensure that those carrying out any council-authorized military mission abide by the strict terms of the mandate (a coded rebuke to NATO). 

Above all, the post-Libya period of “buyers’ remorse” reminded both supporters and skeptics of R2P of exactly what had been agreed to in 2005, when member states endorsed the principle at the anniversary summit of the UN. Article 139 of the Summit Outcome Document does not necessarily create any new rights or duties with respect to R2P. Instead, it identifies the Security Council – and the messy and political dynamics that occur within that body – as “primary” when any coercive actions by the international community to address atrocity crimes are being considered. It also states clearly that the council will consider such situations on a ‘case by case’ basis, and not be guided by any explicit doctrine. In short, it is inevitable – even acceptable? – that the Council will act inconsistently.

The council’s stalemate over Syria, then, is telling for three reasons. First, the draft resolution made no mention of R2P. Sensitivities over this principle made it virtually impossible for western states to incorporate such language. While French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe called the recent attack in Homs a “crime against humanity,” the Syrian government has managed to convince the Russians and Chinese (and potentially others) that what is occurring inside the country is a battle against foreign-aided insurgents. Even without mention of R2P, the intended purpose of the resolution – to protect civilians – seemed a step too far.

Second, this episode shows that powerful members of the council are not merely uncomfortable with contemplating coercive measures with respect to events in Syria, but are also uncomfortable with any hint of taking sides (even when powerful regional actors are asking them to). The council’s shift away from impartiality, so evident in Côte D’Ivoire and Libya, is being “corrected” by those who see themselves as the guardians of how the UN should approach conflicts inside sovereign states.

The third and final lesson is that states that disagree with this kind of retrenchment are willing to call Russia and China’s bluff. It wasn’t clear, even late in the day, whether the draft resolution would be put to a vote. But in the end, western and Arab states took the view that it was better to isolate the opponents of the proposed political process rather than continue to concede on significant points. Though Russian diplomats warned that forcing a vote would lead to a scandal, the German ambassador to the UN, Peter Wittig, retorted that the greater scandal “is not to act.” Arguably, it may be better for the legitimacy of the council if spoilers are exposed, and reasons for votes in favour and against are aired in public.

Yes, the council has been sidelined. As the Russian ambassador quipped, it “is not the only diplomatic tool on the planet.” But it’s hard to see how a Russian-inspired mediation will have the same level of legitimacy as what the Arab League was contemplating. The question now arises, of course, as to whether there will be further attempts to act through the UN as the crisis continues or whether the supporters of the defeated resolution, in their efforts to ratchet up the pressure on Assad, are willing to act outside it.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Imagine a split-screen image. On one side is Vic Toews, Canada’s minister of public safety, testifying Wednesday before a Senate committee on the government’s omnibus crime bill.

During the 2011 election campaign, the Conservatives promised to make Canada a place where “law abiding” folks “don’t have to worry when they go to bed at night; where they don’t have to look over their shoulders as they walk down the street.” However, the tough-on-crime agenda ran into an awkward fact: Canada’s crime rate had been falling for years. According to Statistics Canada, police-reported crime continued declining in 2010 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), and reached its lowest level since 1973.

Faced with this inconvenient truth, last week, Minister Toews advised the Senate committee that he didn’t know if crime was up or down. “Let’s not talk about statistics, let’s talk about danger,” he said. It was a remarkable pronouncement. He might as well have said: “We know Canadians hear reports of crime and have a vague sense of menace. By focusing on ‘danger’ instead of facts, I am speaking directly to their concerns. They know what I mean.”

Let’s be clear: This is a strategy of fostering and exploiting misplaced public fears about an imagined mounting crime rate. It is a cynical and wrong strategy. It’s factually wrong, it’s ethically wrong, and it’s destined to produce the wrong kind of policies – ones based on fictitious trends and distorted portraits of actual risk.

Now, please turn your attention to the other side of our split screen, where Foreign Minister John Baird is completing a three-day visit to Israel. He is making comments on Iran, a country that both he and Prime Minister Stephen Harper have described as the “world’s most serious threat to international peace.”

They are right to be concerned. The International Atomic Energy Agency still lacks definitive evidence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons program, but there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to warrant the aggressive diplomatic and economic squeeze that Canada and other western countries are putting on that country. As I’ve written previously, any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is bad news –and there are few more odious regimes in the world than the one that has ruled Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

In January, however, the prime minister made some surprising comments. In two separate interviews, he said not only that Iran was seeking nuclear weapons, but also that the country’s rulers would have “no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes.”

This was a problematic claim for two reasons. First, the idea that Iranian leaders wouldn’t hesitate to use nuclear weapons flies in the face of what we know about the behaviour of the Iranian regime. For all their revolutionary jihadist talk, the country’s ruling mullahs have consistently worked to realize one goal above all others: keeping themselves in power.

Second, expressing this dubious position in public had important implications for policy. If the Iranian government is indeed suicidal, a pre-emptive attack may be warranted, and perhaps even required. No one knows what the effects of such a strike might be – whether it would inflame the broader region, or, indeed, whether it would have any lasting impact on Iran’s nuclear potential. For these reasons, the Obama administration –while refusing to rule out the possibility of military action against Iran – has reportedly informed Israel that it would not support such a strike.

This is the context in which Harper has opined on the suicidal intentions of the Iranian regime. In making this assertion, the prime minister was, in effect, weighing into a domestic Israeli debate (between those who favour a pre-emptive military strike and those who prefer restraint) and a growing diplomatic divide between Israel and the U.S. over the nature of the Iranian threat and how to respond to it. Why else, other than to influence this debate, or to prepare Canadian public opinion for a more aggressive Canadian policy towards Iran, would Harper utter these remarks at such a delicate moment? 

Maybe he was just musing aloud, I thought at the time. But it turns out he wasn’t. Back on the split screen, John Baird is speaking to an Israeli newspaper reporter last week. “I believe Iran will use nuclear weapons,” he says, making the point in even blunter language than the prime minister did. This contention now appears to be a “key message” for the government, a part of its communications strategy, which means we are likely to hear it repeated at every opportunity, until it becomes so familiar that ordinary listeners begin to take its veracity for granted.

Yet it is also a position that most experts on Iran would judge as dubious at best. This may be the reason no NATO country other than Canada, to my knowledge, has made such a bold and questionable assertion. Indeed, it is especially jarring at a moment when our closest ally, the United States, is counselling restraint.

I know the prime minister does not care that Canada is out of step with its allies – that he takes pride in taking stands on principle, and in the fact that his government will not “go along to get along.” In this case, however, his “principle” is really just idiosyncratic speculation – and dangerously provocative speculation at that.

Now, zoom out. The two parts of our split screen are actually mirror images of sorts. Threat inflation has become a defining characteristic of the Harper government’s policy, both at home and abroad. Welcome to the new Canada.

 Photo courtesy Reuters.

Call me a sucker for punishment, but I believe we actually do need to review foreign policy, and much better than we have in the past. Burney and Osler Hampson’s argument that Canada has engaged in strategic reviews more than any other country of “comparable size” needs greater scrutiny. Prior to 2005, when the Martin government issued its International Policy Statement (full disclosure: I was actively involved in producing this statement), Canada had not formally reviewed its foreign policy for a decade. Is this the definition of “frequent,” especially when the intervening events (like 9/11) and power shifts between 1995 and 2005 created critical new imperatives for our foreign policy?

I couldn’t agree more with the critique that Canada needs to focus on doing – rather than “promising to do.” But unless foreign policy is to be wholly reactive (and I’m not suggesting that it often isn’t, particularly when unforeseen events like tsunamis and revolutions occur), then it must be guided by a set of priorities and assumptions. Given how much money is at stake – across a variety of federal government departments – why shouldn’t these priorities and assumptions be made transparent? Moreover, why shouldn’t they guide the tough decisions about resources and effort that political leaders and civil servants will need to make? Burney and Osler Hampson write that future global involvement for Canada “should be calibrated against judicious assessment of our capacities and our interests, and not a Boy Scout inclination to be helpful fixers everywhere.” While I largely agree with this point of view, I don’t see how such judicious judgments can be made without a strategic direction.

Several of Canada’s core allies, like the United States, regularly issue National Security Strategies. The Bush Administration’s NSS of 2002 was a landmark document, signaling to countries the world over that the U.S. was taking a much more muscular and pre-emptive approach toward threats to its most sacred interests and values, and re-orienting the vast American government towards realizing those goals. Though Canada clearly isn’t a superpower, and shouldn’t inflate what it can do globally, it has the same obligation to think strategically, and to develop the ability and “culture” (as Irvin Studin has suggested) to set up and operationalize a set of priorities. (I’m not suggesting for a moment, by the way, that Canada should match in tone or substance the U.S. National Security Strategies – only that it should subject itself to the same discipline of analyzing the strategic environment, identifying opportunities, clarifying interests, setting priorities, and assessing capability gaps.)  

Underpinning much of the skepticism about conducting foreign policy reviews is the sentiment that “we already know what our real interests are,” and that we simply need to get busy with promoting and safeguarding them. But we need to question that assumption. The national interest is not so obvious and immutable. It involves some constant features, but how it is articulated can – reasonably – vary. Beyond saying that Canada should pursue greater prosperity and security (who could really argue with that?), what are the concrete priorities our country should be identifying? Burney and Osler Hampson claim that the pre-eminent focus on the U.S. is self-evident and beyond serious debate.  The U.S. is our most important economic partner, period. And on the political side, we have influence in the world on the basis of how well we influence our big neighbour to the south.

Without wishing to minimize the relationship with Canada’s crucial ally, I respectfully submit that these “truths” are not so self-evident. A number of commentators have been contending for some time that Canada should diversify and build new economic relationships. A decade ago, we were still being branded as Trudeau-esque “Third Option” advocates, though that argument is starting to run a little thin, given the rise of China, India and Brazil (not to mention others). It is astounding that the Harper government’s draft FPP was amended to call for a new engagement strategy with Asia only after the Obama administration signaled that it was going to delay a decision on the Keystone Pipeline project. This is the epitome of short-termism – not strategic thinking. Economic and demographic trends have pointed for at least two decades to a need for Canada to think truly globally, and for its businesspeople to stop kidding themselves that expansion into the U.S. is a “global” strategy.

Let’s focus for a moment on the energy data. Recent projections from British Petroleum’s chief economist show that the U.S. is on a clear path that will greatly reduce its demand for oil imports. (Indeed, these estimates show that North America will become almost totally self-sufficient in energy within two decades, due to biofuels, shale gas, and unconventional oil.) In the United States, the use of hydraulic fracturing technology has allowed it to release huge reserves of unconventional shale gas – meaning that it will soon become a net exporter of gas. Now that same technology is being applied to shale oil, with dramatic implications for domestic crude output. Of course, Canada will continue to be the key source of any imports the U.S. does need. But in relative terms, markets elsewhere are much more promising. By 2020, China will need to import 80 per cent of its oil and more than 40 per cent of its gas.

Politically, it’s also debatable whether Canada should seek to have influence solely via the U.S. Yes, we will engage in many initiatives together – as we did in Libya. And yes, the values we believe are the recipe for stable societies (democracy, the rule of law, respect for minority rights) are virtually the same as those guiding U.S. foreign policy – a fact many Canadians would like to ignore. But on many crucial issues, such as nuclear non-proliferation, a U.S-focused diplomatic strategy will not yield results. China and India are nuclear powers too, which demonstrates that the imperative to “engage” with these rising powers has to move beyond the minimal objective of tapping into their markets. Thankfully, the Harper government has begun to think about other bilateral relationships that will matter to our prosperity and security – though the current version of the FPP identifies 12 countries as priorities (a sign that we need further focus in terms of where to put our energies).  

Foreign policy reviews, like that of 2005, do involve a bit of navel-gazing. And the result of the Martin review process could have been better. While the final draft was in the respectable range of 30 pages (compared to the behemoth draft we started with!), it still had too many priorities. It was also too timid in its approach to issues like the environment. But the exercise prompted serious debate about choices – and it allowed politicians, civil servants, and the public to engage in that debate.

Three of the four key themes of the emerging Foreign Policy Plan are expressly political: fostering democracy, standing up for human rights, and promoting religious freedom. These are strong, almost “fighting” words. They also don’t provide any answers to how those goals might be pursued. (Europeans and George W. Bush-era Americans, for example, had quite different version of how to democratize.) If Prime Minister Harper wants to take Canada down a road that is more consciously driven by values (and a particular set of values), then the direction of that road should be subjected to rigorous discussion across government, and with Canadians.  That, for better or for worse, is what accountability means.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Harper is right to be concerned about the possibility of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons. Any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is bad news, and there are few more odious regimes in the world than the one that has ruled Iran since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

But is he justified in saying that Iran would have “no hesitation of using nuclear weapons if they see them achieving their religious or political purposes”?

This is an important point. If Harper is correct, virtually all measures, up to and including a military attack on Iran, might be warranted, or perhaps even required, to prevent that country from building such weapons.

The problem, however, is that the prime minister’s assessment flies in the face of what we know about the behaviour of the Iranian regime. For all their revolutionary jihadist talk, Iran’s ruling mullahs have consistently worked to realize one goal above all others: keeping themselves in power.

There are 4 uses for nukes. Which one motivates Iran?

Yes, Iran’s leaders have made the most repugnant and threatening statements about Israel, and it’s an open secret that they support organizations that use terrorist tactics, including Hezbollah and Hamas. But the regime shows no sign of being suicidal itself, which is what Harper is suggesting when he says the country’s leaders would “not hesitate” to use nuclear weapons. Most experts who watch Iran reject the assumption that its leaders would bring about their own certain destruction in this manner.

On the other hand, this is not a reason to be complacent about the Iranian nuclear program. It is genuinely worrying that Iran seems bent on developing such weapons, or at least the capability to build them. Although the International Atomic Energy Agency still lacks definitive evidence of a nuclear weapons program, there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to warrant the aggressive diplomatic and economic squeeze that Canada and other western countries are putting on Iran – provided it is also combined with creative diplomacy that gives Iran a way out, should it choose to take it.

The question, however, is how far we might be willing to go in stopping such a program, if and when hard evidence emerges that Iran is close to building a functioning, deliverable nuclear device. If misperceptions about Iranian behaviour inform our answer to this question – if we succumb to fears based on caricatures, rather than facts – we risk making terrible strategic mistakes.

Some might say: How can we afford to wait much longer before considering preemptive military action to avert this looming threat? We’ve heard versions of this argument from candidates for the Republican presidential nomination and from some conservative American commentators, among others.

But exactly how would such an intervention work? Could bombing, alone, really stop – or even significantly delay – Iran’s nuclear efforts? Would a limited attack not serve to strengthen the Iranian leadership’s domestic power? Might it not also reinforce the regime’s commitment to acquire nuclear weapons as a deterrent against future attacks? What if outside intervention inflamed the entire region? What if it bogged down into another grinding war of occupation?

Let’s also recall that former U.S. president George W. Bush, in responding to concerns about the case for attacking Iraq, used some of the same arguments we are hearing today. “Facing clear evidence of peril,” he said in 2002, just months before the U.S. invaded Iraq, “we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Unfortunately, this frightful yet unfounded message, which went largely unchallenged by some of the country’s most respected media organizations, resonated with a great many Americans.

It should go without saying that political leaders need to be very cautious when they invoke nightmare visions of nuclear catastrophe. Few rhetorical tools are more powerful, or have more potential to mobilize public passions, than allusions to possible mass destruction. That’s why we need to subject these claims to extra-close scrutiny.

Harper acknowledges that he is frightened by Iran. So am I – and so are many others. But at this critical time, as tensions mount between Iran and the West, our prime minister needs to keep a level head. He should step back from the rhetorical brink.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

The fine details of this shift in doctrine will only emerge with the U.S. budget next month, when actual troop reductions will be specified. Nonetheless, there is a clear expectation of a 10-to-15-per-cent cut to the size of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and an increased reliance on the Air Force and Navy. Many commentators will therefore ask whether, under this revised scenario, the U.S. will still be able to sustain its capacity to fight two wars at once – long held to be the defining feature of its superpower status. But while the forecasted reduction in troops is significant – estimated to be worth $450 billion – it still leaves the United States with the largest military in the world (and one that is roughly the same size as it was five years ago). What emerges, then, is a U.S. that is undoubtedly leaner, but still “mean” enough to intimidate its rivals.

It would be easy to chalk most of this up to financial pressures. But the president’s new strategy also reflects a different understanding of his country’s place in the world, and the most significant threats it is likely to face. No surprise, then, that the focus has shifted to addressing threats in the Asia-Pacific (a veiled reference to China’s growing strength) and ensuring the capacity to deter troublesome states such as Iran. This specification of geographic priorities is not unprecedented, but it nevertheless suggests that the U.S. can no longer commit itself to general global “projects” – instead, it must choose its spots with care, based on the degree to which they constitute a threat to vital interests. As a result, much less weight is given to the task of nation-building in so-called failed states – something then-president George W. Bush vowed, in 2000, that he would never do, yet spent most of his presidency doing.

Is this 2012 doctrine confirmation that America, the mighty, has well and truly fallen? Obama’s Republican rivals have been quick to suggest that the new strategy sends the wrong message to the U.S.’s enemies, and will only embolden them. In their view, it relegates the U.S. to a permanent posture of “leading from behind.”

 An alternative assessment is that a leaner and more agile U.S. military is precisely what is required to ensure the U.S.’s pre-eminence post Iraq and Afghanistan. The United States is finally admitting that it must be much more careful about engaging in “wars of choice” (both in financial terms and in terms of reputation). But no one should underestimate its capability and willingness to tackle the most pressing threats to its security – when and where it chooses.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Al-Dabi reported this past week that he had seen “nothing frightening” in the embattled Syrian city of Homs. Yet, if the reports can be taken as accurate, 150 more protesters have been killed on Syria’s streets since the observers arrived. Even the advisory committee to the Arab League has opined that the monitors come home.

So how are we to judge the effectiveness of this effort to change the behaviour of the Syrian government? If we use short-term measures, we might conclude that the observers’ success in facilitating the delivery of food supplies and the removal of dead protesters has had some concrete, positive effect. It’s also likely that the presence of a mission from the outside world has emboldened the protest movement, and given it hope.

But in the longer term, as the International Crisis Group’s Peter Harling recently argued on BBC Radio 4, we are witnessing a tug-of-war in Syria that has an uncertain end. The same observers who verify protesters’ assertions that they are being massacred also bear witness to what the regime wants them to see: an armed struggle, in which Syrian security forces are also being killed. The Assad government’s narrative – that it is facing a well-organized and externally resourced insurgency – may also be bolstered by the mission’s reports.

More broadly, the monitoring mission calls into question the relationship between regional and global organizations. Throughout the Syrian crisis, there have been calls for the UN Security Council to authorize coercive measures to prevent further atrocities. There are a variety of reasons this global body has not done so, including the likelihood of a veto from one of its permanent members. But it has also been argued that regional organizations, closer to the events on the ground, should take the first steps. And we are reminded that without an explicit request from the Arab League, the council would never have authorized NATO to use “all necessary measures” to prevent the slaughter of civilians in Libya (partly out of fear of being associated with a neo-colonial intervention). The consent of regional organizations, it seems, has become a necessary precondition for global action. 

The original United Nations Charter, in Chapter VIII, envisaged a collective security architecture in which regional organizations would take the lead. Indeed, some scholars have long argued that collective security can only be regional, since it is simply not credible to ask countries from across the world to bring their military forces to bear on a security threat that does not directly affect them. Far better that those who are closer – with special historical ties, the capacity to act quickly, and intimate knowledge of the neighbouring country’s political dynamics – take on the responsibility of addressing instability in their neighbourhood.

While these arguments about a link between vicinity and responsibility make some sense, there are also important drawbacks to relying on regional partners as first movers. Although they undoubtedly have more at stake, they may also have an interest in a particular outcome – one that advantages them. There is also the possibility that “historical ties” have not always been amicable. In some regions, there are particular hegemons – South Africa or Nigeria in Africa, for example, or the United States in the western hemisphere – that are viewed with suspicion. Using this logic, a global organization, without a particular axe to grind, would be viewed as more impartial and therefore more legitimate.

More recently, an additional issue has arisen with respect to regional organizations. Let’s call it the “capacity problem.” It may be fine for the UN Security Council to call upon players in the region to act first, as it did when it asked the African Union to take the lead in the crisis in Darfur in 2004-5. But what happens when such organizations do not have the resources (financial or human) to do so? In this instance, deferring to regional organizations risks looking like avoiding responsibility rather than delegating it. Yes, the United Nations eventually joined forces with the African Union in Darfur – to create a hybrid mission – but this was only after two years of further struggle and countless more civilian deaths.

In Syria, there are too few Arab League monitors in too few places. Even if more are dispatched, it is worth asking whether this regional organization, on its own, has the capacity and authority to facilitate a solution to this intractable struggle. The UN – with all the baggage it carries and all the suspicion it engenders – may still prove itself indispensable.

Photo Courtesy Reuters.

Here is the conclusion of my op-ed (including a couple of hyperlinks that don’t appear in the newspaper version):

“Some might dismiss this vision as a dystopian fantasy. But why wouldn’t countries with records of using every tool at their disposal to monitor their citizens also take advantage of these new surveillance and data storage capacities as they become available? And isn’t it true that even in liberal democracies with strong privacy laws, including Canada, we have also seen a gradual shrinking of private space and pressures for more ubiquitous surveillance?

The main benefit of Villasenor’s report – like that of other stylized visions of the future, including George Orwell’s – may not be its specific predictions, but rather, its ability to shock us into seeing real-time trends that might otherwise go unnoticed, including in our own society. Indeed, it speaks to the importance of a different kind of heightened vigilance: not of our fellow citizens, but of our right to remain largely hidden from the constant gaze of the state.”

You can read the full op-ed here.

“Internationalist” Canada’s decision to pull out of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming is much worse. At a minimum, it has seriously damaged Canada’s reputation abroad, which only a month ago, was ranked the “best country brand” in the world. The lead story on CNN and BBC today is how Canada has “quit” the global climate change agreement – just hours after the rest of the world reached a last-minute deal in Durban, South Africa at the climate change conference. This news may play well in Calgary, but it plays disastrously everywhere else. Caring and compassionate Canada has morphed overnight into Canada the selfish and belligerent.

More serious is the damage to our international role. Several years ago, Jennifer Welsh insightfully argued that Canada’s big contribution to world affairs was being a “model international citizen.” At a time when too many countries placed their immediate and narrow national interests ahead of the collective good, Canada consistently – and almost uniquely – sought constructive global solutions to increasingly global problems. From aid to trade, apartheid to land mines, Canada took the high road, playing an indispensable global leadership role as a result. That “global citizen” role has just been clumsily squandered, Environment Minister Peter Kent explains, in exchange for “jobs” at home – and to avoid paying $14 billion in penalties for Canada’s failure to meet its Kyoto targets. 

Roland Paris offers a critique of the present government’s foreign policy.

Most serious is the damage to global climate change policy and international co-operation in general. That the science is tentative, complex, and controversial does not alter the fact that the overwhelming weight of evidence points to man-made pollution being a major factor behind our fast-warming planet. The radical anti-climate change lobby argues that we should not take a chance with the economy on the “possibility” that global warming is real. Surely, they’ve got that backwards – we should not take a chance with the planet on the “possibility” that global warming is wrong. Even a skeptical government should adopt a precautionary approach – as we do in every other aspect of national defence and security – protecting ourselves against this risk, while devoting even more resources to clarifying the threat. Instead, the current policy amounts to “rolling the dice.”

The international order was destroyed in the 1930s because global-wreckers like Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany brazenly flouted their treaty obligations and turned their backs on international co-operation. As this government breezily reneges on Canada’s previous promises – and risks unravelling the world’s most important environmental treaty – it should reflect on what it feels like to suddenly be in the wreckers club. And ponder the long-term costs of undermining our moral authority to seek international co-operation across a range of issues, not just the environment. 

There’s always been a suspicion that the Canadian government’s more nationalist and unilateralist foreign policy was lifted straight out of the Bush playbook. Giving the finger to the rest of the world over Kyoto is not only spectacularly parochial, myopic, and selfish, it’s also deeply un-Canadian. 

Photo courtesy Reuters.

