he first half of 2010 has offered Canada two enviable opportunities to showcase its internationalism: the Winter Olympics in British Columbia in February, and the G8 and G-20 summits in Ontario in June. These chances couldn’t have come at a better time, given that Canada’s last foray into international diplomacy, the Copenhagen meeting on climate change in December 2009, generated some of the worst press coverage the country has ever received. The commentator and environmental activist George Monbiot wrote in the pages of Britain’s Guardian newspaper that Canada’s duplicitous approach to climate change negotiations overshadowed all the good it had done during a century of peacekeeping. Our “campaign against multilateralism,” he argued, was as “savage as any waged by George Bush.”While grenades like these have been infrequent for the past few years, and do not yet form part of a sustained anti-Canada campaign, they nonetheless raise questions about the robustness of our global brand. Prior to Stephen Harper’s tenure as prime minister, much of the analysis of Canada’s role in the world emphasized our decline as an indispensable “middle power,” which came about through a combination of budget cuts and mediocre diplomatic performance. Since the election of the Conservative government, the commentary has evolved from hand-wringing to head-scratching. Aside from maintaining a heavy Canadian presence in Afghanistan and asserting our territorial integrity in the Arctic, the government’s foreign policy initiatives have been quite literally all over the map: championing a free trade agreement with Colombia while imposing new visa restrictions on nationals from our nafta partner, Mexico; promoting a “new” relationship with India while holding off on a prime ministerial visit to China for four years; shifting foreign aid from Africa to Latin America and the Caribbean; and “leading the world” on Israeli-Palestinian relations by refusing to attend the 2009 World Conference against Racism, as temporarily halting funding to the Palestinian Authority in 2006, and stepping up Canada’s commitment to defend Israel against attack.
A charitable reading of these policies might see them as bound together by an ideological commitment to democracy and human rights — a paler, Canadian version of the Bush “freedom agenda.” That logic tends to unravel under scrutiny, however. Colombia isn’t exactly a bastion of democracy, and the Conservatives have lately been backpedalling on China. The early period of Chinese-Canadian relations under Harper may have been heavily influenced by the rather undiplomatic Jason Kenney, a strong critic of China, but recent talk has focused on its indispensability as a market (for instance in the Conservatives’ 2009 global commerce strategy).
And if we’re really so concerned about human rights, why haven’t we sustained our commitment to the rights of those who live in the world’s poorest countries, in Africa? Not to mention the rights of Palestinian refugees. This government has pursued its new policy directions in the Middle East in a particularly undemocratic way, interfering with Montreal-based Rights and Democracy by appointing new board members who subsequently fought to block funding for human rights groups critical of Israeli actions in the West Bank and Gaza. (Three staffers have also been fired, and two other board members have resigned in protest.) The great irony here is that the Tories reaffirmed last year their intention to establish their own Canadian organization aimed at strengthening pluralistic democratic institutions around the world — primarily by building up strong party systems.
To be sure, coherence is a challenge for parties in all countries, given that most international policy is contingent by its very nature. One stream of thought in policy circles, stretching back through many prime ministers and presidents, contends that attempts to create international strategies are doomed to failure, no matter the country. Asked once about his biggest challenge as a leader, Harold Macmillan, prime minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963, is said to have replied, “Events, dear boy, events.” Under this view, foreign policy can never truly be strategic but must primarily react to whatever winds happen to be blowing. I encountered this sentiment in 2005 when I was asked to assist the Martin government in crafting an update to the strategic review of foreign policy conducted under Jean Chrétien a decade earlier. Many critics of this exercise contended that the Canadian government should avoid articulating broad objectives that would inevitably be implemented inconsistently and imperfectly. Instead, they argued, the goal should be much more modest: good policy on a case-by-case basis.
I felt then, and still believe now, that this isn’t good enough. While certain unpredictable events, such as tsunamis or earthquakes, demand rapid, flexible response, the federal government can and should identify, analyze, and adjust to broader power shifts, political developments, and changes in technology. In the wake of 9/11, both the United States and the European Union embarked on a process of analysis and priority setting that resulted in a wholly new strategic vision. Even critics who disagreed with the substance of those strategies (notably George W. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy) could grudgingly admire the discipline and wisdom involved in identifying challenges and opportunities, assessing strengths and weaknesses, and elevating a particular set of objectives for public servants to focus on. This exercise can extend beyond “big” powers as well, with such advanced democracies as Norway, Spain, and Australia all setting out strategic foreign policy frameworks in recent years. If they can do it, so can we.
Whether we can do it well, of course, is another question entirely. Democratic states play the foreign policy game with a considerable handicap, given the pressures of public opinion and special interest groups. One of the shrewdest observers of democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville, famously wrote, “Foreign policy does not require the use of any of the good qualities peculiar to democracy, but does demand the cultivation of almost all those which it lacks.” Non-democratic countries such as China have the luxury of continuity in foreign policy objectives such as securing raw materials or maintaining territorial claims. Moreover, their strategists are isolated from the inconvenience of democratic accountability. Democratic systems, by contrast, tend to have much more decentralized decision-making structures, and must consider what costs their electorates are willing to bear. As a consequence, de Tocqueville lamented, they are likely to “abandon a mature design for the gratification of a momentary caprice.”
Canada, it seems, has become emblematic of de Tocqueville’s critique. It’s not only that our government regularly indulges the cries of various domestic constituencies. Lots of governments do that. We have the added challenges of a political structure designed to further the interests of provinces over a clearly defined national interest, and of a multicultural population that has many and sometimes conflicting interests. Under these constraints, what exactly is Canada trying to do beyond its borders? And, more important, what should it be trying to do?
uring a 2007 visit to Barbados, Chile, Colombia, and Haiti, Stephen Harper launched one of the Tories’ few concrete foreign policy initiatives during their time in government: their much-touted strategy for the Americas. The central ideas behind the plan were to strengthen bilateral relationships with key states in the region; to become more involved in regional bodies like the Organization of American States and the Summit of the Americas; to increase development assistance to the Caribbean; to expand the number of Canadian diplomats in the hemisphere; and to form new partnerships with corporations and educational institutions across the Americas. The strategy arose partly in response to some very real opportunities to increase regional prosperity through trade and foreign investment; enhance democratic government; and bolster individual security by focusing on crime, natural disasters, and pandemics, all of which also affect Canadian travellers.In the days since Harper announced the strategy, however, its most visible products have been the appointment of a Minister of State for Foreign Affairs with special responsibility for the Americas (currently Peter Kent), and the signing of a free trade deal with Colombia. The former is largely symbolic at this point, and has yet to be beefed up with significant policy-making authority, while the latter is unlikely to improve democracy or security in Colombia, or to reap huge economic dividends here. The Tories did demand the inclusion of annual human rights reports, but only after being forced to do so by opposition parties.
Two factors help to explain why the shift toward the Americas has yet to bear fruit. The first is resources — or, more accurately, the lack thereof. The government seems to have believed it could make a strategic turn without