The current British Prime Minister, David Cameron, appears to have broken with that conventional wisdom by choosing to veto a new EU-wide treaty designed to address both the symptoms and root causes of the deep economic malaise affecting the eurozone.

The decision is ironic on many fronts, most notably because Cameron’s overriding concern as prime minister has been to avoid tying himself in knots over Europe — as so many Conservative leaders have done before him. Indeed, the issue of Europe has torpedoed many a Conservative’s career in the U.K.

When Cameron became prime minister in 2010 at the head of a Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition that included both dyed-in-the-wool Eurosceptic Tories and pro-European Liberals, he confidently believed he had found the formula to transcend the problems of old. It appears that overconfidence has been misplaced. After 18 months of insisting that there is not, and never will be, a two-speed Europe, where Britain is on the margins, Cameron has created precisely that scenario.

The broad facts are these. A European-wide treaty, including all 27 members of the EU, will not come to pass. Instead, 26 countries (though three of these still need to consult their parliaments) will negotiate a new intergovernmental agreement to stabilize the eurozone. The deal will include measures to consolidate the fiscal union among those states, accelerate the recently created European stabilization mechanism, and add substantial sums (estimated at 270 billion euros) to the International Monetary Fund. The details, of course, are still to be hammered out over the course of the next few months. Whether or not the agreement will succeed is still an open question. After all, it’s still uncertain whether the European Central Bank will operate as a lender of last resort.

More by Jennifer Welsh on changes underway in Europe.

Three economists answer, “Will Germany Kill Europe?”

What is clear, however, is that Britain will not be part of the negotiations. The explanations for how this situation transpired are already filtering in, but we’d do well to let some of the dust settle. Today, it appears that Sarkozy has won this round of the chess match. And he must have taken a certain amount of devilish delight in being able to publicly chastise a country that earlier this month had dared to compare France’s economy to that of Greece (a comment the U.K. Chancellor, George Osborne, may over time regret). Will we reach the same conclusion when we know more about what really happened, and what it all led to. 

The biggest question that needs answering is how Britain became so isolated. Think back to March 2011, when it was Britain and France — shoulder to shoulder — leading the world in devising a forceful response to the threat of mass atrocities in Libya. Or think back to the years of Blair/Brown when, even when Britain had real and legitimate differences with Europe, British leadership in Europe was never in doubt. One prominent sign that Britain was misplaying its hand was when Poland — the U.K.’s long-standing historical partner and advocate in Europe — criticized Cameron’s approach going into the negotiations. Why had the prime minister failed to forge the necessary alliances, based on reasoned arguments, to ensure that the U.K. wasn’t alone at the critical moment?

The most parsimonious explanation is that Cameron’s gaze was turned inward, as he believed he needed to appease the Eurosceptics in his party. Those 70-80 members of Parliament have become more and more vocal as the prime minister has continued to resist calls for a referendum on Europe. And so Cameron spent most of his time before these crucial meetings talking to his caucus rather than to important partners in Europe. The Eurosceptics urged their PM to go into the negotiations with Churchill’s “bulldog” spirit, rather than Chamberlain’s penchant for appeasement.

Of course, this analogy was tragically wrong on two fronts. First, while Churchill and Chamberlain faced an intractable enemy, Cameron faced long-standing European friends, to whom the U.K. is tied in a myriad of political, economic, and social ways. But more to the point: it was Churchill after 1945 who recognized (with his characteristic good foresight) the need for a kind of “United States of Europe.” Despite the tendency of Eurosceptic Conservatives in the U.K. — and I daresay in Canada too — to evoke Churchill to bolster their arguments that we should be wary about “the French,” a nostalgic dream about keeping Britain in some kind of splendid and detached isolation is not a position that most sensible Tories (including Churchill) would adopt.

The pact Cameron has now made with these Tory Eurosceptics is a dangerous one, for they are likely to want to seize on this moment to try to renegotiate everything about Britain’s relationship with Europe — and to hold a referendum to legitimize that policy. This is a path down which Cameron cannot go if he wants his current coalition to hold together. The pro-European Liberal Democrats will not sign up to such a strategy. Perhaps the Eurosceptics — a minority in Parliament — believe that now is the time to ditch those coalition partners and win a majority in a new election. That would be the riskiest move of all.

A more charitable explanation of Cameron’s decision is that he truly believed he was protecting Britain’s national interest — and particularly the interests of the City of London as Europe’s financial hub. Of course, by vetoing, he is no more able to protect the city than he was before. Essentially, he got nothing. But there is a lingering hope — and we saw this displayed in the headlines of the business sections of newspapers yesterday — that the city can rebuild itself after the debacle of the past two years, and retain its status as an important financial centre. By asking for safeguards for the single market and the city, Cameron believed he was retaining the key tools to fuel that recovery.

If we think only about the current structure of the U.K. economy, we might be relieved about the prime minister’s tough stand. The financial sector makes up approximately 10 per cent of Britain’s GDP. But is this a sustainable economic platform going forward? Does Britain’s future prosperity not also require new efforts to bolster manufacturing, and to maintain access to European markets? And what about the many unemployed Britons who have suffered from the economic crisis largely caused by that financial sector? Are their economic prospects best served by the city, or by growth elsewhere?

What these questions suggest to me is that Britain’s national interest — contrary to what realists seem to believe — is not fixed, obvious, and immutable. It is possible to have an honest debate in Britain today about what the national interest really is, who should articulate it, and how. The boys from Eton have gotten their way today. In so doing, they have changed Britain’s relationship with Europe (and key allies such as France and Germany) in dramatic ways. Is that really in Britain’s long-term interest?

Photo courtesy Reuters.

The new agreement, like the SPP, sets out a menu of policy objectives to be jointly pursued over the coming years. They broadly aim to reduce unnecessary regulatory differences between Canada and the U.S. and other physical and regulatory barriers to the more efficient movement of goods and people between the two countries, while also shifting some security screening to the “perimeter” of the continent. Broadly speaking, these were the objectives of the SPP in 2005, and they are the objectives of the initiative announced today.

As before, moreover, there is no “Big Bang” of sudden continental integration, as some had feared or hoped. We won’t have open borders with the U.S. similar to those between European countries within the Schengen zone, nor will we be eliminating differences in the two countries’ external tariff rates and creating a North American customs union. Rather, what’s now being proposed is incremental and modest. Whether you love or hate these proposals, they will happen slowly.

“Is There a Problem in Canada-U.S. Relations,” Roland Paris asked earlier this year.

Duncan Wood and Robert Pastor react to perimeter.

Or perhaps they won’t happen at all. The old SPP plan included “Ministerial-led working groups” as well as semi-annual reports to be issued by the security, industry and foreign affairs ministers (or their equivalents) from all three countries. The model for that arrangement, in turn, was the Canada-U.S. Smart Border Accord, which had been created immediately after 9/11 and was led by then-Deputy Prime Minister John Manley and his American counterpart, Tom Ridge. It was the personal attention and energy of these two cabinet officials which drove the progress of the Smart Border Accord action plan.

But that was a different time. In the wake of 9/11 there was a sense of urgency on both sides of the border that began to dissipate well before 2005. Partly as a result, the ministers who were nominally responsible for overseeing and implementing the SPP lost interest in the mundane but vital details of the workplans, which languished after running into the inevitable bureaucratic obstacles.

The agenda announced today will run into bureaucratic obstacles, too. Many of its specific objectives are still aspirational – such as negotiating a “preclearance agreement” that would “provide the legal framework and reciprocal authorities necessary” for inspections at the Canada-U.S. land border to take place on each other’s territory (just as they do in airports today when we clear U.S. customs before getting on a flight to the U.S.). These legal issues are extraordinarily complex, and have stymied efforts to negotiate such a deal for years. Nevertheless, the new cooperation plan states that a land preclearance agreement will be reached by December 2012.

The chances of meeting this target – or, for that matter, achieving breakthroughs on other difficult issues in the bilateral relationship – will depend in large part on the willingness of both the Prime Minister and the President to devote sustained attention and political capital to these objectives. Yet we are already less than 12 months away from the next U.S. presidential election. Let’s just say there will be many other demands on Mr. Obama’s attention over the coming year.

The broad vision outlined in this bilateral cooperation agenda is in both countries’ interests to pursue, but doing so will require both the expression of intention and a sustained political effort to turn aspiration into action. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders can deliver the latter part of that formula.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Even without major government support, trade and investment between Canada and China has been growing fast over the past decade – just ask Western Canada.

The new attention on economic ties with India is progress, as well as with Indonesia.  It is less positive that Japan, Korea and ASEAN have fallen off the radar.

It is promising that the government has come to realize that, in terms of Canadian statecraft – just like for other liberal democracies – economic ties have proven as important in relations with China as values.

It is a positive trend that senior Canadian government representatives, including the Prime Minister, have been making more regular visits to China and India, to shore up relations.

However, a qualitative upgrading is needed. Beyond a succession of planned visits, what is needed is a longer-term strategy.

The Asia strategy should be built on five features.

First, it should be anchored on China. The key strategic question is what should we be “pushing for” with China? And with Asia more broadly?

One of the aims must surely be to ensure that Canada secures longer-term access for the key sectors to what is, and will likely remain, the world’s fastest-growing market for the foreseeable future.

We would want to identify which are the key sectors, strategically, from a longer-term perspective.  Debra Steger has called this, “making sure we do our homework” – to think about not only what we want in these negotiations, but also where we’d want to be as a society and economy, 15 to 20 years down the road. Rather than extrapolating simply from where are we today, and moving the yard sticks forward three to five years. This would open up the discussions on energy and the environment with the Chinese to not only what is available immediately, but also shared hedging options in alternative energy solutions.

For Canada, it would be crucial to gain agreement from the highest levels of the Chinese state on the terms and conditions under which Canada and China will further expand economies ties, while Canada also promotes its values.

A key Canadian value – and one that has been passed over in our dealings with China to date in our rights promotion – is “values and ethics in government.” This central feature of Canada’s good governance model is of great interest to reformers in China, under the label of “anti-corruption”. Any advances in this area would bring immediate transparency and public sector accountability benefits to citizens and economic stakeholders alike.

Gregory Chin shows that Canada needs to commit to strengthening relations with China – as the U.S. has –  in Part I of his call for an Asia Strategy. 

John Hancock points to tensions between the U.S. and China and asks, “Whose side – if any – is Canada on?“ 

Second, the economic goal should be gaining preferential access to the Chinese economy.

While ensuring that China adheres to WTO rules will continue to be important, more important for Canada is that the economic playing field for the Canadian side can never really be level in its relations with China, given the inherently asymmetrical nature of the Canada-China relationship.

Achieving a level playing field for Canadian interests, i.e. free access, actually means securing preferential access for Canada in China, especially if the stakeholders are small- and medium-sized Canadian companies. This means going beyond the WTO, and the protection of the multilateral trading system, when dealing with China.

Devising new Chinese procurement and investment rules that are based on transparency and reciprocity is part of the story. Making sure that intellectual property is adequately protected is vital. However, so is gaining preferential access for investment and trade in some sectors that are currently closed or restricted to foreign participants.

Equal access is useful. Preferential access is even better.

However, in order to gain such access, Canadians would probably need to consider whether we would be willing or able to offer any type of preferential access to China. If access to provincial procurement contracts or fed contracts (including defence) has proved to be contentious in negotiations with the EU, with China it would be more so. It would, therefore, be more feasible to think in terms of bargaining over access to Canadian energy, minerals or other raw materials. The Australians have already been pondering such calculations.

At the same time,Canada would want to provide all investors, including Chinese, with a clear set of investment rules so that they could have fair access to some sectors where they currently face restrictions.

Canada should, third, take the lead in promoting changes in the global investment environment that supports growth and stability in the world economy.

Canada would want to backstop its bilateral efforts regarding inward foreign investment with multilateral tools. One step that Canada could take to lead would be to champion a new multilateral (G7?) agreement on investment from sovereign wealth funds and state companies. This would be a useful function that the G7 allies could play for the global public good.

Fourth, Canada should reconsider how its development assistance programs could be restructured and reoriented in relation to Asia’s rising donors, as part of our tool kit of foreign policy.

It is time for Canada to discuss the end of traditional donor-recipient aid relations with China, and to reallocate most of the aid budget to developing new programming where we work with China (and perhaps India) as co-donors, in third countries, to ensure more effective world development. The goal, here, would be building new consensus with the emerging economies, on how to work to reduce income inequality both within each of our countries and regions, and to ensure sustainable economic growth and jobs in this decade and beyond. 

It is also time to reallocate some of the China-related aid resources to those branches of the Canadian government which are more directly responsible for promoting Canadian values and interests in China, in order to strengthen these efforts.

In an article in International Journal (Autumn 2009), I suggested that a fundamental reassessment of Canada’s foreign aid strategy for Asia is needed, and that the reassessment needs to be led by the political leadership and the central bodies of the Canadian government – that a Prime Ministerial Task Force should be struck, to formulate a plan for building a strategic partnership with Asia’s rising donors. This suggestion still holds.

Fifth, effective execution of the longer-term strategy will require that we establish, as the operational norm, that the representatives of Canada’s core leadership will engage directly with the Offices of the most senior levels of the Chinese State. This means at the level of the government Executive – at the Offices of the Chinese Prime Minister and Vice Premiers – and at the senior levels of Party decision-making in China. Without access to these strategic channels, we are left in the Chinese bureaucratic morass.

The overarching foreign policy goal for Canada should be to foster mutual respect and trust in relations with China, as both countries face an increasingly complex and decentralized international system.

Is now a good time to push China? 

Considering the upcoming leadership transition in Beijing, we can expect that there will not be dramatic moves before the new leadership team takes over. 

At the same time, we can expect a high degree of continuity in the aftermath of the transition.

So this would be a good time to start planning – to put in place a new plan and make sure that we’re ready when the new Chinese leadership team takes over.

China would only be the first piece for a new Asia strategy.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Here are my top four reasons:

1. What qualifies FP to rank the world’s Top 100 Thinkers, anyway? Or, for that matter, the World Economic Forum to decide the most competitive economies? Or Maclean’s the top universities? These lists are delivered with such authority and gravitas that few of us question the data or methods used to compile them. Yet many, if not most, are closer to fiction than to fact. FP, for example, doesn’t even bother to explain how it reached its conclusions – which is probably wise given that the process seems to involve little more than asking friends-of-the-editor who this year’s big thinkers are, and then jotting down the list over morning coffee.  

2. Why do the rankings change so dramatically from year to year? Bill Gates and Warren Buffett were the Top Global Thinkers of 2010, according to FP, but, a year later, Bill has slipped to the 13^th spot and Warren has fallen off the list entirely. Did the Sage of Omaha suddenly stop thinking big thoughts? Or did FP get it wrong the year before? And, come to think of it, why did the United States tumble from the world’s most competitive economy in 2007, according to the WEF, to fifth place (and falling fast) this year? Sure, lots of bad economic things happened to the United States in the intervening four years, but none diminished the basic productivity of American workers or factories. If anything, the Great Recession, together with mass unemployment, has actually spurred U.S. productivity in the form of longer hours, leaner wages, and less “fat” all around. Static, unchanging lists would not be nearly as suspenseful – or marketable – but they would be a lot more credible.

3. Is the impact of individuals, institutions, or countries even measurable, given that what’s being assessed are qualities more than quantities? Profound thinkers have an impact that is, well, profound – often not fully grasped for years, decades, or even centuries. Johannes Gutenberg, for instance, would almost certainly not have made FP’s list – he died poor, embittered, and largely ignored, but his printing revolution turned out to be one of the most important events of the modern age, making possible the renaissance, the reformation, and the scientific revolution. If it is hard enough to instantly measure the impact of great thinkers, how much harder is it to measure the impact of whole institutions or countries?

4. Even if the global impact of individuals or institutions were measurable, does it make any sense to rank them? Ranking is a zero-sum game in which one participant’s gain is unavoidably the other’s loss. McGill being ranked Canada’s No. 1 university in this year’s Maclean’s survey necessarily pushes someone else – in this case, the University of Toronto –into second place. But does this blunt ranking say anything about how similar these two universities are? Or how different (apples versus oranges)? And what if the quality of university professors and students is generally improving across the board­­, so that the university that fell from, say, the fifth to eighth spot actually got better? A one-two-three ranking sheds no light on that trend – in fact, it obscures it.

Maybe the modern world’s obsession with ranking everything – from brightest minds to coolest gadgets to sexiest women and men – says more about us than the subjects we are listing. In a chaotic and ever-changing world, we grasp on to numbers and rankings to provide us with “facts” and “truth,” embracing the illusion that someone (anyone) can deliver “certainty” in an uncertain age. Casting doubt on a Top Global Thinkers list is tantamount to suggesting that no one really knows what’s going on – even the great minds identified by FP! And that’s a little too much truth for most of us to handle.

Then again, maybe it’s all American Idol‘s fault.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

One aspect of the campaign, which has received relatively little attention, may in fact turn out to have long-lasting effects. In the very first days of NATO’s air strikes, officials in the Obama administration engaged in intense debate over whether to disrupt and disable the Libyan air-defence system through a cyber attack. While the precise details have not been made public, it appears that the attack would have involved an attempt to sever military communication links to prevent early warning radar in Libya from gathering information about NATO war planes, and relaying that data back to missile batteries with the capacity to bring down the aircraft.

Several reasons have been cited for the eventual decision not to proceed with a cyber attack (and to use conventional missiles and drones instead). One prominent theory is that members of the administration were concerned about a lack of legal authority to engage in such an act, without Congressional approval. But equally plausible is the argument (reported in the New York Times) that engaging in a cyber attack would have set a precedent for other countries, such as Russia and China, to do so in the future. If true, this suggests that the capacity to engage in cyber attacks is seen as a key advantage in the coming struggles of the 21^st century – and one that should be kept secret from one’s rivals. As one U.S. official is reported to have said, “These cybercapabilities are still like the Ferrari that you keep in the garage and only take out for the big race, not just for a run around town.”

Yet, we know that the Ferrari has made it out on a couple of occasions – most notably in 2010 when a Stuxnet computer worm wiped out part of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges (delaying its ability to produce nuclear fuel), and in 2007 when Estonia was subjected to a “distributed denial of service” attack (effectively shutting down all internet-based services in this highly internet-reliant society).

Jennifer Welsh on other ways in which the ethics and conduct of war are changing. 

Clay Shirky and Margaret MacMillan on how Wikileaks will change international affairs.

In both of these cases, it has been difficult to attribute the attack to any one actor in particular (though the U.S. and Israel are the suspected perpetrators of the first, and Russia the suspected mastermind behind the second). This “attribution problem” has been noted by both scholars and policy-makers, and seems to be one of the key challenges confronting attempts to conceive of any legal constraints on cyber attacks.  In one of the few attempts to analyse the moral issues raised by cyber attacks, philosopher Randall Diepert has argued that “cyber conflict” is so different and so novel that it cannot possibly be regulated by our existing ethical and legal frameworks.

But is this true? Do we need to start from scratch when thinking about how to limit cyber attacks? We were also told after 9/11 that terrorism was “completely different” from any other threat that we had ever faced, and that “new rules” were needed. And so we got rendition and Guantanamo Bay.

While not wanting to minimize the novelty or seriousness of the threat, it’s worth asking how our current legal and moral prohibitions on the use of force (contained in the UN Charter’s Article 2.4 and the broader notions of “just cause”, “proportionality”, and “last resort”) might serve as a starting point for thinking about how to contain and limit this new practice. So, as George Lucas (Distinguished Chair in Ethics at the U.S. Naval Academy) has recently argued, we can begin to distinguish between permissible from impermissible forms of cyber conflict – based on whether they are aimed at justified military targets. Under this logic, Stuxnet might be deemed a legitimate act, while the widespread attack on Estonia’s civilian infrastructure would not.

Adopting this perspective, we might also question the view – sometimes expressed – that cyber attacks are to be welcomed rather than feared. Because they do not use traditional military means, they are less destructive, and therefore constitute a kind of ‘lesser evil’ to bombs and bullets. Fewer (if any) soldiers’ lives are lost, and so-called collateral damage from inaccurate missiles is avoided. On this reading, then, the Obama administration acted immorally when it opted to use a conventional weapon, rather than a cyber attack, to take out Qaddafi’s air defences.

However, if we contemplate not the means, but the effects of cyber attacks, it’s not obvious that they are more “humane”. Estonia experienced a widespread and indiscriminate attack on civilian institutions; had the attack lasted much longer, the damage done to those institutions could have been profound (with the potential for loss of civilian life). To put it another way, cyber attacks do not render old ethical questions meaningless; rather, they challenge us to think about what “harm” means in the context of cyberspace.

Following the 2007 attack, Estonian officials requested NATO to consider invoking Article V of its treaty (which treats an attack on one member of the alliance an attack on all). At the time, this suggestion was swiftly rejected, on the grounds that a clear military attack had not occurred.

NATO’s confusion, and non-response, is unlikely to work when (and not if) such an attack occurs again. As long as societies become increasingly dependent on networked technologies, and as long as some of those societies are preparing ways to coerce one another in cyberspace, the question of how to minimize the harm caused by cyber attacks will remain a pressing one.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

When Eurozone finance officials gather in Brussels (as they will on November 29) to discuss how they can woo China to invest in the European Financial Stability Facility, they will do so, knowing that Europe’s economic and political credibility are also at stake.

European representatives know that China needs both a stable export market for its goods, and a place to diversify its reserves.  About 25 percent of China’s reserves are in Euros – and Beijing wants security guarantees for its investment.  This gives Europe some leverage.  But are European states prepared to use it, when they are in need of a money infusion?

European officials have yet to devise a long-term strategy for China, but to their credit, at least they are discussing it.  Furthermore, European capitals are considering how to strengthen their ties with the fragile democracies of Southeast Asia, as a counterweight to China’s rise.

 Gregory Chin elaborates on China’s ascent and America’s descent in international affairs. 

Roland Paris argues that U.S. policy toward China is a “politely-veiled” containment. 

Even more important, the U.S. administration has also upgraded its efforts in Asia of late.  This is both understandable and undeniable.  Some might say, “It’s about time.”

Recent outreach from President Obama (at the APEC and East Asian Summits, and in Australia), also from Hillary Clinton, as well as the administration’s efforts to boost the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the arms-length distance that it has maintained to the European debt crisis indicate that what we’re looking at is more than a series of “Pacific Rim swings.”

Over the past weeks, the US administration has taken concerted measures to harden its stance toward China, from a harder push on the exchange rate and U.S. trade interests, to hard power maneuvers with allies in the Asia-Pacific to firm up the U.S. “hub-and-spoke” security structure in the Pacific.

For Beijing, it definitely feels like what Roland Paris describes as a “politely-veiled containment strategy.”

Behind the US repositioning lays domestic electoral politics.  Barack Obama has decided that he will not leave himself to be painted into a corner as the defender of China by the Republican presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney, who have taken to China-bashing about the Chinese taking US jobs.

At the same time, despite the hardening, US representatives note that the President is committed to strengthening America’s relations with China.  That building a more comprehensive and deeper relationship, including the ‘trust’ that has eluded the two countries to date, is now the priority.  It also means reassuring traditional allies in Asia of the ongoing stake of the U.S. in the region.

There is little doubt that the Obama administration has gotten serious about Asia.

Is it time for Prime Minister Harper to do the same?  To formulate a longer term strategy for engaging Asia, and particularly China?

World circumstances indicate so.

Photo Courtesy Reuters

Some try to downplay the significance of this coming event. They point out that extrapolating GDP growth to predict future power is an imprecise science. In the mid-1950s, then-Communist-leader Nikita Khrushchev boasted that a fast-growing Soviet Union would “bury” the U.S. – and we know how that worked out. Japan, the rising economic superpower of the 1980s, was on track to become the world’s biggest economy by the late 1990s, according to some forecasters. We are still waiting. And yet, China’s sheer size – and the speed of its industrialization – seems to place it in an entirely different category. In 2000, U.S. economic output was three times that of China. By 2030, even with conservative growth estimates, China’s output will be three times America’s. This will mark a complete reversal of their relative economic importance in just 30 years.

Roland Paris argues that U.S. policy toward China is a “politely-veiled” containment. 

With China arriving on the international scene, Gregory Chin claims, get ready for a new type of leadership. 

Others argue that economics is not destiny. They point out that the U.S. military is now bigger than the next dozen powers combined, and more technologically advanced – witness the lethal impact of drones, stealth bombers, and other sci-fi-like weaponry. They also note that that America’s dense network of overseas alliances, as well as its domination of international institutions, allows it to project global influence in a way that China, for all its growth, can only dream of doing.

And yet, if history is any guide, China’s rising economic strength will inexorably translate into military strength. During the Napoleonic Wars, it was fast-industrializing Britain that ultimately triumphed over a militarily stronger, but still agrarian, France. And it was the industrial power of the United States – the “arsenal of democracy” – that decisively tipped the balance in all the great wars of the 20^th century. Indeed, as Paul Kennedy famously argued, military overspending – or “imperial overstretch” – far from replacing economic power, actually hastens its decline.

The past six decades have been remarkably peaceful – especially compared to the 35 million dead in the First World War, or the 50 – 70 million dead in the Second. This is in no small part due to the relatively benign hegemony exercised by a dominant United States. What will replace Pax Americana? 

One school of thought – held by the self-styled “realists” – paints a relatively pessimistic picture of the future. While economic power is a positive-sum game (growth in the East creates export opportunities for the West), political power is unfortunately a zero-sum game (one country’s military gain is another’s loss). China’s ascent will inevitably lead to greater competition and conflict with the United States, it is argued, because rising powers seek global supremacy, and declining powers try to resist. In a back-to-the-future world of great power rivalries, the United States’ strategic goals should be to contain China’s expansion, reach out to Asian allies, and establish a new balance of power.

Another school of thought – call it idealist – paints a more optimistic picture of the future on the grounds that world politics is changing in fundamental ways. The globalization of trade and investment has woven economies tightly together – and no two economies more than the U.S. and China. Even if Washington and Beijing wanted military confrontation, deep economic interdependence stands in the way – as the CEOs of Boeing, Caterpillar, or Lenovo never tire of reminding their political leaders.

Even more powerful than the globalization of economies is the globalization of information and ideas via the internet – YouTube, Facebook, fast-multiplying blogs – creating a global audience, and even global public opinion. As Harvard’s Steven Pinker convincingly argues, the modern world’s increasingly educated, informed, and rational citizens are rejecting the irrational appeal of nationalism, chauvinism, and war that so devastated past eras, which explains why international conflict is declining. The strategic goal should not be to isolate China, but to embed it even more deeply in the existing liberal international order, and to encourage China’s own policy of economic openness and integration. According to the idealists, a military confrontation between the U.S. and China will be as unthinkable in the future as another war between France and Germany.

The one certainty is that the world is approaching a turning point, and more quickly than we think. A key question – as Roland Paris brilliantly argued in his last two posts – is how the U.S. will react to a rising China, and vice versa. Another key question: Whose side – if any – is Canada on?

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Daniel Drezner, a Fletcher School professor and Foreign Policy blogger, isn’t convinced. For one thing, he points out, the U.S. never really lost interest in maintaining a presence in East Asia. The big difference now is “the eagerness with which the countries in the region, ranging from Australia to Myanmar, have reciprocated.”

Second, regardless of what U.S. officials may say or want, the rest of the world will continue to demand their attention:

A pivot implies that the United States will stop paying attention to Europe or the Middle East and start paying attention to East Asia. While I’m sure that’s what the Obama administration wants to do, it can’t. Europe is imploding, as are multiple countries in the Middle East. The United States can’t afford to ignore these regions, since uncertainty there eventually translates into both global and domestic problems.

Drezner sums up: “Talking about a United States ‘pivot’ in foreign policy is meaningless.”

Well, yes and no. Of course, the U.S. never lost its economic or strategic interest in the region, and there is a goodly dose of salesmanship in the administration’s talk of a foreign-policy reorientation towards the Asia-Pacific. And, yes, with the Middle East undergoing revolutionary changes, Europe facing the prospect of cascading economic crises, and American soldiers still dying in Afghanistan, any administration will be at the mercy of “events, dear boy, events.”

But Drezner understates the significance of recent U.S. moves in the Asia-Pacific. The administration’s talk of a “pivot” was clearly intended as a signal to China’s neighbours that, in spite of U.S. domestic fiscal problems and drawdown from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is not about to go wobbly on its military and diplomatic commitments in East Asia. The speech that U.S. President Barack Obama delivered in Australia last week challenged Chinese policies right across the board, from China’s currency-management practices to its regional military aspirations. Indeed, it read like a politely veiled U.S. containment policy towards China.

Related:

The 800-Pound Panda in Obama’s Asia Speechby Roland Paris

Global Leadership at Cannes: China’s Arrival or What Happened to America? by Gregory Chin. 

Perhaps that’s putting it too strongly, because the U.S. is interested in both containing and engaging China. Nevertheless, these speeches – combined with related U.S. actions – have communicated renewed American resolve in the region. In addition to the symbolically important deployment of U.S. Marines to Australia’s northern coast, Singapore may soon provide basing for the U.S. Navy’s new littoral combat ships, Vietnam has invited the American warships to call on its Cam Ranh Bay port for the first time in three decades, and we may soon hear more announcements of U.S. ships and planes being allowed to operate out of local bases across the region. (In case anyone didn’t get the message, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose the deck of a guided missile cruiser as the venue to deliver a speech reaffirming the U.S. alliance with the Philippines “and all of our alliances in the region.”)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy has recently tested a new unmanned warplane designed to be flown from U.S. aircraft carriers, reportedly with three times the range of carrier-based manned aircraft. These drones would not only greatly extend the reach of U.S. air power in the region, but would also allow the carriers to operate outside the maximum range of Chinese anti-ship missiles.

Consider the sum total of these words and deeds. They may not add up to a “pivot” – at least, not if Drezner is correct and the metaphor implies that the U.S. will “stop” paying attention to Europe and the Middle East and “start” paying attention to East Asia. However, I doubt that the Obama administration has been formulating its policy in such stark, zero-sum terms. The message of the administration’s recent speeches and actions, rather, was that the U.S. will be increasing, not decreasing, its involvement in the affairs of the Asia-Pacific. And that is an important and credible message to communicate at a moment when the U.S. is disengaging from Iraq and Afghanistan, when China’s rising military assertiveness has been fuelling regional fears, and when there’s so much at stake in the Asia-Pacific for the future of U.S. military and economic power.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

This past week, by contrast, has seen moves to minimize those democratic impulses. On Friday, Italy’s newly appointed prime minister and respected eurocrat, Mario Monti, won a vote of confidence on the composition of his new government in Italy’s lower house of parliament – a government whose cabinet does not include a single elected official.

Monti proposes to double up as Finance Minister, with a plan to balance the budget, stimulate growth, overhaul Italy’s pension system, and fight against decades of tax evasion. It’s an agenda that technocrats have long wanted to pursue, but that democratic politics in Italy had apparently made very difficult. 

But it’s not just the technocrats who are frustrated with democracy. It’s also the financial markets. As The Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland argued last week, 2011 may be remembered as the year when democracy was being demanded and fought for in one part of the world (during the Arab Spring), while it was exposed elsewhere “as paralysed and impotent in the face of economic crisis.”

By contrast, the leaders of the world’s non-democratic states, wrote Freedland, “had a spring in their step” at the G20 meeting in Cannes, confident that they could “face down whatever the economic meltdown threw at them.” Without the constant pressure of an unruly electorate, states like China, Saudi Arabia, or Singapore could – in theory – push austerity down and through their societies, or engage in massive stimulus. The markets know this too. This is why they appear less pessimistic about these states’ capacity to weather the storm than they are about the capacity of the U.S., Italy, and the rest of the eurozone.

 See what Jennifer Welsh wrote three weeks on the reassertion of democratic politics.

Read John Hancock’s argument on how democratic politics can cause problems.

The shrewd observer of democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville, once lamented the inability of democratic governments to fashion a coherent foreign policy – one that could sail above petty local concerns and squabbles and take the “long view.” What the current crisis suggests, however, is that markets have adopted de Tocqueville’s critical stance regarding democratic states’ domestic policies, as well. 

So does this mean the era of democracy’s triumphalism is coming to an end? After the fall of the Soviet Union and the revolutions in Eastern Europe, western commentators declared democracy to be the “winner” in the contest to bring progress and prosperity to citizens. Some went even further, claiming that – because democratic states tend not to go to war with one another – a broad campaign to democratize was also the best answer to the problem of interstate conflict.

But if Italy is any indication, democracy is having a bit of a rough ride. The technocrats’ rise to power is eerily reminiscent of the words of another commentator on democracy, the Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter, who argued that it was impossible to have “rule by the people” (the essence of democracy), given their short-term perspective and lack of knowledge and expertise. As Schumpeter famously wrote: “If results that prove in the long run satisfactory to the people at large are made the test of government for the people, then government by the people, as conceived by the classical doctrine of democracy, would often fail to meet it.”

This seems to be the view of those who believe it is time for the technocrats to rule for the people, by doing what is “best” for them. The problem, of course, is that decades of liberal democracy have created a people that is anything but homogeneous, with a single and definable interest. Despite the rhetorical commitment to equality that underpins democracy, economic inequality is a striking feature of many of the democracies now facing crisis.

So where does this leave democracy? The core of this system remains the capacity to change government without bloodshed. As political theorist Adam Przeworski once put it, in a democracy, “people who have guns obey those without them.” That (among other things) is what distinguishes Italy from Syria. Moreover, the very fact that there is the prospect of a government changing fosters a spirit of compromise that makes the resolution of conflict more likely. 

As the markets express their dissatisfaction with the fickleness and indecisiveness of democracy, those pulling the strings behind those markets should perhaps ask themselves whether they would really like to live under any other system.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Much of the speech sought to reassure China’s neighbours about America’s commitment to regional security in the face of rising Chinese power. The United States, said Mr. Obama, will “deter threats to peace” and keep its commitments to allies including to Japan, South Korea and Australia. It will adopt a more “flexible” military posture, including by basing Marines in northern Australia and by training the naval and land forces of regional partners. It will also deploy “new capabilities,” an oblique phrase that may refer to ship-based drone aircraft, which have the potential to significantly expand the reach of U.S. air and naval power.

The rest of the speech addressed several other hot button issues in U.S.-China relations. For example, the president emphasized the need to ensure that “commerce and freedom of navigation are not impeded” and that “countries with large surpluses take action to boost demand at home.” He called for a “level playing field” for business in which “every nation plays by the rules” and “intellectual property and new technologies that fuel innovation are protected; and where currencies are market driven so no nation has an unfair advantage.” Moreover, he spoke strongly about upholding human rights – and workers’ rights, in particular. These messages were clearly intended mainly for China.

Amazingly, however, Obama barely mentioned China in the speech. The text of his address was 50 paragraphs long, but he referred to China in only one of these paragraphs.

This omission served a diplomatic purpose. China is extremely sensitive to American criticism – and even more so to what it views as American meddling in the region. By speaking indirectly, President Obama was able to reassure China’s nervous neighbours, while communicating his entreaties to China, along with implicit warnings – without unduly insulting or provoking Beijing.

Nevertheless, isn’t it striking that these messages have to be communicated so obliquely, and that relations between the world’s two most important countries remain so brittle that a speech that is essentially about China needs to be dressed up as something else?

The silences in Mr. Obama’s speech were as eloquent as his words.

Photo Courtesy Reuters.

It is fitting that Greece, the cradle of democracy, is the central stage on which this drama is being played out, although the storyline is becoming familiar throughout Europe and North America. Globalization robs citizens of power; it hijacks democratic choice. Backed by unaccountable international organizations, like the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it forces governments to cut spending and slash social programs, even as it rewards the already rich. Greece is just the latest, and most vulnerable, victim of a voracious and predatory capitalist system that has grown out of control. No wonder we sympathize with the young Greek protestors fighting back against unbridled financial markets. Greece’s David is standing up to capitalism’s Goliath.

Except for one problem. Greece is not powerless, and never has been. Greece was not forced by global capital markets to run unsustainable public deficits for over three decades, accumulating a debt mountain reaching 180 per cent of its gross domestic product. International bankers did not coerce Greece into floating its bonds on foreign markets. Brussels did not blackmail Athens into adopting the euro in 2002 – in fact, Greece browbeat skeptical EU members, like France, into letting it join, precisely because it wanted to exchange monetary “flexibility” (i.e., uncertainty) for monetary stability. And Greek voters were not intimidated into electing a succession of governments that conveniently ignored one of the most lax tax regimes, generous pension systems, over-staffed bureaucracies, and ridged labour markets in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – and then “cooked the books” to hide the extent of the problem. By the same token, there is nothing stopping Greece from deciding to leave the euro or default on its debts – as Argentina did in 2002 or as Russia did in 1998.

Europe’s problems are also of its own choosing. European governments chose to turn a blind eye to the serial deficits of Greece, Portugal, Italy, and other Eurozone members. Indeed, export powerhouses, like Germany, have benefited enormously in selling everything from cars to telecommunications equipment to debt-fuelled southern consumers. European banks, until it was too late, chose to ignore the inherent risks of lending to an increasingly insolvent Greece – even though Greece has spent half of the past two centuries in default – just as European financial regulators chose to ignore their banks’ dangerous over-exposure to sovereign debt. In the same way, the solution to the European Union’s escalating financial crisis rests in Europe’s hands: Bail out the indebted South, ramp up exports to the creditor North, and/or allow Europe’s periphery to default or devalue (i.e., leave the Eurozone). What’s stopping Europe is its own bickering and dithering over whom picks up the tab for past mistakes and how to share the inevitable economic and social pain.   

Indebtedness is rarely empowering. Bankrupt countries – like bankrupt individuals – want to blame financial markets for their misfortunes, but the main cause is their own short-sightedness, reckless policies, and resulting vulnerability. They find themselves at the mercy of capital markets, sovereign lenders, or the IMF, simply because they want to borrow money. And, if their fiscal situation is dire enough, they have relatively little say over the conditions (higher risk premiums or explicit policy reforms) that wary foreign lenders attach to their loans. This same basic dynamic explains the relative weakness of all deficit countries – Greece, Italy, Spain, even the “mighty” United States – versus the relative strength of surplus countries – Switzerland, Singapore, or China. It’s worth noting that no one is telling Singapore how to tighten its tax system or slash social spending. That’s why, since the 1997 Asian financial crisis, so many developing countries have rushed to cut current account deficits and accumulate foreign reserves. Never again was the IMF going to interfere in the domestic affairs of Korea under the threat of withholding financial first aid.

Even so, what’s striking about the Greek financial crisis is how fears about its knock-on effects have probably increased Greece’s influence – proving the adage that if you owe the bank $1,000 it’s your problem; if you owe the bank $1,000,000 it’s the bank’s problem. Europe wants to avoid a Greek sovereign default because it will turn the spotlight on other low-growth, high-debt Eurozone members, as is already happening with Italy, and highlight the vulnerability of Europe’s banks. The world wants to avoid a Greek default because it will expose how badly over-leveraged the whole global economy has become, highlighting our failure to undertake the painful task of transferring wealth from creditors to debtors, through default, inflation, or fiscal rectitude. Some countries, like Canada, feel smug because their national accounts are relatively healthy; other countries, like Britain, feel superior because they stayed out of the Eurozone. But if Europe slips into recession, or worse, the Eurozone cracks up, the whole world will feel the repercussions.

Doesn’t this mean that economic integration (i.e., globalization) undermines sovereignty? Not unless you believe that the splendid isolation of a North Korea or a Myanmar makes them world powers. Countries open up to trade and investment because it is in their economic interests to do so. They agree to abide by international rules because they want other countries to live by the same rules. And they join international organizations because in tackling shared global challenges, their sovereignty is increased, not diminished, by working in concert with others. In short, integration is a choice, with consequences.

The idea that globalization makes national governments unnecessary is even less valid than the idea that it makes them powerless. For countries to successfully harness globalization, inspired public policy – sound finances, effective regulation, empowering social programs, rigorous and creative education systems, state-of-the-art infrastructure – is more critical than ever. If globalization punished social democracy then Sweden would be on the way down and Nigeria would be on the way up. If globalization rewarded low, or no, regulations, Bangladesh would be the star and Singapore would be the failure. If globalization was all about unfettered banking and bigger bonuses, the United States would be riding high and Canada would be on its knees. Policy matters, in a competitive, integrated and fast-changing world more than ever.

That globalization is imposed on us, strangling our sovereignty and freedom, is the “big lie” of the modern age. In fact, globalization is the exact opposite. It’s all about the decentralization of economic power and the supremacy of individual choice. What drives the global marketplace is the pressure of consumers, electorates, you and me, for more growth, better jobs, higher living standards – the latest gadgets, nicer vacations, better health care, improved education for our kids – which in turn pushes governments to join, not retreat from, globalization. It could even be argued that what people find most scary about this unstable, unpredictable, fast-globalizing world is the result of too much choice, too much individual empowerment, even too  much freedom – but that’s a subject for another day.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The China hype is growing. But the new attention on China only makes sense in relation to the apparent disappearance of U.S. leadership at the G20.

A tipping point may have been reached at Cannes. But it was not that the Europeans approached China and the other emerging economies for support, since these advances started before the Summit. Rather, it was the role of the U.S.

The details of how events unfolded leading into and during Cannes suggest that we are seeing an American state that is now focused heavily on domestic politics, that is increasingly lacking the political will, and arguably the economic capacity, to provide leadership for global economic burden-sharing.

Take, for example, the amount of time and energy that deputy treasury secretary Lael Brainard dedicated at the White House press briefing (at the end of the first day at Cannes, 3 November 2011), to reassuring the U.S. domestic audience that U.S. banks were not overexposed to European debt, and that America’s banks had rebuilt their capital holdings after the 2007-09 global financial crisis. In short, the “point to register” was that American taxpayers would not have the foot the bill for a European bailout, that America’s financial sector is safe.

This response to the European debt crisis bears a marked difference from America’s role in resolving previous cases of sovereign debt restructuring, such as the 1994 Mexican financial crisis, when the Clinton Administration risked annoying U.S. taxpayers by agreeing to shoulder the largest portion of that bailout package. The U.S. administration countered Congressional Republican opposition to loan guarantees by raising funds from its Exchange Stabilization Fund. U.S. support helped Mexico to avoid default.

Also in contrast to the past, the aforementioned White House press briefing revealed that the major objective for the U.S. at Cannes was to make sure that the Chinese agreed to language in the Summit Communiqué about “surplus countries agreeing to increase domestic demand” and agreeing to more “market determined and flexible exchange rates.” If one tracked the statements of the U.S. Treasury Secretary since 2009, one would recognize this goal as another case of elevating U.S. domestic and bilateral trade concerns up to the global multilateral level.

Perhaps we should not be surprised by the U.S. posture at Cannes. As Thomas Wright has noted perceptively, multilateralism and global summitry have been tough sells in the United States for a while.  But for a moment, we thought the Obama presidency might be different.

In fairness, the United States remains the largest contributor to the International Monetary Fund.  And it was reported that the U.S. President Obama did try to encourage German authorities to strengthen the ECB.  It was said that treasury secretary Timothy Geithner also attended all of the European meetings where Euroland officials tried to rework their debt bailout measures for Greece. U.S. representatives shuffled in and out of meetings, trying to nudge and encourage. But without the capacity to offer additional financing, their influence was limited.

What Cannes suggests is that we may be looking at a United States that is starting to suffer a lack of capability and will for global economic leadership. More troubling, we may also be seeing an increasingly inward-looking America, disengaging incrementally from ‘global’ economic problem-solving – and perhaps on the first steps of the steady slope to (economic) isolationism.

Where does this leave the idea of a “G2”?

If by G2 we mean only that the US and China tend to “go bilateral,” and that everyone else will have to live with whatever the Big 2 decide, then we may now be in the era of a G2.

But some mean something more by a G2. That the Big 2 will (hopefully) also provide global leadership by embedding themselves within a G20, or other global institutions, and in so doing, provide needed guidance and direction for global agenda- and priority-setting – to help break international deadlocks, to help build new global consensus. For those with this view of the G2, Cannes was disappointing.

The French G20 Summit suggests that we may not even have a “G2”.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The roller coaster ride that we have experienced in Europe over the past two weeks is a potent reminder that politics – and more precisely, democratic politics  – are alive and well, frustrating the efforts of the elites to craft the “right” solution to the Eurozone crisis.

The economic pundits seem to be in broad agreement about what needs to happen. The Greeks need to swallow the medicine, no matter how distasteful, and agree to the conditions attached to their loan. The rest of the Eurozone countries (read Germany) need to step up and provide sufficient resources to shore up the Euro. And the IMF needs to become – as it was during previous financial crises – the all-important anchor and source of liquidity in the global economy.

 But in all three cases, politics have intervened. As the conversation in Cannes revealed, neither the U.S. nor the U.K. – let alone the squeamish Chinese – could promise to pump large sums into the IMF. In the case of the former two, their domestic parliaments and congresses just wouldn’t agree. In Britain, for example, there is a powerful sentiment against allowing taxpayers’ money to travel via an IMF infusion in the coffers of the Eurozone. And so no precise figures were promised at the G20 meeting. Instead we saw an agreement on the part of Italy to be “monitored”, and vague discussions about a new “special facility” that might be created to support Europe in its hour of need. But the overwhelming sentiment at Cannes, shared by the Europeans themselves, was that this is the Eurozone’s responsibility to sort out first, if it can.

In the case of the Germany, it is history that seems to shape so much of its policy response. On the one hand, German policy-makers from this particular generation are hard-wired to support European unity, no matter what it takes. The European ‘project’ has delivered peace for a generation, and offered Germans the possibility of new history. Hence the strength of Merkel’s commitment last week to bail out Greece. Yet, at the same time, another ghost from Germany’s history – rampant inflation – has served to dampen its enthusiasm for providing what the markets seem to crave: a huge sum of money that can prop up not only Greece, but Italy as well.

And then we come to the embattled Greek Prime Minister, George Papandreou. As I write, he has survived a no-confidence vote in the Greek parliament, but only on the condition (it appears) that he step down and pave the way for a new government of national unity that will attempt to deliver on the requirements of the bail-out package agreed last week by European leaders. The task facing the government that emerges from this turmoil is no less than monumental, given the continued presence of large protests in the Athens’ square just outside parliament.

There is much irony in the fate of Papandreou. Most obvious is the fact that his grandfather (whose name he shares) was first elected as Prime Minister 48 years ago on November 3 – the very day that Papandreou the younger was warding off calls for his departure. But there is also irony in the fact that it is Greece – the birthplace of democracy – that has done a u-turn on the promise of the referendum. These days it seems that to be a “good European” is to act against the instincts of one’s electorate (or, in the case of British Prime Minister David Cameron, the desires of a good portion of his own party) and avoid – at all costs – referenda.

Europe has, of course, been here before. The reaction of the Irish public to the Lisbon Treaty threatened to scupper the handiwork of Europe’s enlightened technocrats. But this time, there is arguably more at stake. The economic and social dislocation that threatens Greece (no matter how much the Greeks may have contributed to their own malaise) is very real. And for a relatively young democracy, it is deeply unsettling. What is particularly striking about the protesters in Athens is their age: they are predominantly young, under the age of 30. They are Greece’s future, yet their overwhelming sense is that their future is bleak.

Given that reality, was it really so audacious for Papandreou to seek a mandate from those who will bear the costs of austerity? The reaction of his European peers suggests that he had committed the ultimate betrayal. The script had been written, and all Papandreou needed to do was act out his part. Perhaps, in the end, Greece will deliver its lines – even if later than expected, and with a new Prime Minister. But something important has intervened to remind the guardians of the Eurozone about who, ultimately, should be in the driver’s seat.

More broadly, the Greek tragedy points to Europe’s hubris. It was politics, not economics, which motivated the push to include Greece in the Euro. The signs were there, for anyone who cared to look, that Greece’s ‘economic fundamentals’ might not be compatible with the requirements of its inclusion in the common currency. But the symbolic prospect of inclusion was just too tempting. How could the country of Plato be, as proclaimed by one French official, outside of Europe’s great scheme for monetary union? And so, today, politics rears its head again, though not quite in the way that the leaders of the Eurozone might have expected.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Europe has effectively dealt itself out of a global power role because it can’t manage itself—as the paralysis over Greece makes embarrassingly clear—let alone project a unified foreign policy. As long as Britain, Germany, France and Italy insist on their own seats at the G20 table, the E.U. president might as well stay home. Japan could be a bigger global force, but it shuns the limelight (and responsibility). India, Brazil, and Russia dream of global power status, but they remain regional players. Meanwhile, Canada is in the club because the U.S. wants a friend. Australia is in because Canada is in. Argentina and Mexico are in because Brazil is in. And Turkey, Saudi Arabia and South Africa are in because… well, no one quite knows why they are in.

It is U.S.-China agreement—or, more likely, disagreement—that matters on all the big issues. Take global imbalances, the subject that should have been at the top of the G20’s agenda were it not for Europe’s ADD. The instability and uncertainty that has rocked the global financial system for a decade will only get worse as long as China—the world’s biggest exporter and saver—accumulates ever larger surpluses, and the U.S.—the world’s biggest importer and consumer—accumulates ever larger deficits. Although the problem is global, the solution rests mainly with the U.S. and China.

The same is true of the deadlocked Doha Round of free trade talks. With a $45.6 billion trade deficit in August, imports from China exceeding exports by a factor of four, and real unemployment approaching 16%, the U.S. desperately needs China to cut tariffs and stimulate imports if it is to have any hope of selling a global free trade deal at home. But the U.S. has limited leverage since its market is already largely open and China’s export powerhouse benefits enormously from the status quo. So world trade negotiations—already in their 10^th year—remain on hold until the U.S. and China figure out how to untie this Gordian knot.    

It’s a similar story with climate change negotiations. Even if the U.S. were prepared politically to commit to more radical and immediate carbon emissions targets, it will not do so without China—the world’s second biggest economy and already the biggest C02 emitter— moving in lockstep, not least because of fears that a decision to “go it alone” would place U.S. manufacturing at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis China’s industrial machine. As with free trade, a global breakthrough on climate change will only result from a China-U.S. breakthrough.

What places America and China in a league of their own is shear economic weight. Despite the housing bubble collapse and lingering recession, the U.S. economy still represents almost 20% of world output and China’s economy over 14% (calculated at purchasing power parity). In comparison, Brazil makes up only 2.8% of the global economy, Russia 3%, and Canada 2%. Just as significant is the way the U.S. and China have grown so economically intertwined, even co-dependent—as a result of mutually reinforcing trade and financial flows—despite their political differences. Chinamerica—Niall Ferguson’s label for their symbiotic relationship—has essentially become the core of globalization.

Likewise, when the U.S. and China clash, the reverberations are felt worldwide. Frustrated by repeated failures to persuade China to raise an undervalued Renminbi, the U.S. Senate has passed legislation that would allow America to slap punitive trade sanctions on China for unfair currency manipulation. At the same time, the U.S. is effectively de-valuing the dollar—and flooding the world with liquidity—through its policy of quantitative easing. In response to the global shock waves emanating from China and America, a number of countries (notably Japan and Switzerland) have been aggressively intervening in money markets to drive down their exchange rates, while Brazil is threatening unilateral tariff hikes to cope with a fast-rising Real. With good reason, Brazil’s finance minister has warned darkly of coming “currency wars” if the U.S. and China do not get their acts together. 

Does this make the G20 pointless? Not at all. It provides a useful way to shroud our bipolar world in a cloak of multilateralism. It allows helpful countries, like Canada, to inject creative ideas into the policy mix—ideas that, curiously, great powers often seem lack. And it encourages the 18 other actors in the G20 drama to take collective ownership for what are effectively bilateral decisions. But while the G20 provides lofty communiqués and great photo ops, no one should be under any illusions that it is calling the shots. That’s the job of the G2.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Mark Lynch, associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, sums up the success nicely:

The NATO intervention did save Libya’s protestors from a near-certain bloodbath in Benghazi. It did help Libyans free themselves from what was an extremely nasty, violent, and repressive regime. It did not lead to the widely predicted quagmire, the partition of Libya, the collapse of the TNC, or massive regional conflagration. It was fought under a real, if contestable, international legal mandate which enjoyed widespread Arab support. It did help to build — however imperfectly and selectively — an emerging international norm rejecting impunity for regimes which massacre their people. Libya’s success did inspire Arab democracy protestors across the region. And it did not result in an unpopular, long-term American military occupation which it would have never seemed prudent to withdraw.

Of course, now Libya’s interim government faces the daunting task of navigating the transition to a post-Qaddafi political system in a country that has no experience with democracy, significant regional and tribal differences, and semi-autonomous armed militias.

The international community’s message to Libya’s leaders today should be simple: “We respect and celebrate your declared intention to create a representative, tolerant government by, of and for the Libyan people – and we will do our best to help you realize this goal.” At the same time, however, such assistance should not amount to a blank check. Canada’s foreign minister John Baird, for one, has indicated that he will hold Libya’s government accountable for their pledges to respect human rights and work towards democratic governance. He was right to do so.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Informally, officials indicated that they hoped to complete the plan by summer. More than eight months have now passed, however, and we are still waiting for the announcement.

This delay isn’t troubling in itself. Negotiations can take time, and there’s no reason to doubt the government’s reports of “excellent progress” in the discussions. Nevertheless, it’s hard to shake the sense that something is not quite right, in part because the intervening period has seen a flurry of new U.S. measures, implemented or threatened, that would impose additional restrictions on cross-border commerce. This week, it was the approval of a new $5.50 levy on Canadians arriving in the U.S. by boat or plane. In previous weeks, it was the renewed threat that Canadian companies would be excluded from public contracts under so-called “Buy America” provisions, and a proposed new tariff on U.S.-bound rail freight.

If discussions towards a substantive bilateral action plan are, in fact, making excellent progress, why haven’t the same negotiators turned their talents to resolving – or, better yet, preventing – these new irritants? The answer, of course, is that things are not so simple. The American policy process is notoriously, unspeakably, gloriously chaotic. The proposed tariff on rail freight, for example, is the handiwork of two U.S. Senators from the State of Washington, who believe that Canadian ports have unfairly drawn container traffic from harbours in their home state. Congressional business is littered with such initiatives, few of which register on the White House radar screen as significant.

It is, however, noteworthy that several of these irritants have appeared at this time, when Canada and the U.S. are negotiating the terms of a new partnership. We are left with unanswered questions: Is the White House still committed to elaborating and pursuing a renewed agenda of bilateral cooperation? What, exactly, has been holding up the announcement of the action plan? Does the prime minister have the kind of personal relationship with Mr. Obama that would allow him to call in a political favour?

That favour would be a commitment of presidential attention and political capital to the task of strengthening the bilateral partnership. Without such a commitment from the White House, the natural tendency towards decentralized parochialism in the American policymaking system will continue to raise new barriers between Canada and the U.S. – awkwardly, at the very moment the two countries are supposed to be renewing their vows.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

But what about the legality and ethics of war itself? At a recent seminar in Oxford, the co-directors of the Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict (ELAC) analyzed this broader question, and identified at least three major effects of 9/11 on ethical and legal developments.

The first effect relates to the authorization of the use of force. If we cast our minds back to September 2001, we’ll remember an unusual moment of international solidarity and support for the United States. Indeed, on Sept. 12, 2001, the UN Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1368, a statement in support of measures against those responsible for aiding and supporting the perpetrators of the attacks. At the same time, NATO invoked Article 5 of its founding treaty, declaring that the assault on the U.S. represented an assault on all members of the alliance.

At that point, however, the Bush Administration did not take up the implicit offer of a UN-authorized military action against Afghanistan. Nor did it immediately accept NATO’s offer of assistance. Instead, on Oct. 7, the U.S. informed the Security Council that it would exercise its right of self-defence, under the terms of the UN Charter, to attack al-Qaeda training camps and Taliban military installations in Afghanistan. The rationale, as explained at the time, was a desire on the part of the U.S. to maintain as much flexibility as possible in terms of how it engaged in reprisals against those who had attacked its territory.

Ten years on, however, Security Council authorization has become more important than ever as a means of legitimizing the use of force. The biggest factor explaining this trend is, of course, the Iraq war – the great diversion from the war in Afghanistan – which the U.S.-led coalition initiated without the backing of the council. The negative fallout from this episode is still with us, seen most visibly in NATO’s reluctance to participate in the Libya mission until an affirmative UN Security Council resolution had been passed.

A second major impact of the post-9/11 attack on Afghanistan is the evolving view in international law on the legitimacy of military action against non-state groups. The question can be posed as follows: To what extent can a state use force, in self-defence, on the territory of another state, in order to “punish” a non-state group, if that state is not directly responsible for the actions of the non-state group?

As noted by international lawyer Dapo Akande, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) addressed a very similar question in 1986, during its deliberations over the legality of U.S. military actions against Nicaragua. At that time, the U.S. argued that it was acting in collective self-defence, in support of neighbouring states such as El Salvador and Costa Rica, to respond to the destabilizing effects of Nicaraguan-sponsored rebels in their territory.

The ICJ, however, ruled that Nicaragua’s support for the rebels – while perhaps illegal – did not constitute an armed attack, and therefore did not justify the military response of the U.S. In order to qualify as an armed attack, the court reasoned, there had to be evidence that the state in question had “sent” or “controlled” the rebel groups. Only a year earlier, in a unanimous resolution, the Security Council had come to a similar conclusion in its condemnation of the Israeli use of force against Palestine Liberation Organization positions in Tunis.

But what a difference a decade makes. The response to the 9/11 attacks has opened up a space where states now believe they can lawfully use force in the territory of states that “harbour” terrorists or rebel groups. Examples of this practice include Turkey in Northern Iraq, Russia in Georgia, Rwanda and Uganda in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia in Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia in Yemen.

More broadly, this trend marks a change in the very nature of war. Today, most instances of military force do not involve two sovereign states, but are instead characterized by a single state acting against non-state rebel groups or “terrorists.”  The law of armed conflict, by contrast, is still designed primarily for the former kind of conflict – resulting in significant gaps in regulation. So, for example, while the law pertaining to international armed conflict (i.e., war between two states) has clear provisions for the detention of prisoners, the rules for non-international armed conflict (i.e., of the Afghanistan variety) does not have the same degree of clarity.

Finally, the military response to 9/11 has raised important questions about the ambitions of liberal interventionism. The rationale for the use of force in Afghanistan went through a series of iterations. In the very early days, the campaign was dubbed “Operation Infinite Justice” – a symbol of the spirit of reprisal that motivated it. Once Muslim groups in the United States warned of the implications of invoking notions of justice, the Bush Administration switched to “Operation Enduring Freedom.”

This shift was more than linguistic. It also reflected the growing belief on the part of the U.S. that political transformation and the promotion of humanitarian outcomes were necessary to “win the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people. President George W. Bush, who, in the 2000 election campaign, had expressly eschewed nation-building, now embraced it with open arms – committing not just the U.S., but all of the members of the NATO alliance, to an expansive conception of the “national interest” and a lofty set of war aims that are still largely unfulfilled.

Some commentators have argued that the failure to achieve these aims in Afghanistan has killed liberal interventionism. But the willingness to engage in military action in Libya suggests that the arguments in its favour still carry some weight. Whether the national budgets of the U.S. and its allies can finance these arguments is perhaps the most pertinent question to ask.

Two things, however, do seem clear. First, without 9/11, liberal interventionist impulses would not have been strong enough to justify military action to improve the human-rights situation in Afghanistan. The Security Council had imposed sanctions in October 1999 against the Taliban, and routinely expressed concern about violations of human rights (especially the rights of women). But there was insufficient will to act more forcefully on that concern.

Second, even if the word “justice” fell out of the U.S. rationale for war soon after 9/11, it has now found its way into the rhetoric and motives of those fighters in Afghanistan who today seek to throw out the foreign “intruders.”

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Last month’s attack on the Israeli embassy in Cairo offered an earlier example. For hours, Egyptian police and army stood aside as protesters demolished the embassy’s security wall and ransacked the building. Nor did this attack seem to be the work of Islamist groups. Rather, according to one eyewitness the crowd was “a combination of soccer hooligans and pro-democracy protesters.”

Of course, anti-Coptic, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments are not new in Egypt, but now they may find expression through mob violence, or through the actions of the security forces themselves, reflecting popular prejudices. Such incidents serve as a reminder that the extraordinary flowering of political freedom in Egypt, as elsewhere, comes with the risk of what Edmund Burke called the “tyranny of the multitude.”

Libya, another Arab country embarking on a hopeful transition to democracy, is also susceptible to this problem. Last weekend, crowds reportedly gathered in Tripoli and Benghazi demanding the deportation of David Gerbi, a Libyan Jew who had fled to Italy in 1967 and returned earlier this year to participate in “the building of a new democratic and pluralistic Libya.” A psychoanalyst by profession, Gerbi first volunteered his time in Benghazi treating rebel fighters for post-traumatic stress disorder, and later traveled to Tripoli where he began cleaning up a long-abandoned synagogue, which he hoped eventually to reopen. This action apparently provoked demonstrations calling on Libya’s provisional government to expel Gerbi and to prevent other Jews from settling in the country.

These incidents suggest that intolerant passions are not far below the surface in Egypt and Libya. Indeed, governing authorities in both countries appear to be aware of such dangers: Egyptian security forces did ultimately come to the aid of Israel’s besieged embassy officials, the country’s military rulers are now holding urgent talks with representatives of the traumatized Coptic community, and at least two members of Libya’s National Transitional Council stood alongside Dr. Gerbi in Tripoli and called on anti-Jewish protesters to disperse.

But one thing seems clear: It wouldn’t take much to exploit these ugly sentiments – or to fan them into something even more dreadful and dangerous.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Why Now?

There are four possible explanations for the timing of this outburst. First, the U.S. administration seems exasperated after years of waiting for Pakistan to deliver on promises to clamp down on the Haqqani network, a militant group responsible for attacks on American and Afghan government targets in Eastern Afghanistan and Kabul. The Haqqanis are rumoured to be based in North Waziristan, a remote part of the Pakistani tribal area bordering on Afghanistan. Not only did the Pakistani offensive against the Haqqanis never materialize, but the militants have been launching ever-bolder attacks, including the recent assault on the U.S. embassy compound in Kabul. American frustration with Pakistani inaction is probably part of the explanation for the public denunciation of ISI complicity in Haqqani terrorism.

Second, the discovery that Osama bin Laden was living comfortably in Pakistan raised new questions about the extent of official Pakistani duplicity in the bilateral relationship. Although no evidence proves that senior Pakistani military or intelligence officials were aware of bin Laden’s presence, it’s implausible that he lived in the shadow of a prestigious military academy for years without anyone in a position of influence knowing about it. This realization has hardened American attitudes towards Pakistan, culminating in Adm. Mullen’s public accusation.

Third, U.S. officials must now be realizing that the ‘surge’ of American troops has increased security in parts of southern Afghanistan but has done little to change the strategic situation in the larger region encompassing Afghanistan and Pakistan. These conditions still favour the Taliban, in part because the Taliban continues to enjoy safe havens in Pakistan, while (as a rule) U.S. troops are restricted to Afghanistan. This has been a liability in the NATO operation all along; however, now that the endgame seems to be approaching – defined, most notably, by the U.S. decision to begin withdrawing troops – American officials may have concluded that cracking down on these safe havens is a vital U.S. interest that cannot be delayed any longer, even if doing so risks profoundly alienating the Pakistani government.

Finally, we should not rule out the possibility that Adm. Mullen was speaking more bluntly than perhaps he had been authorized to do. After all, he was days away from retirement when he appeared at the Senate committee, and his former boss, ex-Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, established a precedent for politically incorrect straight talk in the days before he left the Pentagon. Moreover, unnamed “American officials” have subsequently suggested that Adm. Mullen was overstating his case against Pakistan. Nevertheless, while it’s possible that the good admiral took liberties, other reports suggest that the U.S. administration has adopted a much harder line on Pakistan’s support for the Haqqanis, and that there has been a coordinated campaign by administration officials to convey this message in private and public. It appears that Adm. Mullen’s testimony was one part of that campaign.

What Difference Will It Make?

Assuming that the United States has decided to push Islamabad harder than before, what impact will such efforts have on Pakistani behaviour? Alas, probably very little.

Allow me to digress for a moment. Last week, in a Master’s seminar on peace operations that I teach at the University of Ottawa, my students and I reviewed academic research on what happens when peace negotiations succeed or fail. The findings reminded me of a fundamental point relevant to American policy prospects in Afghanistan and Pakistan: namely, that parties to a conflict tend to respond to incentives and to their own calculations of costs and benefits, rather than to verbal entreaties. Thus, peace negotiations in any given conflict may go on forever without reaching fruition until the major parties calculate that it is in their respective interests to conclude an agreement.

Similarly, the United States can cajole or even threaten Pakistan in hopes of getting it to cease supporting the Haqqani network, but the dominant strategic fact in the region is not America’s intensified protests. Rather, it is the reality that the U.S. has begun to withdraw its forces and the likelihood that this move foreshadows a more substantial U.S. military disengagement from Afghanistan in the coming years. Given that prospect, elements in Pakistan’s security establishment may have concluded that their country’s overriding medium-term interest in relation to Afghanistan is to maintain close ties to proxy forces that will be in a position to promote and protect Pakistani interests in Afghanistan after the bulk of U.S. and NATO forces depart.

If this is true, U.S. officials should be very careful with their demands and threats, because Islamabad is unlikely to heed them – except perhaps in the half-hearted and symbolic manner that the Pakistanis have used to deflect previous U.S. pressure. Without a reasonable expectation of policy change transpiring in Pakistan, an escalation of America’s public demands for Pakistani action may serve only to reinforce perceptions of American weakness and declining influence in the region. How would that serve U.S. interests?

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

I could not believe my eyes when I read that US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, would press the EU to do more to solve its sovereign debt crisis. Then on Thursday, our own Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Europe needed to do more: “Certainly, in Europe, we need an exercise in political will, we need decisiveness, we need clarity.” Who are we to provide advice on political courage?

It  is easy to criticize European leaders for not being decisive enough. Yet we should recognize that most are, locally, in a very difficult political situation. Chancellor Angela Merkel, for instance, has seen her grip on power considerably weakened as Germans get ever angrier about footing the bill for the continent’s less disciplined nations. On the opposite side of the bill, it is difficult to imagine what more Greece’s PM George Papandreou could do to satisfy the country’s creditors.

Managers and consumers desperately need to be reassured. “We need a conductor,” said the head of an investment firm quoted by the Globe and Mail. “If we don’t get that conductor, it is going to be a very messy orchestra.” Of course. But who could it be?

Herself calling for strong, collective action, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde added a note of realism: “There is obviously a gap between very solid, very strong governmental commitments at the highest level and the implementation time. That’s inherent to parliamentary life … we are no longer in Napoleonic times when a leader could just snap his fingers and make it happen. We are in democracies and it takes time.”

So the kind of leadership the world needs is not only one that will convince fellow heads of government to act but also that will persuade the citizens of each country to support the measures necessary to avoid the precipice.

In the US, not only is the economic situation dire but the political gridlock renders any government action impossible. President Obama may look like a great conductor but half the orchestra is looking the other way. As Mr. Geithner recognized after his first unfortunate intervention in Europe, the Americans “are not in a particularly strong position to provide advice» to other countries about political will.” Who knows how high the unemployment rate will be before the November 2012 elections free Washington.

As far as Europe is concerned, most experts believe that in the longer term, the common currency will survive only if the member countries agree to a closer coordination of their fiscal policies. European Central Bank’s President, Jean-Claude Trichet, has even called for a European Finance Minister.  But such changes would need popular approval through referendums; in the current context, such a result is highly improbable.

So yes, extraordinary political leadership is desperately needed in these troubled times. But what if the world has become so complex and are democracies too weak (cynical politicians, embittered citizens) that finding and implementing solutions is beyond our capabilities?

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

This uncertainty has infected the economic debate.  Everyone is looking for the magic policy that will fix the economy—especially in the US, where an election is looming—but it’s hard to agree on the right policy “fix” when no one agrees—even three years after the financial crisis—on the source of the problem. Are we mainly suffering the aftershocks of the burst US housing bubble? Or the future shocks of fast-rising China, India, and other emerging giants? Is the problem too little fiscal stimulus, as Paul Krugman and other Keynsians remind us ad nauseum? Or too much debt, as the dour disciples of von Mises and von Hayek would have us believe? Is this the brink of economic collapse, or the cusp of economic boom?

No one knows. This uncertainty partly explains why the policy debate in the US, as elsewhere, has become so shrill and polarized—as if arguing a case loud and long enough will make it true. Uncertainty about the future—ironically—has also made the debate even more dependent on the “insights” of long-dead economists and the ”lessons” of economic history—with Hoover, Keynes, and the Great Depression haunting the current economic drama as pervasively as the King haunted Hamlet.

Which is perhaps the biggest problem.  We are all looking in the rear-view mirror when the one certainty about today’s economy is the way it’s being utterly reshaped by technological change—a process which, almost by definition, obscures the future and renders existing models obsolete. Signs of massive economic transformation are everywhere: Google growing from university start up to the world’s most valuable brand (worth a staggering $48 billion) in just over a decade; the US suffering simultaneously from high unemployment and acute labour shortages; a global economy whip-sawed between massive western deficits and massive eastern surpluses; China’s and India’s billions industrializing at a pace never seen in history—and that will never be seen again.

This is Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” on steroids. 

In the long run (and if we don’t screw up), the deep structural changes that are reshaping the global economy—innovation, integration, accelerating development—promise not just a brighter future, but one that’s quite literally ’unimaginably’ brighter. But in the short-run, change is unsettling—a recipe for uncertainty, disruption, a world gyrating wildly between hope and fear.  

So forget the “Great Recession”, the “Great Stagnation”, the “Great Bubble” and all the other Great Events that experts confidently predict will define the future. Get used instead to the Great Confusion—and learn to live with, if not love, the roller-coaster ride that’s modernity.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

As a result of the GA’s vote on Friday, NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil will attend the upcoming UN gathering of world leaders in New York. Abbas, elected PNA President in 2005, does not enjoy the same privileges (although the Palestinian Liberation Organization has long been recognized as the representative of the Palestinian people, and has the status as an ‘observer entity’ at the UN). Indeed, the NTC has enjoyed a meteoric rise. Compare its assumption of its country’s seat in the UN with that of the Communist government of China. After World War II, China’s seat on the Security Council (and in the wider UN) was filled by the Republic of China (the Nationalists), and continued to be so during the stalemate of the Chinese Civil War. It was not until 1971 that the People’s Republic of China was awarded the Chinese seat at the UN (again, through a General Assembly Resolution).

Of course, international lawyers would be quick to say that we are dealing with apples and oranges here. The Libyan case is about the recognition of a government of an existing state, whereas the overtures of Abbas and the PNA are designed to bring about recognition of a new state. In other words, Libya already enjoys membership in the international community; all we are debating is who should represent it – an issue that has not traditionally been the concern of international law. What the Palestinian National Authority proposes is more significant: the creation of an additional member of the international community, which in legal terms requires the fulfilment of particular criteria and carries with it sovereign rights and responsibilities. Moreover, if Abbas’ tactic were to work (highly unlikely, given the U.S. promise to veto), the Palestinians would gain admission to a range of international legal and diplomatic forums, where complaints against Israeli occupation and its policy regarding settlements could be pursued.

But these seemingly clear legal distinctions are more ambiguous in practice. Let’s take the latter phenomenon first: the recognition of new states. According the 1933 Montevideo Convention (most commonly cited as a definitive legal source on the requirements of statehood), in order to be recognized as a state an entity has to fulfil four main criteria. It must have a permanent population, a defined territory, an effective government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. In short, international law takes the view that statehood is a matter of fact. In addition, as international lawyer Stefan Talmon insists, the recognition of other states merely confirms a new state’s status; it does not (contrary to the old ‘constitutive’ view) bring a new state into being.

In reality, however, the acquisition of the status of statehood is much messier. Indeed, Talmon admits that there ‘is probably no other subject in the field of international law in which law and politics are more closely interwoven.’ To begin, we have seen cases where entities have arguably met the formal requirements for statehood, yet not been recognized by other states in the system or admitted as states into the UN. Some take the view that this is the case with respect to Kosovo, whose 2008 declaration of independence was deemed legal by a non-binding opinion of the International Court of Justice in July 2010. Yet, at present, Kosovo is recognized by only 83 out of 193 UN member states and its membership of the UN is unlikely as long as Russia has veto power in the Security Council. (Interestingly, however, Russia has simultaneously used the U.S. recognition of Kosovo as a precedent to recognize the breakaway Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as sovereign states.) There are also cases where entities are recognized as states, without necessarily fulfilling the legal criteria. Some have argued (including Ali Abunimah) that Abbas’ efforts are premature, since at present the Palestinian Authority controls neither fixed territory nor borders, and is prohibited under the 1993 Oslo Agreements from freely entering into relations with other sovereign states.

These cases suggest that, far from being based only on fact, recognition is a highly political business. Some states and organizations, such as the European Union, are completely open about their political approach to recognition. So, for example, in 1991 the EU adopted Official Guidelines on the Recognition of New States in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which stated that recognition would be made conditional on certain minimum standards like the prevalence of the rule of law, democratic government, guarantees for minority rights, and respect for existing borders. (Let’s leave aside, for the moment, the uncomfortable fact that individual EU states then disregarded their own guidelines, in their hasty recognition of Croatia and Bosnia.)

When we move on to the recognition of governments, we see a similar kind of ambiguity. As suggested above, international law is said to be silent on the question of who should represent a state, and therefore has not to date developed criteria to distinguish between illegitimate and legitimate governments. Furthermore, some states – such as the UK – are adamant that they do not engage in the practice of recognizing governments at all. Therefore, when questioned about whether Britain recognized the NTC, Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted until very recently that it was a moot question, since ‘the UK only recognizes states, not governments’.

Nonetheless, while formal statements of recognition may not be articulated, states still need to decide whether a particular person or group is competent to act as the organ and representative of an existing state – particularly in situations where there is civil war or competing factions. This decision is based not only on whether a government has effective control over a state’s territory, but again  – inevitably – on more political considerations. Discretion reigns here too. Thus, some European states (such as Italy) gave their ‘diplomatic recognition’ to the NTC before one could reasonably argue that such control had been demonstrated. Even now, the status of the NTC is disputed by some members of the international community. In the wake of the GA vote on Friday, a left-leaning group of Latin American states lodged their opposition to granting the UN seat to the NTC, arguing – in the case of Venezuela – that it would ‘represent an abominable precedent’.  In their view, the NTC is not the legitimate representative of Libya, but rather a faction imposed by foreign intervention. More generally, the NTC example raises questions about whether international law should have something to say about the recognition of governments, and what the balance should be between the demonstration of effective control over territory and support of the majority of the people.

This brings us back to the Palestinians. Even if statehood were to be recognized (and that is a very big if), that would not end the controversy, for it would bring into sharp relief questions about who should represent the Palestinians within the United Nations. As legal scholar Guy Goodwin-Gill argued in a widely cited advisory opinion last week, a successful bid for statehood threatens to fragment the Palestinian people – more than half of whom have been displaced and live outside the territories governed by the Palestinian Authority. At present, the United Nations – and the international community more broadly – recognizes the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people (inside and outside the Occupied Territories), and their right to self-determination is not territorially limited to the West Bank and Gaza.

Would Abbas’ latest proposal change this for better or for worse? Many are focusing on what it would do to the prospects for a peace deal with Israel (and more narrowly to the PNA’s relationship with Washington). But there are broader implications. As Goodwin-Gill suggests, we could end up with a situation where the government of the new state (the PNA) would represent the Palestinian people within the UN, and the PLO would continue to represent them outside of it. In terms of the international community’s more general approach to membership, it may add weight to the arguments of those who believe that the character of a state’s government (particularly its form of representation) is a legitimate matter of international concern.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

In Britain, Europe bashing seems to have become a bit of a blood sport. It’s as if commentators in the broadsheets and on the airwaves believe that the Chunnel can somehow be blown up, allowing Britain to return to the safety and security of ‘splendid isolation.’ Have they forgotten that the UK’s trade and investment are now inextricably bound up with the economic fortunes on the ‘continent’? If the Eurozone goes down the tubes, so too will the UK economy. So let’s cool it with the schadenfreude. We are all in this together.

If there is one silver lining in these months of doom and dread, it is the thought that banks just might have to emerge from those shadows, to experience the spotlight of accountability. There was a time when the big banks in Europe, and particularly in the UK, played an important social function in protecting and educating those who knew little about managing money. A pensioner who I spoke to the other day told me a story of when she opened her first bank account, a momentous step which was accompanied by a meeting with the bank manager to discuss the importance of balanced budgets. How could any of us, with a straight face, endure a similar kind of lecture from a banker today?

Photo Courtesy Reuters.

There is a tendency on Parliament Hill, when that sort of sex-spy affair comes up, to forget that Canada is not a major player in international affairs. I’d be very surprised if Mr. Baird himself had in his mind or his briefcase information that, in the hands of the ‘enemy’, would have important consequences on world affairs, or even on Canada’s interests. This is even more the case for Mr. Dechert, even though the media, to make the story more interesting, chose to call him ‘a senior Harper government MP’. In my experience, Parliamentary Secretaries have no power whatsoever. They exist to replace the Minister in Parliament while he or she attends to more important business. Whatever statements they make have been written by bureaucrats and vetted by the minister’s political staff (or the reverse). 

That reminds me of Maxime Bernier, who had to resign after leaving ‘secret’ documents at his girlfriend’s apartment. The incident was a spectacular demonstration of carelessness that proved he was unfit to be part of Cabinet. But, had Julie Couillard read all 500 pages, would she have become a danger to Canada’s security? Had she given these to her former biker boyfriend, would he have been interested in the Harper government’s views on the future of NATO?

CSIS’s director Richard Fadden has warned that some Canadian politicians at the provincial level have fallen under the control of foreign governments, probably China. Still, I wonder why exactly the Chinese would be interested in influencing the decisions of any of our provincial governments.

The truth is, now as in the past, reporters and politicians alike cannot resist these James Bond-like stories. Remember Pierre Sévigny, war hero and Associate Defense minister in John Diefenbaker’s government?  When it was discovered that Sévigny had had a close relationship with Gerda Munsinger, a prostitute from East Germany, a huge controversy erupted, threatening to derail Lester Pearson’s minority government. Yet, again, what crucial information could Sévigny have shared with Munsinger?

Like most Canadians, I like to think that our country can, as a G8 middle power, play an significant role in world affairs. Yet I have a very hard time believing that our foreign policy officers carry with them information so sensitive that, in a spy’s hands, it could have a major impact in world or continental affairs. 

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Somehow this story has morphed into a morality tale about the folly of the European Union and the bankruptcy of social democracy. This is blaming the victim for the crime. Sure Greece borrowed beyond its means, as did the governments of Portugal, Italy and others. Sure its over-generous welfare state – and sieve-like tax system – was unsustainable. And yes the single currency led Greece, like other euro-zone members, to believe it could borrow endlessly on the same market terms as Germany.

But the real cause of Europe’s financial crisis is not government, socialism, or the false security of the euro-zone – it’s the banks who lent so recklessly and lavishly to overstretched governments, and now find themselves facing insurmountable losses if (or rather when) Greece and others default. To focus on the failure of Greece to borrow prudently is to miss the much bigger and systemically critical failure of the banks to lend prudently – and to recognize the risks of Greek debt (even when denominated in euros), given Greece’s record of serial financial crises since 1945.

The failure was spectacular. By some estimates Europe’s banks are in worse shape than America’s. According to the Wall Street Journal, the total debt of the big three U.S. banks (Bank of America, JP Morgan and Citigroup) is $5.86 trillion, or 39% of GDP, while the debts of France’s giants, BNP, Crédit Agricole and Société General, amount to euro 4.7 trillion, or 250% of GDP – a suicidal level of exposure concealed up till now by regulators apparently more focused on protecting the incestuous network of bankers, bureaucrats and politicians that dominate French finance than shedding light on the health of the financial system.

This threat of a banking collapse – and an implosion of the financial system – is the gun being held at European governments and taxpayers. The debate now is no longer about how Greece will repay or whether it will default – clearly little more can squeezed out of Greece – but  about who will pick up the tab for the banks’ blunders.

Many blame the Euro ‘straight jacket’ for the crisis, arguing that it prevents Greece from devaluing its ways to economic health.  But how would returning to a drastically devalued Drachma improve banks’ balance sheets, the core of the problem? Devaluation is just default by another name. Others point the finger at the E.U., arguing that its rambling, decentralized structure has made policy coordination difficult and left no one institution in charge. But how would dismantling the E.U. – disintegrating Europe- improve coordination and efficiency?  Back-to-the-future proposals are a recipe for even more chaos.

Besides these debates obscure the real question – what to do about the banks, the Achilles heel of globalization?  Despite Basel III, despite G-20 pledges, despite promised domestic reform, we still find ourselves in a world where spectacularly ill-judged decisions by too-big-to-fail banks threaten to bring the world financial system to its knees – and to unravel not just European but global integration.

Thomas Jefferson supposedly claimed that ‘banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.’  As the global economy stumbles again – for the second time in just three years – it’s hard not to be reminded of his warning.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The revolution in robotic warfare is about to go global. Many countries are trying to develop or acquire remote-controlled “drone” aircraft such as those the United States has used to kill hundreds of alleged militants in Pakistan. Before this proliferation occurs, liberal democracies should be working to clarify and strengthen international rules on the use of these weapons systems.

The U.S. seems to be taking the opposite course, extending its drone campaign to countries far removed from the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan – including Yemen and Somalia – and using rules of engagement that are, at best, obscure and, at worst, illegal.

This is a dangerously short-sighted strategy. While execution by drone may appear to be a relatively low-cost and low-risk option for dealing with America’s enemies, it legitimizes methods that other countries may be expected to follow once they acquire similar capabilities.

If you’re interested in reading further, here’s the entire article.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Democrats were ecstatic after the speech: their President had abandoned the conciliatory tone he had used all summer in the hope of bringing Republicans to support his debt reduction plan. Thursday’s speech may be seen as Barack Obama’s first of his campaign for reelection.

Most commentators believe that some of the measures included in the America Jobs Act will get bipartisan support. But Republicans will attack the spending parts of it, for instance the billions offered to State governments so that they can rehire teachers laid off as part of cost cutting initiatives. Whatever the amounts that get Congress approval, economists think the direct impact on the economy will be relatively small. Even when offered tax incentives to hire new employees, managers will not do so if they are not confident that there will be clients for their products. As the President said, “ultimately, our recovery will be driven not by Washington, but by our businesses and our workers.” Sure, government “can help, make a difference” (even Canadian Prime minister Stephen Harper now seems to think so…). But it may be beyond the President’s and Congress’ power to produce the kind of jolt that would quick start the economy.

American companies don’t lack money. As Moody’s has shown, they are sitting on over 1.2 trillion dollars in cash. They’re just waiting. Not for tax breaks or federal funds, but for signs that confidence is coming back, that customers are filling the stores again, that the European debt crisis does not lead to the double-dip recession everyone dreads. No confidence, no investment; no investment, no new jobs. Politicians can beg all they want, the private sector will not start hiring in the present environment. As Catherine Swift explains in her interview with the CIC, “companies’ main goal isn’t to create jobs, though that does happen; companies’ Number 1 objective is to stay in business, which means making money.”

After what happened in 2008 and 2009, can you blame the private sector for being careful? For not trusting politicians unable to set aside a little bit of their ambitions for the good of the country? Can you assail business people when you see Europe’s economy threatened by high levels of debt, badly timed austerity packages, social unrest and the impotence of its own political leaders?

No magical formula exists to bring back confidence. The oratory skill that President Obama demonstrated again on Thursday night, as pleasing as it was to his admirers, did not affect investors somber mood, as shown buy the markets’ sharp drop on Friday.

Given the current state of the American economy and the few reasons for optimism, I would be very surprised if the Obama administration put a lot of energy in defining the new grand foreign policy some are hoping for, as mentioned in Roland Paris’ latest blog entry. If unemployment remains high for a long period, the American economy might suffer long term damage and the United States may start losing some of their influence in the world, both through hard and soft power.

Photo Courtesy Reuters.

Instead of a flurry of new thinking at the highest echelons of the foreign policy establishment, the major decisions of the past two administrations have been generated from the same tool kit of foreign policy ideas that have dominated the world for decades. Washington’s strategic debates – between neoconservatives and liberals, between interventionists and realists – are essentially struggles among ideas and strategies held over from the era when nation-states were the only significant actors on the world stage. As ideas, none of them were designed to deal effectively with a world in which states are grappling with powerful entities that operate beyond their control…

Although establishment thinkers and government decision-makers have been slow to catch up to the more complicated new mechanics of the world, some thinkers already have begun to grapple with its implications. Even as America’s top-level strategy was driven by more traditionally derived notions such as the “global war on terror” and a “freedom agenda,” quieter corners of the Defense Department and then the newly formed Department of Homeland Security started investing research dollars in the academic study of fuzzier problems like failed states and transnational networks. Much of that grant money has only begun to bear fruit in the last few years, with a handful of thinkers emerging to lay the groundwork for a newer kind of strategy.

Joseph Nye, a Harvard political scientist who served in the Carter and Clinton administrations and has advised Secretary of State Clinton, was one of the pioneers. In the 1990s, he coined the term “soft power,” arguing that sometimes the most effective way for America to promote its interests would be through influencing global health and the environment, or culture and education. His latest book, “The Future of Power,” counsels that America can preserve its influence if it reconceives its institutions and priorities to deal with a world where the energy is shifting from the West to the East, as well as from states to non-state actors. Michael Doyle at Columbia University, a seminal theorist whose idea of a “democratic peace” in the 1990s crucially inflected policy with the belief that democracies don’t fight each other, now talks about the notion of an age of the “empowered individual,” where lone actors can alter the trajectory of states and of history as never before. Stephen Walt, also at Harvard, argues that in the new era America simply needs to start by acknowledging its limits: that with less muscle and less extra money, the first step will be to streamline its goals in a way that so far politicians have been loath to do.

Cambanis is right: We’ve seen nothing like George Kennan’s Foreign Affairs article of 1947, which set forth a vision of Soviet intentions and helped crystallize a consensus on US “containment” policy. Cambanis is also correct to note that the official US foreign policy discourse has been largely stuck for the last decade, not least because of the Bush Administration’s extreme reaction to 9/11, which led to a polarized, all-consuming debate between supporters and critics of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Now, with the American involvement in these wars winding down, there is a growing interest in other issues and other parts of the world, including the still-reverberating effects of the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the growing strength of China. So, yes: I agree with Cambanis’ call for more (and more creative) thinking about the ingredients of a forward-looking foreign policy.

But that said, I also have two reservations.

First, given the complexity of the international environment, it is not at all clear that the United States or any other major country would be well-served by a singular grand strategy.  I don’t want to take this argument too far, because I believe there are important benefits to defining broad foreign policy objectives. But Cambanis’ apparent longing for such a clarifying doctrine may be nostalgic and even risky. Indeed, the Bush Administration provided a clear foreign policy vision in response to 9/11, when it declared a ‘war on terror’. That vision was flawed not only because it misdirected American attention and resources, but arguably because it presumed that any simplified doctrine would serve U.S. interests in the current environment. The world is changing so quickly that we barely have time to write about the changes before they are superseded by something else. Under these circumstances, flexibility may be the most important ingredient for a successful foreign policy. Flexibility is not synonymous with passivity. John Hancock is right to point out, in his Roundtable post, that ‘world leadership is in short supply.’ But leadership does not require the articulation of a simplifying doctrine.

Second, more thinking has taken place on the changing nature of international affairs than Cambanis acknowledges. He mentions the works of Nye, Doyle and Walt, all of whom are great scholars. However, as my former University of Colorado colleague, Dan Drezner, points out, the ideas that Cambanis mentions are not new. Nye’s insights into ‘soft power’ were first published in 1990, for example, while Doyle’s pioneering work on the ‘democratic peace’ appeared in the late 1970s. Drezner could have added that in the ensuing years there has been a flurry of scholarly writing addressing the issues that Cambanis raises– including works about the role of non-state actors and about ‘fuzzier’ problems such as transnational networks and failed states. Admittedly, much of this literature is full of academic jargon, but an interested reader with a bit of perseverance will discover rich veins of gold to mine. (If you are interested in taking up pick and shovel, this course syllabus, which lists some recent writings, is a good place to start. If, however, you prefer to have a shiny nugget handed to you, take a look at this thoughtful article by Princeton’s John Ikenberry.)

I wonder what others—including my fellow Roundtablers—think about the Cambanis piece. Is there a dearth of strategic thinking about foreign policy? Which books or articles offer the most convincing analysis of the changes now taking place in global affairs, in your view?

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Some predict a fast-rising China will soon dominate. Others foresee a period of rivalry and conflict among great-power equals. Yet, for the moment, what’s striking about the international scene is not the struggle for world domination, but rather the scramble to avoid global responsibility and leadership. We live in an age when no one much wants to be in charge.

Power—usually—abhors a vacuum. But today’s great powers are a timid lot. After launching an all-out “War on Terror” in the wake of the 2001attacks—capped by invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq—the US has spent the last several years looking for excuses to retreat from its military occupations, and to share out the global policeman role among freeloading allies. The EU talks a good line on world leadership, but it’s done little to increase its global power—such as investing in more than a token military—and shows no sign of being able to agree on how to wield that power if it did. And while the US and Europe have turned inwards, China has been surprisingly reluctant to play a major global role, focussed more on keeping its head down—and its economic miracle on track—than throwing its weight around. Despite repeated warnings about the inevitability of conflict between the US and China, we are worlds away from the last centuries’ great wars—ideological and military—for global supremacy.

Maybe multilateral organizations are finally coming into their own, and the utopian dream of world government is at hand. But don’t bet on it. Once the target of mass riots because of its alleged plot to foist global capitalism on the world, the WTO now looks so feeble that it’s lucky to attract a half dozen listless protestors outside its meetings. Its long-running Doha Round of free trade talks is dying because of international apathy, not international acrimony. Meanwhile, the fact that the UN crowd feels the need to crow so loudly about recent successes in Libya says as much about the organization’s powerlessness to deal with real international threats, such as a nuclear Iran or African famine, as its ability to cheer on the toppling of tin-pot dictators. Multilateral organizations remain nothing more—or less—than the collective will of their members. And those members feel in no mood to step up to the plate.

There are several reasons why world leadership is in short supply. One is that the financial costs are too high, especially for overstretched western powers reeling from financial crisis, anaemic growth, and spiralling debts. Another reason is that, despite unrelenting globalization, electorates are more focused on domestic concerns—crime, unemployment, education—and warier of foreign entanglements. Despite 9/11—or because of it—a recent Pew Research Centre survey finds that Americans are more isolationist today than they’ve been in four decades.

The biggest reason is that world power just ain’t what it used to be. In an ever more open, interconnected and competitive world, GDP and technology define global success and prestige far more than armies and navies. China appears on everyone’s radar screen, not because of its foreign policy or military clout, but because of its phenomenal economic growth. In comparison, nothing has done more to take the shine off of “superpower” status than the image of the United States—with a military larger than the next 12 world powers combined—bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being a “world power”, classically defined, looks like a liability more than an asset.

What are the implications of our leaderless world? Some worry—with good reason—that the international community will prove incapable of tackling big collective problems, such as global imbalances, or climate change, or nuclear proliferation. The US and China may not be about to launch a new Cold War—if only because they are now so financially and economically intertwined­—but nor have they offered anything like a shared vision or joint leadership.

And yet—with these big caveats—global anarchy is going surprisingly well so far. The WTO may be deadlocked, but world trade is surging. The General Assembly may be ineffectual, but across a range of practical issues—from internet rules, to accountancy standards, to disease control—cross-border co-operation is thriving at the grassroots level. Governments may still have trouble playing in the same sandbox, but global integration is racing ahead.

So let the diplomats and academics obsess about who’s on top and who’s not.  For the moment, the rest of us are just getting on with it.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Yet, according to a Harris Decima poll sponsored by the Canadian Press, a majority greeted the announcement favourably. Even in Québec, where opposition was expected to be very strong, a respectable 41 percent agreed with the government’s decision.

Therefore, from now on, our armed forces will be known as the Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army (no royal for these guys). That important piece of business dealt with, politicians should now begin to discuss how the country will use its armed forces from now on. What have we learned from our long engagement in Afghanistan? Did the Libyan experience confirm our need for a new state of the art fighter as costly as the F35, or should we invest in a cheaper fighter or even drones? What share of the fiscal burden should National Defence be asked to carry as the government aims for zero deficit in 2014-2015?

These are very difficult questions to which I would not dare suggest answers. But I sense many Canadians are wondering where the nation should go militarily in the future. A report leaked to the media earlier this week shows that Ottawa’s efforts to increase our armed forces’ capabilities contributed to our successes in the field but also produced a bloated bureaucracy in Ottawa.  The report was written by a “transformation team” led by recently retired Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie, the former Chief of the Land Staff.

In its analysis of the forces current situation, the “Transformation Team” doesn’t mince words. It speaks of “an increasingly cumbersome and even confusing degree of interdepartmental process,” of “stifling process, blurred authorities and accountabilities,” one consequence being that hundreds of millions attributed to National Defence has remained unspent. The report remarks that while personnel in operational jobs grew by 10 percent from 2004 to 2010, the number of employees in non-operational functions (i.e. bureaucrats) grew by 40 percent!  “In far too many instances,” deplores the Team, “the headquarters and other overhead grew while ships were decommissioned, regular and reserve battalions were disbanded and whole aircraft fleets cashed in.”

General Leslie’s group recommends that “dramatic changes” be made so that the Forces are able to respond to present and future challenges while limiting costs. Among those changes: the number of bureaucrats should be reduced, 3,500 force personnel should be reallocated to priority functions, the number of full-time reservists should be  cut by half, and the amount spent on outside contractors and consultants (2,7 billions) should be brought down by at least 30 percent.

Rumours indicate that the top brass are very unhappy about the report. However, reports the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson, the Prime Minister’s Office has shown “considerable interest” in the document. Rightly so. If one is to believe its description of the waste and disorganization that prevail at National Defence and the Forces, there is indeed an urgent need for dramatic changes. Therefore, besides tackling the hard questions about the role of the Canadian military, the government will also have to make sure that once these decisions are taken, the Department will be willing and able to manage efficiently the enormous amounts of money it receives.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

On his way to a summit meeting in Paris, Harper stopped at an Italian airfield to thank Canadian military personnel who were part of the NATO operation in Libya. As it happens, the Prime Minister went beyond thanking the troops. The fact that there is now “new hope” in Libya, he declared, “gives some proof to the old saying, ‘A handful of soldiers is better than a mouthful of arguments.’ For the Gaddafis of this world pay no attention to the force of argument. The only thing they get is the argument of force.”

To appreciate the resonance of that declaration with Harper’s larger view of foreign affairs, it is helpful to recall an interview he gave to Macleans a couple of months ago. In it, he set out the dark vision of a Manichean world in which the forces of good and ill are locked in continual struggle. Against the background of this ongoing conflict, he further asserted, the use of armed force for righteous causes has defined Canada as a nation.

Turning back to Libya, it is true that Gaddafi needed to be confronted, because he had paid little heed to international demands that he stop attacking Libyan citizens. But Harper’s remarks yesterday went further. Indeed, he came close to lampooning the idea of diplomacy itself. Who needs a “mouthful of arguments” if you can land a good punch? It doesn’t take much imagination to hear the snickering behind that quotation.

Nor does it take much imagination to think of alternative quotations Harper could have used in his speech. Here’s one, for example, from a man who certainly knew how to land a punch, and whom the prime minister himself has described as “incomparable”: Winston Churchill.  The incomparable Churchill famously said this: “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” That comes from someone who understood the terrible price of war.

Although it’s in little evidence these days, Canadians are actually pretty good at “jaw-jaw” in international relations. Our ability to use words to settle conflicts and advance our interests has defined this nation as much as, or more than, our wars have done.  That’s a part of our history – our diplomatic tradition – which Harper seems to be hiding behind his narrative of military prowess and sacrifice.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Modest expectations are therefore in order.  But there are also reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the prospects of peacebuilding in Libya. Here are four:

1. The war seems to be heading towards a decisive rebel victory.

Studies have found that civil conflicts ending in decisive victory are considerably less likely to recur than conflicts ending in a negotiated settlement.  The logic behind this is straightforward: when a warring faction is destroyed or surrenders after defeat, it will generally have more difficulty reconstituting itself as an effective fighting force than if, instead, it had negotiated a peace agreement while it was still intact.

2. Libya’s rebel leadership has been saying and doing the right things.

One of the challenges facing the NTC (in addition to winning the war and keeping its own coalition intact) is to be magnanimous in victory.  Specifically, it should welcome all but the most senior Qaddafi loyalists back into Libya’s political life and give them a voice in the upcoming constitutional and electoral processes.  So far, the rebel leadership has signalled a distinctly conciliatory approach to regime supporters who lay down their arms.  In the days and weeks to come, the NTC needs to continue working to control retaliatory score-settling and focus on delivering services and initiating political reforms, as it has promised to do.

3. Planning for the post-conflict transition has been underway for months.

The NTC, along with its principal international backers and the United Nations, appears to have been involved in extensive planning for Libya’s post-conflict transition.  No peacebuilding plan survives contact with reality intact, but starting with a plan – better, one that’s well thought out – is preferable to improvisation.  At present, it is impossible to evaluate the content of these plans because they have not been made public, but early signs are encouraging.  For example, some rebel forces entering Tripoli were instructed to send text messages to city residents imploring them not to damage or loot public property.  Memories of chaos of post-invasion Baghdad seem to have loomed large in this planning.

4. Libya has oil.

There are many hypotheses about the relationship between natural resources and conflict, but one finding is quite clear:  countries with higher per capita income have better peacebuilding outcomes, all other things being equal.  Libya’s oil is responsible for its per capita income being roughly the same as Mexico’s (instead of, say, Chad’s).  Oil gives Libya something that most other post-conflict countries, which tend to be impoverished, rarely have:  a steady source of revenue that is not dependent on external donors.  That, too, raises the odds of success.

None of these four conditions guarantees that Libya’s transition to a post-Qaddafi peace will be smooth.  On the contrary, it is almost certain to be rocky.  But compared to other countries emerging from civil wars, Libya has a few important things going for it.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

To begin, the no-fly zone was pushed by the UK and France, and backed up by Lebanon. The U.S. came on side much later in the game. Indeed, a White House official was over-heard to say wryly that the U.S. was ‘leading from behind’. Given the origins of the impetus for action, the Canadian government did not have to worry about being portrayed as a blind follower of U.S. policy. Liberal governments have been known to take this perception seriously (just think of Paul Martin’s decision on ballistic missile defence). So here is one factor that suggests they would have been supportive of action in Libya.

Second, the framing of the no-fly zone used the language of civilian protection. As André notes, former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy was a strong proponent of the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (or R2P, as it has become known). In fact, it was a Canadian-sponsored Commission, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which in 2001 coined the terminology and pushed the notion of R2P within the United Nations. (Michael Ignatieff – at that time an academic in human rights – was a prominent member of the Commission). Other key Liberals, such as Allan Rock and Paul Martin, were equally supportive of the principle. So it is difficult to imagine that a Liberal government would have been opposed to an action framed in terms of R2P.

Third, the no-fly zone was authorized by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 1973. Liberals have been long-standing supporters of multilateral processes. It was the lack of multilateral backing – i.e., the failure to get the so-called second resolution on Iraq in 2003 – that largely determined the Chrétien government’s refusal to back the Iraq War. So the campaign in Libya ticked all of the boxes in terms of having ‘proper authority’ within the international community.

Finally, the Security Council delegated implementation of the Resolution to NATO: a body in which Canada has historically had a huge part to play. One of the arguments that motivated Canada’s participation in Afghanistan – an involvement that, as André notes, began under a Liberal government – was that Canada needed to honour its commitments to its allies, and ‘pull its weight’. In addition, it was under a NATO umbrella that Canada participated in the Kosovo air campaign in 1999 (interestingly, without Security Council authorization). So again, it seems unlikely that a Liberal government would have opted out of an action taken by the NATO alliance.

All of these cases demonstrate that the notion of ‘honest broker’ needs careful definition. It most certainly does not mean non-involvement, i.e., Switzerland-style neutrality. Our country has been far from neutral in a variety of international crises. To suggest otherwise is to air-brush away some key instances in Canadian history – some of them integral parts of the process of building our nation. What is true, however, is that our country has tried to maintain a stance of impartiality in a number of conflicts. By impartiality, I mean the policy of trying to treat two sides even-handedly in political terms.

In the case of Libya, impartiality would have meant sticking judiciously to the mandate of no-fly zone, designed only to protect civilians, and avoiding the temptation to sponsor one political outcome. NATO and its allies were most certainly exceeding that mandate in many of their actions, particularly during the assault on Tripoli. After all, it was Qatar’s Special Forces, and not the rebels, who made the storming of Qaddafi’s compound possible. Some Western leaders also went beyond the fragile consensus that supported the no-fly zone; by proclaiming (as Obama, Sarkozy, and Cameron did) that Libya’s future could not include Qaddafi, they were most certainly choosing sides.

I’m not a defender of the current government’s foreign policy, but the criticism leveled needs to be fair. So what is behind these suggestions that the Harper government’s policy on Libya represents a new departure for Canada in foreign affairs? It is not involvement in the NATO-led effort that seems new. Rather, it is the strong rhetoric of ‘right and wrong’, as we have discussed previously in these pages, and the clear support for one winner in Libya’s political struggle.

But as André suggests, modern conflict is becoming more complex. When the goal is to protect civilians, it is extremely difficult not to pick sides. Resolution 1973, if read very narrowly, represented a possible path for protecting the vulnerable without dictating a political outcome. But it was liberally interpreted by some as allowing for partiality and ‘muscular diplomacy’. That is the charge we can level at Harper. Some Liberals might not have followed him down that road, but others might well have.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

But beyond the question of what to do, and in what sequence, is the issue of who should do it. During the last six months, Western policy-makers have continually insisted that only Libyans have the right to decide upon their future, and that the role of outsiders is to support and assist, when invited. Respect for the long-standing principle of self-determination, along with the fear of being branded ‘imperialist’, has motivated this careful stance.

Undoubtedly there is also some pragmatism at work here. Reconstruction is not only messy, but expensive. And after struggling to finance the thousands of air sorties over Libya to disable Qaddafi’s military capability, NATO countries will quietly express relief that they can turn their scarce resources elsewhere. Already, negotiations are taking place between Libya’s Transitional National Council and the foreign powers that have supported it over the release of frozen Libyan assets. These assets will be critical to the work of reconstruction and national healing.

There is, however, another side to this pragmatism. To see it in action, witness the recent Chinese offers of help to rebuild war-torn Libya. They know all too well that there is much money to be made during the reconstruction and beyond – if firm ties can be established now with the rebels-turned rulers.

So what principles should guide this potential free-for-all in Libya? Do outsiders have any responsibilities to rebuild what they have helped to destroy? And what are the nature and limits of their right to play a role in post conflict reconstruction? As I’ve argued in a 2009 article in Ethics and International Affairs, a number of rationales for rebuilding have been forward by international actors over the past two decades. They can roughly be grouped into three types.

The first argument is that the act of using force – even in a supporting role – carries with it responsibilities of reconstruction. The logic here is causal. Appealing to former U.S. Secretary of State Colin’s Powell’s use of the Pottery Barn analogy (in relation to Iraq), ‘If you broke it, you own it’. Because military means have damaging and destabilizing effects on local people and institutions (even if they also have positive consequences, such as removing a tyrannical regime), there is a moral imperative upon those choosing to engage in the conflict to stay on and ensure that personal insecurity, political instability, and economic devastation are addressed. Interestingly, this notion of a ‘responsibility to rebuild’ has also been invoked by actors who were not parties to the original conflict (whether states or international institutions). The question here, of course, is what gives these actors the right, let alone the responsibility, to engage heavily in the post-war affairs of a sovereign state. The answers given frequently draw on arguments about historical or ‘special’ ties to the state in question, or expert capacity in ‘doing peace-building’. In the case of Libya, this might include a state like Saudi Arabia (influential in the Middle East), or Japan (which has contributed extensively to different UN peace-building ventures).

These arguments need to be interrogated carefully, to ensure that narrow economic and political interests are not hiding underneath moral claims to responsibility. Even if, for example, NATO countries have been complicit in the destruction, does not mean that they can or should take a guiding role in any political settlement. Moral philosophers have shown that backward-looking ideas of causal responsibility relate imperfectly to the forward-looking task of addressing a problem, since the actor involved in ‘creating the mess’ may not be viewed as a legitimate participant in rectifying the situation. Nor is it clear that any country in the international system has a particular ‘knack’ for peace-building. We should all be humbled by the expensive, drawn-out, and often over-stretched peace-building missions that have dotted the international landscape in the 1990s and 2000s.

A second rationale for reconstruction, forwarded at various times by Western states, is that war’s end represents a transformational moment for a society. If it can be seized, with outside help, democracy and human rights can be secured. This rationale, of course, rests on a deeper set of liberal beliefs that: a) democracy is a morally superior form of government; and b) democratic states by and large do not war with one another, and therefore the promotion of democracy is the best route to international stability. Both notions were most obviously at the heart of former U.S. President George W. Bush’s ‘freedom agenda’, but values projection has also informed both European and Canadian foreign policy (much as many Europeans and Canadians would like to deny this). While the promotion of particular values is ultimately matter of choice for these Western states – did we really have to go to war over Kosovo or Libya? – it is often framed in public discourse as a national obligation: a function of ‘who we are’.

Democracy promotion, particularly in the context of reconstruction, also has its perils. While international actors like to claim that they are only ‘assisting’, and that there is full ‘local ownership’ of the reconstruction, in practice that ownership in many cases amounts to an effort to persuade and ‘incentivize’ the leaders and populations of war-torn territories to accept international prescriptions for how to rebuild. More problematically, we have seen in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan how the presence of international personnel (no matter how good their intentions) can foster an unhealthy relationship of dependency and a stifling of local capacity. Ominous signs of this potential problem are evident in the paternalistic statements of some Westerners that the Libyan TNC appears chaotic and ill-prepared for governance.

An additional problem with reconstruction-as-democracy-promotion is that international supporters of local efforts, operating in the name of ‘universal’ values, will perceive any opposition to a particular reconstruction agenda as coming from so-called anti-democratic forces. This has the potential to stigmatize what might be legitimate opposition, and to misinterpret the complex politics that will accompany any period of transition.

The third rationale for reconstruction, and the one playing a particularly prominent role in the case of Libya, draws on hard-nosed conceptions of national interest. Societies devastated by war can morph into ‘failed states’, and, consequently, serve as the breeding ground for terrorism. This rationale is often part of a broader perspective on international affairs which divides the world into a ‘zone of peace’ (our cosy Western world) and a ‘zone of instability’ (which seems to have a fluid membership). So-called failed states are problematic not only because they destabilize their own regions, but because – as the events of September 11, 2001 demonstrated – they can foster the growth of movements with the capacity to inflict pain on the zone of peace.  What is notable about this rationale is that unlike the ‘responsibility to rebuild’, its focus is less on the vulnerable in war-torn societies, and more on the peace-builder’s own society.

Efforts to address the problem of ‘failed states’ form the core of most national security strategies in  Western states, including Canada. And one might reasonably argue that it is unrealistic to expect states to become involved in protracted reconstruction efforts purely out of a sense of duty to assist the vulnerable. But this self-regarding motive does have implications for the state being reconstructed. To begin, it subjects that state to changing national security priorities within Western states (something that Afghanistan experienced firsthand, when in 2001 Bush shifted attention and resources to Iraq). There is also the possibility that the standard against which post-conflict reconstruction is measured is lowered. In other words, the level of stability required to prevent a state from becoming a breeding ground for terrorism may not correspond to what would be required to provide for the basic security and needs of the population.

The degree to which these moral and political challenges will affect Libya remains to be seen. Perhaps the transition will be swift, and Libyans will keep outsiders at arm’s length. In terms of the reparation of physical damage, it may be that Libyan resources are sufficient to meet all the ‘bills’, and that outside financing is not required. Perhaps the experience in Iraq will make Western leaders more reticent to insist upon a particular approach to building democracy, and welcome whatever political solution emerges. It may be that the suggested emergence of al-Qaeda in Libya has been over-played, and that the security implications of the country’s transition will be limited in scope. And perhaps the temptation of outside actors to grab a piece of the economic action will be firmly and successfully managed by competent Libyan authorities, so that it is the Libyan people – rather than foreign investors – who reap the proceeds of (eventual) economic growth.

But if past experience is anything to go by, the reconstruction phase is rife with ambiguity and uncertainty that can be exploited by outside actors. This reality suggests a need to clarify who has the right or responsibility to rebuild, what constraints (if any) should be placed upon their activities, and how burdens might equitably shared. No, the work in Libya is not done. It is just beginning.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

An article by reporter Bill Curry quotes academics and opposition MP’s who think that in deciding to be part of such a mission, the Harper government produced “a very significant shift in Canadian foreign policy.” According to Christian Leuprecht, of Queen’s Centre for International and Defence Policy, “what we see in Libya, previous governments very likely would have sat out.” The report recalls Tory campaign ads glorifying Canada’s increased military strength. The Conservative government has also made a point of “taking sides”, for instance in the Middle East conflict, instead of playing the part of an “honest broker”.

So, is Canada’s involvement in Libya another step towards a more aggressive international posture?  Not according to Lloyd Axworthy. Writing in the op-ed page of the same newspaper, he defends the Libyan NATO mission as a demonstration of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle first put forward by Canada while he was Foreign Affairs minister. “We are seriously engaged in a resetting of the international order toward a more humane, just world, boasts Mr Axworthy. “It calls for immediate and appropriate action as called for in R2P.”

There is no doubt that Stephen Harper’s government’s language has been more favourable to military action than Canadians are accustomed to. But its actions? The decision to go to war against the Taliban was not taken by a conservative government. Neither was the critical one to take command of NATO’s operations in the dangerous province of Kandahar. Last spring, Michael Ignatieff’s liberals campaigned against Canada’s participation in the F35 fighter program, conveniently ignoring the fact that the first steps on this very costly road had been taken by a liberal government. I’m not saying I approve of Mr. Harper’s foreign policy. In fact, I often find it overly ideological and simplistic. I’m just asking the question to the readers and participants of this blog: is the Conservative foreign policy so different in fact from the traditional Canadian stand?

In answering the question, we have to take into account the fact that international politics and armed conflicts are not at all what they used to be. Public opinion in democracies does not tolerate that their governments ignore the sufferings of people under the boot of dictators or displaced by civil wars. Canadians may be proud of our role in traditional peacekeeping but when they learn of what goes on in Rwanda, Kosovo or Libya, they insist that the international community act immediately. In today’s world, where we learn in seconds what goes on in any corner of the world, waiting for a truce between combatants is considered a morally unacceptable option. So we have to wonder: faced with the same facts as the ones Stephen Harper had to consider in the case of Libya, what would Trudeau or Pearson have done?

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

John’s recent posting on this generation’s material advances is provocative, and is a useful companion to the alarmist commentary (especially on the BBC) about the slow-motion collapse of contemporary western societies. What he encourages us to pay attention to are not the everyday zig-zags, but rather the longer-term trajectories of growth and wealth accumulation, which – if his analysis is correct – will spell continued prosperity not only for the developed world, but for large chunks of the developing world, as well.

But while I find this argument somewhat reassuring, I cannot help thinking that something is, potentially, rotten at the core of modern capitalism. In his recent book, The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism, Colin Crouch (of Warwick Business School) takes another long-term approach to analyzing capitalist economies, but reaches quite different conclusions. Crouch argues that, despite the economic crash of 2008 and the heavy bailout burdens placed on taxpayers, the tide has not turned against neo-liberalism – the set of macroeconomic policies that have constituted the political orthodoxy of most advanced economies. Neo-liberalism will “shrug off” all of the recent challenges, he concludes, because it is, contra John’s views, no longer about free markets or free trade at all, but rather about the structurally dominant position of large corporations. Our only hope for the future, according to Crouch, is to acknowledge that corporations have distorted both markets and democratic politics, and to drag them into the full light of political controversy and accountability.

What is particularly refreshing about Crouch’s approach is that he is not simply calling for the state to come back in and claw away at the freedom of markets. Instead, he directs us to the moral assumptions underpinning modern capitalist societies, and the culture of greed and impunity that have seeped into their foundations. And this brings us back to the chaos on the streets of Britain last week. In the early 1980s, when riots raged in Britain, there were attempts to understand some of the root causes of the mayhem. Some commentators blamed moral decay and poor education. Margaret Thatcher famously stressed the weakening of respect for authority. Others pointed to the impact of draconian cuts and unemployment.

There is much less of that soul-searching today. Instead, politicians are closing ranks and chalking everything up to criminality and gang culture. There is no willingness to dig deeper, for fear of letting the perpetrators off the hook. Instead, key policymakers like U.K. Chancellor George Osborne have the audacity to proclaim (as he did last week) that the U.K.’s deficit reduction plan “has been vindicated.” Vindicated by what? He points to global economic events, but, even here, tough questions need to be asked about why growth figures are so sluggish. And what about in domestic and social terms? In the same speech, Osborne promised to “galvanize” the U.K. economy this fall with lower corporate tax rates, less regulation for small firms, and tax breaks for entrepreneurs. But he said nothing about galvanizing a divided and unsettled society.

To try to understand why the riots broke out is not to excuse the criminality of the actions, or to brush away the impact with an appeal to justified grievance. It is merely to ask, without being branded as a loony Marxist, whether modern capitalism is really working in a sustainable way, and whether its current political and economic leadership is part of the problem.

In a much-frequented blog post written last week, Peter Oborne, of the Daily Telegraph, argued that the rioters were, in some ways, following the example set by senior and respected figures in society who have descended into various forms of criminality themselves. “Let’s bear in mind,” he wrote, “that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.” Yet the highest ranks of British society have been rife with criminality of various kinds, too, whether it is tax evasion, false expenses claims, or – most recently – phone-hacking.

Criminality is a complex phenomenon, with multiple causes. But, at the risk of simplifying, it is plausible to suggest that greed is sometimes at the heart of it. And greed, today, seems to be a fundamental part of modern capitalism. For the vast majority, I hasten to add, that greed is not manifest in criminality; instead, it expresses itself in what John calls the aspiration to higher living standards.

This raises the question of how that aspiration is to be fulfilled in the 21^st century. After all, as Crouch has pointed out, capitalism thrives upon happy workers and consumers. Indeed, it cannot function without them. In the mid-20^th century, capitalism filled the pockets of its workers through the welfare state. This fuelled decades of consumption, social mobility, and, yes – economic growth. In the latter part of the 20^th century, when the welfare state needed some pruning, capitalism filled those pockets through another avenue: mass lending. And so, while my parents had to save to buy the newest appliances (like a TV or dishwasher), my generation just put its cars, flat-screen TVs, and iPods on credit.

So, what’s next for capitalism? Deficits suggest that the welfare state will continue to be pruned, and the financial crises indicate that the days of easy credit are ebbing away. Perhaps the answer, as John hints, is that the developed world will need to rely on the aspirational consumption of those in the developing world. But is this really a win-win situation? The vast numbers of unemployed and disaffected youth in the developed West can be excused for thinking that something has been lost.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Even amid the current gloom and doom, the International Monetary Fund cautiously forecasts 4.3 per cent global growth this year and 4.5 per cent next year, with rates steadily climbing over the coming decades. That compares to an average annual global growth of just 0.5 per cent in the 18th century, two per cent in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, and 3.5 per cent in the “golden years” after 1945. In other words, world growth rates are not only increasing, but also accelerating – with profound implications for living standards, education, health, democracy, and world peace.

There are three fundamental trends that are likely to make the long-term future considerably brighter than most of us seem to believe.

First, the developing world is finally experiencing the industrial revolution – almost three centuries after its first sparks in England – but at a far faster rate, and involving billions more people. China has grown at eight to 10 per cent a year for three decades – without interruption – recently eclipsing Germany as the world’s biggest exporter, and Japan as the world’s second-biggest economy. This alone represents the most significant economic miracle in history. India is not far behind, projected to grow at 12 per cent annually over the next 10 years. And Asia’s success is being replicated in Latin America and Africa, with these continents chalking up four per cent and five per cent growth rates, respectively, in the last decade.

Technological innovation is a second cause – and an effect – of widening growth. It has never been easier for economies to import the latest technologies, know-how, and ideas – whether from the internet, footloose multinationals, or an overseas education. Advances in – and the mass adoption of – technology drives up the pace of growth. And growth, in turn, frees up resources for more research and development (R&D) and increases the incentives for innovation. Today, leading-edge technology is still largely generated in the already-advanced and educated West. But soon, the newly wealthy, increasingly educated emerging economies will be technology innovators and leaders too – adding to the positive feedback loop that is driving technological progress.

Third, widening growth and accelerating innovation are happening because the world economy is more open and integrated than ever before – driven partly by lower trade barriers, but mainly by massive declines in transport and communications costs. For instance, it now costs less to move a container from London to Shanghai than from London to Birmingham. Despite much hand-wringing over the threat of protectionism and isolationism, the pace of globalization is actually increasing, not decreasing. Even after the “Great Recession,” world trade was over 50 per cent higher in 2010 than in 2000 – and 183 per cent higher than in 1990.

OK, you say, the developing world is booming. But isn’t that at the expense of the industrialized West? Actually, it’s just the opposite – because economic growth is not a zero-sum game. Already, western consumers have benefited hugely from inexpensive imports (boosting living standards, à la iPods and flat screen TVs) and cheap capital (which, through no fault of developing countries, encouraged us to live beyond our means). Plus, the rise of rich markets in Asia – and a vast new middle class – will inevitably spell export opportunities for the West. Fears about the loss of technology are even more misplaced. Knowledge is expanded – not reduced or lost – when it is shared. China graduating thousands of new engineers or investing massively in R&D are events to be applauded, not feared, because they represent major new additions to the global pool of creativity and innovation.

Indeed, these deep, structural trends – a rising developing world, spreading technology, and growing trade – are mutually reinforcing. Classical economists – from Smith to Malthus to Marx – worried about diminishing returns, convinced that economic growth would sooner or later level off, and that mankind would have to learn to share a static pie. But rising growth over the past several centuries – as well as current trends – suggested a world of increasing returns, an economic pie that grows ever bigger and richer.

Already, the impact of increased global growth is being felt in rising living standards, longer lifespans, and better education. Even the tentative signs that the world is becoming a more peaceful and democratic place can be traced, at least in part, to the beneficial effects of living in a positive-sum world, where countries no longer have to go to war to grab a bigger slice of the pie, and where billions worldwide (not just millions in the affluent West) can aspire to a better life. Isn’t that what the young women and men on the streets of Cairo or Damascus are demonstrating about?

Is this brighter future guaranteed? Hardly. Globalization is the product not of unstoppable technology, but of human choices. Uncertainty and fear generated by the unprecedented pace of change could still stop globalization in its tracks, turn us inwards, and usher in a new dark age. But while a darker future is possible, it is not probable. If the last several centuries are anything to go by, we are the luckiest generation yet – even if we don’t know it.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

But has it? The fine print reveals that the deal only postpones further, more fever-pitched debate. The next round of the boxing match will occur in November, just around the time of American Thanksgiving. And if agreement cannot be reached – well, the U.S. government might just have to shut down. Not a bad time of the year for such a “catastrophe” (indeed, the last time the U.S. government shut down was over Christmas, when not a lot seems to go on anyway).

All of this political theatre would be entertaining, if it weren’t hiding the real crisis: the alarmingly poor state of the U.S. economy. The behaviour of bond markets over the past week was interesting to watch; they never really seemed to doubt that some kind of deal would be reached. But those same markets are ruthless with respect to real economic facts. And the sad reality is that Washington’s best and brightest aren’t doing a whole lot to address them. At some point, interest rates are going to go up. When they do, the cost of debt will rise still further, and the pressures on U.S. lawmakers will mount. Their hands will be forced. At that point, one hopes, a more realistic recovery plan will emerge.

Meanwhile, back in the “cloud cuckoo land” that is Washington, each side proceeded to do its own victory lap. But it’s clear that with no concrete possibility of tax reform, the Republicans are the big winners. In the process, they have transformed President Barack Obama’s winning smile into gritted teeth. Some of his high-profile Democratic Senators felt compelled to break ranks and vote against the bill, claiming that it bore no resemblance to a compromise.

For their part, Republicans like to say that this latest crisis wasn’t fuelled by political posturing, but by an honest, “philosophical” debate about how to promote America’s economic recovery. While Democrats warn that deficit cutting in a time of such low growth could tip the U.S. into recession, Republicans retort that smaller government will give “oxygen” to the private sector, and enable it to take over government functions. They also claim that tough action on the budget will somehow reassure business-owners and consumers, thereby encouraging them to spend more.

The problem with these arguments, however well-rehearsed, is that they are just hunches. They have never had a fact base to support them, whereas the evidence for the worries of Democrats – the concern that aggressive cutting in the wake of the global economic crisis could harm rather than help – is clear and present. One need look no further than to the sluggish economic figures in the U.K. (where the coalition government has also embraced the austerity philosophy).

In 10 years’ time, what will historians say about this sordid episode in U.S. politics? It’s always hazardous to make such predictions, but somewhere in the synopsis is likely to be something about fiddling while Rome burned. Given the globalized nature of the economy, and the status of the U.S. dollar as everyone’s reserve currency, we will all bear the effects of this big distraction for some time to come.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Nowadays, speed seems to be the main concern of commentators, be they professional journalists or citizens. Traditional as well as social media aim to react to events and express points of view as rapidly as technology permits. One wonders: Can the brain follow? There was a time, not that long ago, when an editorialist took many days before writing his or her opinion on an event. Today, a commentator who takes more than one day to write about a story risks becoming irrelevant.

“Nowadays,” I say. Sorry, I’m being nostalgic. In fact, history shows that speed has always been a major preoccupation of the media. 24-hour news, the internet, and social media have considerably accelerated the news tornado. But the driving motive of news organizations is the same today as it was decades ago: to be the first to report an event and the first to explain and analyze what happened. The acceleration is particularly apparent on television, where journalists and experts are required to react to a story while it is unfolding, if not before it happens. We saw a lot of that in the few hours after the Oslo blast last Friday. An exploded car, shattered windows, grey dust everywhere: it looked so much like 9-11 that most reporters and talking heads assumed al-Qaeda was behind it. They were wrong, and maybe should not have speculated thus. Yet the important thing is that the same media worked very hard so that we could know who was the real culprit and what his motives were.

Last Friday afternoon, when the scale of the tragedy had become clear, I, no doubt like many colleagues in other newspapers, thought about writing an editorial for Saturday’s edition. After a couple of hours spent weighing the pros and the cons, I decided to wait. I did not feel I had enough of a grasp on what had happened and I could only speculate as to who had committed such a heinous crime. In the evening, I felt guilty: Was I being prudent or lazy?

Relief came on Saturday morning: Had I written on Friday night, I would have lacked essential information on the author and the circumstances of this rampage. Not all editorialists were as lucky as I.

We can deplore the media’s obsession with being the first on a story, but it will be in vain; that is the nature of the beast. Journalists, however, have to work ceaselessly on attaining a proper balance between speed and quality. In the early days of the 24-hour news cycle, many mistakes were made. Deaths of celebrities were announced prematurely, erroneous election results were aired, etc. Television newsrooms realized that they needed to tame this new animal. Similar adjustments are being made now in regard to blogs and social media.

In today’s world everything moves faster. The media both follow and contribute to the trend.  But speed need not compromise quality. Good journalists will remain good journalists because they will know when to hit the brakes – when moving fast is detrimental to the quality of their reporting or their analysis. They will choose the right tool – Twitter, Facebook, editorial, book – depending on what they want to say and who they want to say it to. And citizens will have access to an unprecedented array of sources of news and opinions.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The problem, however, was not just with the experts who lacked the patience to wait a few hours for evidence to emerge before pronouncing on the motives of the attack. Part of the responsibility also lies with the informal curators of social media networks, mainstream journalists and many others who repeated this speculation, and, in doing so, helped publicize and legitimize it. With the lines between traditional and new media blurring, it’s not surprising that the information then found its way onto the pages and websites of reputable news publications.

The failure, in other words, seems to have been a systemic one. The 24-hour news cycle has given way to an 86,400-second-per-day information flow that creates incentives for experts to comment quickly so they can be “part of the conversation.” The informality and seeming intimacy of social media can also lull analysts into mentioning things on Twitter that they would never say in a traditional publication or media interview. As we have seen, however, comments and judgments travel across these platforms quite easily.

Journalists, too, are under increasing pressure from editors to use social media accounts to provide real-time updates on unfolding stories. The result has been thrilling in many respects. Now, anyone with a Twitter account can send a question to C.J. Chivers, who is arguably the world’s best war correspondent, and there is a chance he will reply from somewhere in Libya. Increasingly, journalists are also engaged in public discussions about the meaning and implications of stories they are still preparing. Some have turned to “crowd-sourcing” to solicit interpretations of specific facts or events from the users of social media.

Moreover, given the immense volume of information, and the premium of speed and relevancy, some enterprising and energetic people have emerged as unofficial curators of news and opinion on specific subjects, thus providing a service for others who do not have time to scan countless sources. Successful curators can attract a large following, but their success depends on maintaining a steady stream of timely information and establishing themselves at the centre of discussions of events as they unfold. They are 21st century social media versions of traditional news anchors, republishing observations that they find interesting, turning to on-the-ground correspondents for updates, and calling on a network of analysts for instant reactions. It is fascinating to follow, and it is revolutionizing the collection and dissemination of “news.”

The experts who weigh in on these discussions (including the terrorism analysts who saw al-Qaeda’s fingerprints on the Norway attacks) are part of this new information system. Many of these analysts have genuine expertise, but expertise is not the same as wisdom; it does not make you immune to the pressures and incentives of a system that encourages snap judgments.

In some respects, this is a very old story.  Early interpretations of events are often suspect and need to be taken with a grain of salt.  In other ways, however, the changing context is cause for concern. Think about all of these elements together: Informal speculation (dressed up as certitude) is republished by self-appointed curators and reputable journalists and gains credibility through repetition, while traditional media organizations, anxious not to be left behind as attention shifts to social media, rush stories onto their websites and provide direct access to their reporters’ real-time, unedited Twitter feeds.

In this world, crowd-sourcing can quickly morph into mob-sourcing. Look out.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Ask yourself this: Who is the most globally influential Canadian?  My vote – like millions of others – goes to Justin Bieber. His YouTube video Baby has been watched by a staggering 600 million people – a tenth of humanity – whereas, say, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s most popular performance attracted just 22,000 hits. And I doubt his fans are in Tokyo, Rio or LA. Sure, JB doesn’t get invited to G20 summits or chair cabinet meetings. But if he decided to hold forth on world hunger or saving polar bears, my guess is a sizable portion of the planet would listen.

The power of modern media to focus global attention has real-world implications. Take the financial tsunami currently engulfing Europe – which actually began with distant Dubai’s default scare back in 2009. Having utterly missed one potential crisis, markets started scouring the planet for others in the making: Greece was pronounced dangerously weak; then other euro-zone countries looked wobbly; suddenly even the U.S. seemed in trouble. Global fear fed on itself – creating a vicious circle of exploding borrowing costs, draconian spending cuts, contracting economic output and – inevitably – greater risk of default.

Now headlines warn of the imminent breakup of the euro zone, CNBC worries about whether the U.S. is the next Greece and op-eds lecture on Western profligacy, decadence and decline. That there is nothing objectively dangerous about debt levels on either side of the Atlantic (Europe’s 85 per cent of GDP and the United States’  96 per cent are too high, for sure, but significantly less than debt levels reached at the end of the Second World War, and a far cry from Japan’s 200 per cent) is irrelevant. These crises are becoming more real by the day, fuelled as much by fear as by fundamentals. In the information age, Keynes’s “animal spirits” are on steroids.

It’s not just geo-economics that’s driven by our access to – and obsession with – instantaneous information. The 9/11 terrorists attacks – especially the indelible image of two jets crashing into the World Trade Center’s twin towers – arguably did as much to shift U.S. and Western foreign policy as the rise of Soviet communism. The latter involved plotting a revolution, seizing an empire and creating a superpower. The former only required 18 hijackers with penknives – plus, crucially, the breathless collaboration of the world’s media. But it succeeded in launching two disastrous wars, igniting civilizational conflict between Islam and the West, emboldening a fast-rising China and driving the U.S. trillions of dollars deeper into debt. This is not to downplay the tragedy of the attacks, only to ask whether our horrified fascination with the event – amplified by real-time images, 24-hour news cycles and endless internet chatter – eclipsed its significance.

As worrying as the way globalized information can create international crises is the way it can also kill them. Three months ago the world was transfixed by Japan’s devastating earthquake and a nuclear meltdown in the making – prompting an overnight debate about the future of nuclear power. Remember? Before that we were glued to the Arab uprising – sparked (literally) by viral internet images of a young Tunisian setting himself on fire – until the Japan story pushed it out of the nightly news and thus out of our collective consciousness. One legacy is NATO’s increasingly forgotten – and aimless – war in Libya. And before that, the global crisis du jour included – in rough order – oil prices, Somali pirates, global warming revisionism, Nuclear Iran, pedophile priests, and bankers’ bonuses. Each global media event has, in its own unique way, convulsed the international system and forced the world to react – before the next big story compels us to move on. It seems the only thing shorter than the global news cycle is the world’s attention span.

How do we  manage world politics – and grapple with long-term global issues – when people are both too plugged in and not plugged in enough? Do we now have access to more information than we can handle? John Stuart Mill argued that information should be made as freely available as possible so citizens can make rational choices. But are humans always so rational? Was Marshall McLuhan closer to the mark when he said the medium is the message? With so many information outlets – and so much competition to supply global demand – how do we  ensure accuracy, balance and perspective?  Who should ensure it? And would anyone listen when the next big crisis or tragedy or scandal is just a mouse click away?

Whatever the answer, we should be very concerned about the media power issues raised by André in his latest post.  But then, of course, this story, too, shall pass.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

What is particularly troubling about this whole episode is the degree to which the British police colluded in the tactics of News of the World journalists, and failed to perform the basic functions of investigation. While much of the commentary is (rightly) focused on how the press might be better regulated, and whether greater concentration of ownership should be allowed, not enough attention is being paid to the accountability of the police for their failures. Let’s hope members of Parliament soon turn their finger-pointing in that direction, too. Or perhaps this is a task for the many fine journalists working in the U.K.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Canadians and Canadian policy-makers shared that overall desire for the forces of freedom to win out over tyranny during the Cold War years. But, at the same time, we seemed to appreciate the shades of grey that existed then. Think, for example, of our policy on Cuba, or Lester B. Pearson’s famous questioning of the Vietnam War, which sparked outrage from L.B. Johnson. As Roland’s piece suggests, there are grey patches in the world today, too, and they can’t be wished away by the prime minister’s term “complexity.” The Canadian public, evidence suggests, seems to appreciate this. Indeed, when I was working on the 2005 foreign-policy review, I was interested to discover that, when asked about the greatest threats to their security, Canadians’ answers diverged from those of their American neighbours. Yes, terrorism was on the list. But the threat of pandemic disease was actually at the top (no doubt, a function of the SARS crisis).

Stephen Harper may be out of sync with his own population in trying to portray Canada’s history as inextricably linked with conflict, and our future as bound up with a struggle between good and evil. But it is clear that he has always been uneasy with what he perceives as the wishy-washy diplomacy of his predecessors – particularly with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. It remains to be seen whether the prime minister will leverage his new majority in Parliament to try to position Canada more defiantly on the side of “right,” and whether Canadians will agree with him.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

The U.K. press, characterized by the unsurpassed popularity of the tabloids, has always been unique. In our country, reporters are their own detectives. Their editors and the companies’ lawyers make sure that they do nothing illegal while gathering information. In contrast, it seems that British dailies frequently hire private detectives to do the dirty work for them. At News of the World, these detectives routinely listened in on phone conversations and hacked voice mails. The judicial inquiry that Prime Minister David Cameron announced will tell if NoW’s competitors engaged in the same illegal and immoral practices.

What has been exposed thus far confirms that all forms of power may corrupt – even the power of the press. If a news organization is convinced that its investigations are of crucial importance to the public interest (which most are), and, moreover, if such an organization evolves in an extremely competitive environment, it may be tempted to cut corners. That rarely – if ever –happens in Canadian newsrooms. Still, we should remain aware of the risk.

Notwithstanding their apologies in front of a House of Commons committee, the Murdochs (father and son) and Rebekah Brooks had obviously decided long ago that the risk was worthwhile. At best, as LibDem MP Adrian Sanders explained to a visibly uncomfortable James Murdoch, they were guilty of “wilful blindness,” a legal term that states that if there is knowledge that you could have had and should have had, but chose not to have, you are still responsible.

During an emergency debate in Parliament on Wednesday, David Cameron expressed concern that some media group may have become too influential. “Above all,” he said, “we need to ensure that no one voice, not News Corporation, not the BBC, becomes too powerful.” Coming from a prime minister who, a few weeks ago, was more than willing to let Rupert Murdoch buy all of satellite broadcaster BskyB, that comment is surprising, to say the least.

In and of itself, media convergence is neither bad nor good. It depends how much news and opinion diversity remains. It also depends on what the owner of a given media conglomerate wants to achieve. Concentration can allow for cost sharing and large investments that improve the overall quality of the news produced. But if an owner uses its newspapers and television stations for the sole purpose of yielding political influence, concentration leads to distortion; to propaganda.

The solution to problems that may flow from press concentration does not reside in government intervention, for obvious reasons. Press councils, like those that exist in most Canadian provinces and in the U.K., are much better suited to oversee the media’s activities. However, these councils should be given the means to properly investigate the complaints they receive – means that they presently lack. Besides, membership to such councils should be mandatory, so that no media can escape this check on possible abuses. (However, it should be noted that the British Press Complaints Commission, when it investigated the practices of News of the World in 2009, found no proof of widespread phone-hacking…)

In all this, we should not forget that, while a few journalists and their bosses may sometimes act irresponsibly, overall, the press fulfils its duty and thereby plays a crucial role in democracies. The News of the World scandal is another illustration of that: It is thanks to the tireless work of Guardian reporter Nick Davies that the phone-hacking affair was uncovered.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

War and conflict figure prominently in this story. In the interview, Harper traced a connection between war and the emergence and development of the Canadian nation, arguing that the War of 1812 “essentially began to establish our sense of national identity” and was the “genesis of the geographically wide and culturally diverse nation we have today.” He then explained that Canada has consistently been “on the right side of important conflicts” – including the Second World War and the Cold War – “that have shaped the world and that are largely responsible for moving the world in the overall positive direction in which it is moving.” There is a theory of history encapsulated in this short statement – one that emphasizes, again, the enduring struggle between moral forces, and the transformative and redemptive potential of this struggle. These “big conflicts,” he explained, have been “the real defining moments for the country and for the world.”

Kenneth Whyte, who conducted the interview, probed further: “You suggest that we are in one great conflict, or that we’re heading to one that we need to be prepared for.”

Harper responded: “I think we always are.”

Let’s pause for a moment. After describing a pattern of historic confrontations through to the Cold War, Harper suggests that we are either in the midst of a new monumental struggle, or we are heading into one. That’s remarkable news. It would seem important to learn more about this.

But when asked about the nature of the present threat, the prime minister seemed to grasp for a response:

“Well, I think it’s more difficult to define now. We know there are challenges to us. The most obvious is terrorism, Islamic extremist terrorism. We know that’s a big one globally. We also know, though, the world is becoming more complex, and the ability of our most important allies, and most importantly the United States, to single-handedly shape outcomes and protect our interests, has been diminishing, and so I’m saying we have to be prepared to contribute more, and that is what this government’s been doing.”

The fact that Canada may need to “contribute more” to protecting our security may be true, but that portion of Harper’s response tells us nothing about the threat itself. We are left with “Islamic extremist terrorism” as “a big” threat. Is it the big one? Are there others?

The world is a messy place, so I empathize with the prime minister when he talks about the difficulty of defining threats in a complex world. But let’s be clear: complexity itself is not a threat. Nor should we respond to complexity with simplistic theories of history or vague allusions to looming conflicts.

If Canada faces a clear and present danger, Harper should tell us exactly what it is. Otherwise, he should stop scaring people – and himself.

Photo courtesy Reuters.

Another tragedy in Africa’s sad history. How come? Haven’t we (the rich countries) spent billions to try and pull the black continent out of its poverty? Yes we have spent a lot of money. A lot of goodwill also. In 2000, the international community agreed to reach eight “Millennium Goals” by 2015. In 2001, the African Union adopted a New Partnership for Africa’s Development. The NEPAD stated that democracy and respect for human rights were crucial if Africa was to prosper. In 2002, that approach was endorsed by the members of the G8 at Kananaskis, under the leadership of Jean Chrétien.  Did all this diplomatic and political activity achieve anything? Apparently, it did. Or maybe it’s just a coincidence: since the beginning of the 21st century, Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its GDP grow by about 6% a year. Of course, the region was not immune to the global recession. But it climbed out of the crisis relatively early. Reasonable growth rates are expected in 2011.

But Somalia is one of the exceptions that confirm the rule. The country is incredibly poor. It has no effective government. The 20-year-long civil war has forced hundreds of thousands out of their homes.

A sense of despair invades me when I look at these pictures of rachitic babies dying in their mother’s arms. Of course, I’ll send money to the Humanitarian Coalition formed by Canadian aid organizations. But will it reach the people who need it or will it be stolen by corrupt contractors and radical rebels, like what was revealed last year about the UN World Food Program’s activities there?

For years, international aid organizations have worked hard to learn from their mistakes, have adjusted programs to local situations, have tried to act before the droughts become famines. Apparently to little avail, at least in Somalia.

Still, we have to do something. I hope governments will realize that this is not the “usual” humanitarian tragedy. By the way, we still have not heard the voice of Canada…

According to many witnesses on the ground, this drought is the worst this martyr region has known in the last 60 years. Interviewed by The Independent’s Matt Croucher, Save the Children‘s emergency manager for East Africa, explained: “Thousands of children could starve if we don’t get life-saving help to them fast. Parents no longer have any way to feed their children; they’ve lost their animals, their wells have dried up and food is too expensive. We can stop this tragedy unfolding, but we only have half the money we need.”

UNICEF says 2 million children under the age of 5 are suffering from malnutrition.  In one camp, 60 babies die each day. Sixty babies dead, each day…

I wonder if the Western democracies’ efforts are aimed at the right goals. Could the money we spend in Libya, for instance, be more useful in the Horn of Africa? Or is the situation in Somalia so desperate that there is nothing more we can do, besides sending aid to alleviate the thirst and hunger of those who are lucky enough to reach the camps? And hope that one day, in the spirit of the NEPAD, the Somalians will decide to take their destiny into their own hands?

Photo courtesy Reuters.

All this leads one to ask three questions: First, why are the French in charge of so many of the world’s economic organizations anyway? After all, France’s world power status effectively ended with the Battle of Waterloo, and it has been living off past glory ever since. Why is it in control? The answer is twofold: French bureaucrats are excellent. And France is adept at playing the hardball of international realpolitik. There are countries – like, say, Canada – that try to get what they want by being nice and solicitous team players; then there are countries that are pricklier, assertive, even obstructionist. To know which approach works best in the fierce lobbying and horse-trading for top international jobs, just ask how many Canadians hold them. Answer: none. We need to brush up on our Cardinal Richelieu.

Second, why do countries want these jobs so badly? The hours are brutal, the travel is punishing, and managing the so-called “international community” is as easy as herding cats. Plus, it’s not as if running the IMF or the WTO allows you to bestow special favours on your country – just the opposite in fact. When Don Johnston headed the OECD between 1996 and 2006 – Canada’s first and last recent “big” international post – he was so keen to avoid perceptions of favouritism that Canada was actually prejudiced against. What motivates countries to expend vast diplomatic currency on international appointments comes down to a combination of two things: patronage and prestige. There’s no patronage like bureaucratic patronage, and jobs at international organizations remain the plumiest of postings – or at least a pleasant exile for potential political rivals. Plus they’re prestigious. Heading the World Bank or sitting on the IMF board is a visible sign that a country still matters, that its opinion counts, and that its Great Power status is intact.

These points raise the most important question of all: If it’s all about prestige and symbolism, why aren’t mature powers like the US and France sharing centre stage more gracefully with newly emerging powers like China or Brazil? In a recent Foreign Affairs article, John Ikenberry argues that “even as China and other leading states try to contest US leadership… the deeper international order remains intact…. For these states, the road to modernity runs through – not away from – the existing international order”.

I hope he’s right, but the jury is still out. The post-war bargain that gave the Europeans the IMF and the US the World Bank shows no sign of modernizing, as the Lagarde coronation proves. Even last year’s no-brainer suggestion that China – currently banker to the world, and holder of the biggest foreign reserves in history – be given a greater say on the IMF board at the expense of mighty economies like Belgium resulted in its voting shares rising by just 1% to 3% – compared to America’s 17%. How to expect emerging powers to uphold the current international order – and take responsibility for leading our interdependent world – if they are shut out of influence? Faced with the West’s tenacious efforts to remain in control, Asians are already musing about the need for an Asian monetary fund and a more robust Asian trade bloc.

History tells us that the international order periodically blows apart mainly because declining powers cannot accommodate – or accept – rising powers. Spain’s accent in the 16th century helped spark the Thirty Years War; France’s rise in the 18th century, the Napoleonic Wars; Germany’s rise in the 19th century, the First and Second World Wars. Only the transfer of global power from Britain to the US after 1945 went relatively peacefully – probably because Britain took solace that it could still play Greece to America’s Rome.

Will the current power shifts thrown up by globalization look more like 1945 or 1914? The West should reflect on this question when the next big international job opens up. France can claim victory – once again – but it looks like a pyrrhic one.

Photo courtesy  of Reuters.

The creation of a common currency for the European continent was an incredible success story. Who would have thought, 20 or 30 years ago, that the French would relinquish the franc and the Germans the deutsche mark? Well they did. To most observers’ surprise, the change happened quite smoothly and the euro rapidly became one of the world’s strongest currencies.

When the euro was introduced in 1999, many economists thought that it did not make sense to create a common currency without putting in place institutions to coordinate economic and budgetary policies. True, a European Central Bank took over as the common central bank and the members of the monetary union agreed to abide by a couple of fiscal rules : any member country’s deficit and public debt would not go beyond 3% and 60% of GDP respectively. But those rules were never enforced as the fiercest supporters of the euro, France and Germany, were the first to ignore them.

The euro helped the continent’s weaker economies grow rapidly but it also encouraged them to borrow excessively, which explains the current difficulties of Greece and of other “PIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain). Most specialists believe that to prevent such a crisis in the future, Europe will have to give itself the tools to manage a monetary union. The president of the ECB, Jean-Claude Trichet, has called for “budgetary federalism” and a European minister of Finance. However, because citizens of most European countries have grown wary of the Brussels bureaucracy, it seems improbable that the heads of government will go forward with such policies. Or if they do, they will operate by stealth; the word “federal” will not be pronounced.

Yet, the Greek crisis clearly indicates that the status quo is not an option. Therefore it is very difficult to predict what will happen. If Greece defaults, will it drop the euro and go back to the drachma? Could other weak economies follow suit? If so, will the euro’s credibility be weakened? How will that impact the larger process of European integration?

The EU is one of the most important achievements of the 20th century. It fosters peace and prosperity on a continent that for centuries had been torn apart by war. I hope its leaders will find the courage and the audacity to find solutions that increase the continent’s coherence and solidarity.

However, I realize that that road is full of obstacles, the more daunting one being the resistance of the majority of the citizens. The first task of political leaders is therefore to convince their respective voters that solving their economic problems requires not less but more Europe. No easy task, to say the least.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Last week, UK Foreign Secretary William Hague offered a brief glimpse of the emerging plan for international involvement in Libya after Qaddafi.  In a statement to the House of Commons, he reported that officials from the UK, US, Turkey, Italy and Denmark had visited Libya “to assess stabilization needs.” (Another report suggested that Canada participated in related consultations.)  Hague also nudged the United Nations to move forward with its own plans for post-conflict Libya, noting that the UN will play the leading role in such efforts.

However, detailed information on planning for post-Qaddafi Libya is scarce.  Beyond the Libyan rebels’ own statement of principles, and tidbits leaking out of national capitals, very little is known.

In the Globe and Mail today, I wrote this:

After stumbling into an Afghan mission based on mistaken assumptions, surely we have an obligation to scrutinize the details of any plans for international participation in Libya’s reconstruction…

For starters, is there a plan to deploy ground forces in Libya? If so, under what circumstances? Who would provide troops? How quickly could they be deployed, where would they go, what would they do?

Another priority may be restoring basic services to the population, including food, medical supplies, health care, electricity, fuel, policing and justice. How can international actors help to provide these services without engendering problems of dependency, economic distortion and local resentment that are sometimes the unintended effects of massive aid interventions?

What about the work of rebuilding Libya? The rebel council’s democratic principles offer a foundation, but a thin one. What role will the UN and other outsiders play? The notion that Libyans should “own” their political transition makes sense, but what does this mean in practice? What if Libya can’t support Western-style democracy? In the wide spectrum between Col. Gadhafi and Thomas Jefferson, what outcomes would be acceptable, and to whom?

These questions are not easy, but they are crucial to address now, not later – because we may find ourselves knee-deep in a messy, multi-year, statebuilding effort in post-Qaddafi Libya before we realize what has happened.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

I am struck by one reason Roland gives for not debating the idea: cutting ties with the British monarchy would necessitate amending the Constitution. Who wants to go there?

It is true that changing the Constitution is a very difficult and wrenching process. Yet, shouldn’t we eventually contemplate the possibility of modernizing our political institutions? We will avoid the topic forever because we don’t want to plunge into another constitutional quagmire? If so, we can forget a Canadian head of state and a legitimate Senate. The Constitution will remain as is for decades, becoming increasingly disconnected from contemporary reality.

I wonder, are all countries that allergic to constitutional debates?

Quebecers’ feelings towards the monarchy and the British connection in general range from indifference to, for an infinitesimal minority, hostility. Very few French-speaking Quebecers realize to what extent our “distinct society” has absorbed British political, social and artistic culture. Many of our institutions are inspired by the UK traditions. Same with our architecture and our culinary tastes.

Sunday, in Québec City, 200 or 300 hardcore separatists will demonstrate against the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. The fact that there will be so few demonstrators is proof that most Quebecers have no resentment towards the British or the monarchy. Indeed, even though we won’t admit it, many of us will fall under the charm of this beautiful royal couple – not because William is our future king but because he and his wife have become international superstars. The demonstrators represent no one but themselves.

After this Canada Day weekend, I’d like to discuss the European crisis. Any thoughts, guys? Will Europe move towards more integration (dare we say more federalism!) or will the monetary union fall apart?

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Nevertheless, he is not Canadian.  Nor is his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, our head of state.

Does anyone else find this situation a bit… awkward?  While I agree with Jeffrey Simpson that it would be “unpardonably rude” not to greet the future king and queen with courtesy, this seems as good a moment as any to raise questions about Canada’s vestigial ties to the British crown.

In good Canadian fashion, let me apologize in advance for the question I’m about to ask, and make it clear that I hope Will and Kate have a wonderful visit. I watched yesterday as their entourage arrived at the National War Memorial, where the royal newlyweds laid a wreath and greeted the crowds.  They seemed to shake every hand thrust at them, which was very sporting – although it left me hoping, for their sake, that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are accompanied by the Gentleman Usher of the Royal Hand Sanitizer.

Anyway, here’s my question:  Why does Canada have a foreign head of state?  There, I asked.  Sorry.

The simple answer is that history has led us here.  Whereas in 1776 America abruptly and rudely severed its ties with Britain in a fit of pique over taxes, Canadian democracy emerged gradually and more consensually.  Over many decades, we gained the right of self-government, control over our own foreign affairs, and finally the ability to change our constitution without seeking permission from the “Mother of Parliaments” in London.

An outside observer might wonder why we stopped there.  Shouldn’t the next step be to “Canadianize” the office of head of state, and wouldn’t the evolution of our democratic institutions point toward an elected head of state, to boot?

There are, of course, imposing institutional obstacles to disconnecting ourselves from the monarchy, the most daunting of which is the legal requirement of unanimous consent by the federal government and all ten provinces.  Forget about that, at least for the foreseeable future.

But I don’t think these constitutional hurdles are the real explanation for the lack of any serious republican movement in Canada.  More revealing, I think, is how little most Canadians seem to care about the issue, one way or another.  Yes, polls show the public to be roughly divided between those who would prefer to keep or do away with the monarchy, but the intensity of feeling is low, even among French-speaking Quebeckers.  As André’s colleague, Yves Boisvert, recently wrote in La Presse: Quebeckers are opposed to the monarchy, but it just doesn’t seem to be worth the trouble to do anything about it.

This is, in many ways, a commendable trait. As a long-time student of civil wars, I am frequently struck by the seeming triviality of the issues that lead people elsewhere to kill each other in large numbers.  In Canada, by contrast, a question as fundamental as the nationality of our head of state is more likely to evoke yawning than yelling.

We also know that opening up the constitution to fundamental amendment could lead us back down the rabbit hole of endless, wrenching discussion.  Once initiated, such discussion may open the door to other issues that could potentially provoke real yelling.

So, why bother? After all, the powers of the Queen and her representative in Canada, the Governor-General, are almost entirely symbolic. The practical effect of republicanism on our political system would be minimal.

What, however, about the symbolism of the status quo?  It’s an anachronism and we should move on, shouldn’t we?  Perhaps not.

The result is quintessentially Canadian: we feel lukewarm about our foreign monarch but unmoved to give serious consideration to republicanism.  And we greet our monarch and her heirs politely – as we should.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The first relates to Roland’s observation that the efforts of the ICC are ‘complicating’ the NATO mission. This is no doubt true. But we need to remember that the original Security Council Resolution 1970, which called for the ICC to investigate alleged crimes against humanity, was largely designed to be preventive:  to (hopefully) dissuade those around Gaddafi from both committing atrocities and continuing to support him. Commentators are always criticizing the international community for reacting, and not taking prevention seriously.  In this instance, there was an attempt at late-stage prevention, however limited. It was assumed (rightly or wrongly), that the threat of prosecution would have a preventive role. If R2P has now been articulated in terms of four crimes (as I suggested in my last post), then these kinds of preventive tools make some sense.

However, as we all know, this preventive tool didn’t work. So the international community moved to something else. That something else may in the end require a political settlement, and the spectre of criminal prosecution has complicated the prospects of such a settlement.  What the Libyan case is revealing, therefore, is the difficulty of managing dynamic processes: tools that state leaders apply in one stage of a crisis have knock-on effects for what happens later. Such tools also may constrain options. This reality needs to be taken into account beforehand – but this is oh so hard to do when there are so many ‘moving parts’. As the preventive dimension of the principle of R2P is developed, these kinds of dilemmas will need careful analysis. But it is surely an overstretch to pit this as ‘R2P vs. ICC’.

The second point I want to raise is this vexed issue of consistency (or what some would call ‘selectivity’ of practice). Why Libya and not Syria or Sri Lanka? R2P is a still predominantly a product of politics, rather than law. The 2005 Outcome Document which endorsed the principle cannot be seen as a treaty or formal source of law. Rather, I like to think of it as a political commitment, which expressed an authoritative interpretation by states of already existing laws on the use of force and the obligation to punish and prevent genocide. Because of its political nature, R2P depends to a large degree on perceptions of legitimacy. And selective practice can certainly harm legitimacy – it can raise questions as to what the ‘real’ motivations are behind action.

All that said, selectivity is inevitable with respect to R2P, just as it is with other reasons or ‘causes’ for collective action. R2P only prescribes that certain atrocities (or the imminent commission of those atrocities) call for a response. The nature of that response will vary. It may involve the use of force, or it may not. (So, for example, the U.S. has responded to violence in Syria by imposing unilateral sanctions). When it comes to the use of force in particular, other considerations besides ‘right cause’ must come into play. So whether force should be used depends on more than just the fact that atrocities have been (or are about to be) committed; it will also depend on whether other moral and political criteria are fulfilled. For example, are there reasonable prospects of success? (What are the chances of creating more death and destruction?) Can force be used proportionately (i.e., in a way that meets the threat without causing unnecessary further harm)? Does the action have ‘right authority’, or widespread support?

It’s clear that in some cases, while there may be ‘just cause’, these other criteria won’t be fulfilled. So, for example, while it is undeniable that civilian deaths were high in Chechnya a decade ago, the likelihood that Western military action in response would have caused a large-scale war with Russia was also high – and that had to be taken into account by prudent state leaders. There is no getting away from the fact that difficult moral and political judgments have to be made. But that is the reality for R2P. So, when Tony Blair famously said that ‘just because we can’t intervene everywhere, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t intervene when we can’ he was expressing just this reality.

What we all need to do, however, is scrutinize carefully what the reasons are behind decisions not to act.  Sometimes, those reasons need interrogating – especially if they involve the lack of a clear economic or political interest. If that is the case, it needs to be made explicit.  I do think, however, that the claim that the West intervened in Libya because of oil is over drawn; the country’s contribution to the world’s oil supply is relatively low. What I think did motivate action were three factors: a) the clarity of Gaddafi’s intention to commit atrocities (he was so vocal and provocative, that it impelled Western leaders to respond); b) the perception that there was local and regional support for outside intervention (coupled with the fact that Gaddafi was unpopular in his own region); and c) domestic pressures, particularly in France, to act more decisively with respect to the dynamic events in the Arab world (and to make sure that the fruits of the change were fully realized, rather than squashed).  Undoubtedly, there were all kinds of mixed motives here. This, too, is inevitable in moral and political action.

Moral philosophers frequently say to me that they don’t understand why the international affairs discourse insists on a single motive to call something ‘right’ or ‘humanitarian’; moral philosophers accept that individuals act for a myriad of reasons. What is more significant is the intention, rather than the motive. If the intention is humanitarian, then it may well be that we can and should support the action (despite multiple motives). And if the intention is humanitarian, than we should be able to see that reflected in how a mission is organized and carried out. This gives us something to which we can hold policy-makers to account.

One reason frequently given for not acting is lack of capability. This factor was frequently raised in connection to Darfur: because the West was bogged down in Afghanistan, it didn’t have the resources to respond to atrocities in Darfur. Indeed, this prospect worried former Prime Minister Paul Martin a great deal. It’s important to challenge this oft-cited reason for selectivity – compelling as it might seem. There are a host of states that have endorsed R2P and advocated its implementation, but who have simultaneously not committed any extra resources to realizing it (particularly when it might call for military force). If, in the end, the responsibility can be borne by only a handful of states (the U.S., France, and the U.K.), is this still a collective responsibility? If the ‘responsibility to protect’ is really a responsibility, and not just a discretionary right, then I would argue that states have an obligation to develop the capacity to respond. Otherwise, they are simply throwing around a word without recognizing its moral implications.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

When I read the participants’ statements, I am struck by how certain these militants and artists are that Israel is the one to blame here and that the Palestinians’ situation is the most pressing of all humanitarian problems in the world. Why don’t they steer towards Syria?

Although far from being an expert on the subject, I have closely followed the Israel-Palestine conflict over the years. I have come to think that the issue is very far from black and white, that the only sure thing is that both peoples have a right to an independent, free and safe country. Both sides are too uncompromising, both have suffered tremendously, both have been poorly governed. I despair that a peaceful solution will ever be found, so deeply convinced each side is of speaking the truth.

Each time I’ve written an editorial about the situation in the Middle East, I’ve taken a moderate position, trying to be fair to both the Israelis and the Palestinians. Each time, I’ve received angry reactions from supporters of BOTH sides, each certain that there is no middle ground, that THEY are right and that the ENNEMY is wrong.

How can foreign observers be so sure of their opinion on that matter?

How can one be absolutely convinced that the blockade of Gaza is not, at least partly, justified by security concerns?

Couldn’t Israel prevent the delivery of weapons to Palestinian terrorists without limiting the import of such needed material as cement and steel?

What is Hamas’ share of responsibility for the dire economic situation in the Strip?

Why does the Netanyahu government authorize the building of new houses in the occupied territories, knowing full well that each expansion of the colonies makes peace more difficult?

Why do Palestinians in the Gaza Strip support Hamas instead of Fatah, which government has done much better on the West Bank than the Islamists in Gaza?

There are no simple answers to these and many other questions. I fail to understand how intelligent and well-intentioned people come to see things so clearly that they are willing to risk their lives to provoke Israel in the hope that this will lead to better living conditions for Palestinians. I would find their action more credible if they also pressured Hamas to rule the Gaza Strip in a more democratic way.

How can Stephen Harper be so certain that the Israeli government is always right ? Seems to me approving each and every decision of the Netanyahu government does not help the cause of peace in the region.

We all know what will happen if the so-called Freedom Flotilla approaches the coast of Gaza. The Israeli armed forces will intercept the boats. In the optimistic scenario, the passengers will be arrested and sent back to where they came from. In the worse case scenario, some will be killed. In any case, whatever the photos and films show, whatever the inquiries conclude, pro-Palestinian commentators will accuse Israel, pro-Israeli ones will put the blame on the militants. All will be set for Freedom Flotilla III. And the search for peace will become even more problematic.

Photo courtesy of Reuters.

Let me add one more concern to André’s list: the apparent incongruity between NATO’s strategy in Libya and the judicial processes now underway at the International Criminal Court.

The ICC will decide on Monday whether to issue arrest warrants for Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, his son and brother-in-law for ordering attacks on unarmed civilians. A successful trial of Qaddafi would be a triumph for the ICC, but he would need to be arrested first – and the threat of arrest may make it harder to end the Libyan war.

The ICC chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, told a Spanish newspaper that he is “working on the assumption he (Gaddafi) will be arrested by his people, by members of his regime.” That’s always possible, but it’s not clear why an ICC indictment itself would convince people around the dictator to turn against him. Surely, NATO’s bombing of Tripoli, which has intensified in recent weeks, is a greater threat to regime loyalists – yet there has still been no coup. Given the choice between fight and flight, most of the senior government officials who have abandoned Qaddafi to date have opted to flee.

In the best of all possible worlds, this wouldn’t matter. Eventually, the imbalance in power between NATO and Qaddafi’s forces would result in his defeat and arrest. But in the real world, the political coalition supporting the NATO air operation shows signs of fraying. On Wednesday, Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini called for a suspension in NATO bombing, further exposing intra-alliance rifts already visible in Germany and Turkey’s refusal to participate in the operation. The Arab League, whose initial acquiescence provided a crucial legitimizing stamp for NATO’s intervention, is now all but opposed. So is the African Union, including its most powerful member, South Africa, which initially voted in favour of Resolution 1973 authorizing the use of military force to protect civilians, but now claims that NATO is “abusing” the resolution.

This is not a war in which NATO is prepared to “fight on the beaches and landing grounds.” Alliance members would likely welcome a less-than-perfect resolution if it could end the fighting with Qaddafi relinquishing power. True, by all appearances he has no intention of giving up and may even already see himself as a martyr. But maybe, just maybe, that assumption is wrong. Perhaps he would agree to some kind of negotiated departure.

Libyan rebels are reportedly engaged in discussions with the dictator through intermediaries in France and South Africa. Earlier today, the spokesperson for the rebel National Transitional Council said the rebels would “have no objection” to Qaddafi staying in Libya, as long as he left power. More likely, however, if Qaddafi were to resign, he would end up in another country. Don’t forget that the Ugandan despot Idi Amin lived out his final days in a hotel in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Amin deserved to be tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, but his compatriots were mostly happy he was gone.

But here’s the problem: The ICC judicial process, which was initiated by a referral from the UN Security Council, now seems potentially at odds with NATO’s political and military strategy. If Qaddafi feared arrest, why would he willingly resign?

The creation of the ICC was a great achievement in the history of international justice – and it has already established a strong track record. However, being a proponent of the ICC shouldn’t blind us to questions about the coordination of international diplomatic, military and judicial instruments, including in circumstances such as Libya. Nor should we assume that R2P and the ICC are always mutually reinforcing.

The international response to civilian deaths in Libya (and the imminent threat of mass atrocities) is unusual in three keys respects. First, Security Council Resolution 1973 authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians without the consent of the “host” state. This is the first time the Council has ever done (though of course it came close in some other cases, such as Somalia and East Timor). The Council’s intentions, and actions, could not be interpreted as anything other than coercive. Second, in contrast to other crises involving alleged crimes against humanity (most notably Darfur), diplomacy produced a decisive response in a relatively short period of time. The resolution’s passage was made possible by the fact of regional support (i.e., the request from the Arab League, and was passed by a Security Council whose composition is very much in line with that recommended by advocates of Council reform (non-permanent members included Brazil, Germany, India, Nigeria and South Africa). Thirdly, the effort was not led by the United States; France and the UK proposed the resolution, and Lebanon was a key figure in security support for it. These three features suggest that many analysts of intervention (including myself) need to revise their previously pessimistic assessments of what is possible in contemporary international politics.

What is less clear, however, is how the crisis in Libya—and NATO’s on-going aerial campaign—will affect the fortunes and trajectory of the principle of R2P.  In summary, I think is will do so in three main ways.

By way of introduction, I’m a university professor and occasional visitor to the policy world, having served twice in government and as research director of Canada’s largest think tank.

Although my own research focuses on international security – specifically, civil conflicts and post-conflict peacebuilding – I’m basically a foreign policy nerd who’s interested in all things international, so you can expect my contributions to be wide-ranging.

I’ll certainly talk about events in Libya and Afghanistan. What are the prospects for these controversial missions? What are their implications for regional and international security, the future of NATO, multilateralism and humanitarian intervention?

No one can ignore the seismic effects of the Arab Spring and its aftershocks, whose reverberations will be felt for years. Let’s not forget that revolutions are rarely ended by those who start them.

I’m also interested in democracy promotion and international human rights more broadly. Have you heard about the case of Asia Bibi, a 40-year-old, illiterate mother of five who is on death row in Pakistan for “blasphemy”?

Having lived and worked in the United States for a decade and subsequently advised the Canadian government on relations with the behemoth to our south, I’ll be following the foreign policies of both countries as well as the bilateral agenda. Will the emerging Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness agenda represent a historic step forward in North American integration, or another mishmash of disconnected initiatives?

In my day job, I have the good fortune to direct the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS) at the University of Ottawa, which hosts about 65 events a year for researchers, students, policy practitioners and journalists. I’ll mention some of these events in my posts because they feature an amazing array of thinkers and doers from around the world. (Our most recent guest was Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and now head of a new organization addressing climate justice.)

Finally, I’ll highlight some of the most interesting academic publications I come across.

Yes, it’s an ambitious agenda for an occasional blog, but there’s a lot to talk about these days! If you’re interested in even more, including links to interesting reports, please check out my Twitter account.

Peace can be dangerous. Crises are forgotten, the world returns to normal, and complacency sets in. Great causes are replaced by technical discussions. Grand alliances are eroded by petty rivalries and squabbles. Global issues take a back seat to domestic concerns. A few voices warn of looming global threats, but no one wants to disturb the peace—so the doomsayers are ignored and the barbeques are turned on.

Canada is enjoying its moment of peace and prosperity. We just went through a general election where foreign policy was almost wilfully ignored—except for allegations that Michael Ignatieff’s extensive experience abroad disqualified him from representing the country. Canadians see themselves as an island of tranquillity. But by any measure—trade, finance, immigration, the environment, security—that island has never been more exposed to shifting global currents. And those currents are becoming a torrent.

Even more worrying is our complacency about events across the border. We’ve watched America’s decline with a combination of smugness (couldn’t happen here) and schadenfreude (about time the superpower was taken down a notch) —as if the US were an ocean away and not our key partner—and strategic ally—in an ever more interconnected and interdependent continent.

We’re doing fine without them. We’ll just sign more free trade deals with Asia and Europe. Except that Canada’s global economic leverage increasingly hinges on the strength and competitiveness of North America as a whole—our shared innovation, infrastructure, and production chains. Not to mention our shared security. “Who ya gonna call” if Russia muscles in on Canada’s Arctic? Beijing? New Delhi? Brussels? We could never afford to ignore the elephant next door—all the more so now that the elephant is wounded. That these wounds are largely self-inflicted should not make Canadian’s any less anxious to see America’s health restored.

Canada is not alone. The world too seems allergic to global issues at the moment—even as globalization binds us closer together. Despite the Great Recession, world exports were over 50 per cent higher in 2010 than in 2000—and 183 per cent higher than in 1990. Developing countries’ trade is growing fastest of all—symbolized by China overtaking Germany last year as the world’s top exporter. But beneath globalization’s shiny surface, tensions are growing—from continued financial instability, to global imbalances, to environmental stresses, to deteriorating US-China relations. A recent poll suggests that only a third of Americans now view globalization positively—a far cry from the optimism that greeted globalization after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Another poll found that only 37% of Europeans see globalization as an opportunity, while almost half see it as a threat.

An integrated global economy fundamentally requires political cooperation to sustain it. But globalization seems to be outpacing—even weakening—our willingness to do so. Witness the deadlocked Doha trade talks. Or our paralysis on climate change. Or our dithering and disunity in the face nuclear proliferation. So much easier to turn away from a complicated and messy world—mind our own business—see no evil, hear no evil.

But make no mistake. Our peaceful world is starting to look like a more dangerous place. Has anyone noticed?

Though I am based at the University of Oxford, I maintain deep ties to Canada and my home province of Saskatchewan. In my 2004 book, At Home in the World: Canada’s Global Vision for the 21st Century, I explored Canada’s role as a model citizen. Since then, many things have changed – including my own views. Last year, I argued that Canadian foreign policy has become a mishmash of contradictory concerns and ill-conceived policies and asked, ‘Can it be fixed?’  The arrival of the first majority government in Ottawa for quite some time presents a new opportunity to assess this question.

In addition to shepherding in a new government in Canada, 2011 has also ushered in dramatic changes to the international system. My own research focuses on issues related to the ethics and politics of military intervention and, in recent years, in my role as co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, I have tracked the evolution of the notion of the ‘responsibility to protect.’ Resolution 1973 and the subsequent international military operation in Libya represents a crucial point in the development of this international norm. It will be interesting to follow the interaction of theory and practice as the crisis in Libya unfolds.

I should also note that for the past two years, I’ve been a member of the Premier of Alberta’s Council for Economic Strategy. We recently released our report, which challenges Albertans but also other Canadians to see the province in a new light. For my part, I think this decade will open up new challenges for articulating a coherent ‘Canadian national interest’, and Alberta’s particular agenda and goals is just one example of how the federal government can no longer have a monopoly on foreign policy.

Clearly, Roundtable has a full agenda! Like Roland, I see this blog as an opportunity to push the barriers of my comfort zone, and to trade ideas on issues that I frequently contemplate – but, ’til now, rarely aired publicly. I promise to question, challenge, and dispute – and I hope that André, John and Roland will too.

True, as a journalist for now nearly 35 years, I have had to think and write about a wide range of issues, including these ones. I’ll do my best to bring to this discussion what may be a different perspective than the one academics may have. Of course, being from Québec, I may also contribute a different approach to some issues, or at least try to communicate how Quebecers feel about those. (Hopefully, readers will pardon my very imperfect written English…) Finally, since I have been given access to such prominent people, I will do what I do most in my day job: ask questions.

The NATO mission in Libya underlines the difficulties in translating R2P into action. The Security Council 1973 made very clear that the goal of the Libya mission iss to protect civilians, not to affect regime change. Yet here we are bombing Libya with the explicit goal of bringing Gaddafi down.

Now we know from the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan that regime change is very costly, both financially and in human terms. We also have learned that the results are far from certain. Who are these rebels who we are supporting in Libya? Are they democrats? Are we sure that Libyans would be better off with them than with the weird and cruel “Guide”? It becomes sadly ironic to pretend we are protecting civilians when some NATO bomb misses its intended target and kills… civilians.

The Western world’s interpretation of R2P is bound to be inconsistent, since there are many more populations mistreated than we can afford to protect. Why are we bombing Tripoli and not Damascus?

So let me throw these questions to my fellow panelists: although obviously undeniable in principle, is R2P possible to put in action with reasonable chances of success? How should we define success? How do we choose which people we should protect? Can we protect without launching an all-out war that may cause more damage to a country than a dictator’s rule?

I want to make it clear I am all in favour of R2P. I am just worried that it may be very difficult, if not impossible to carry it out.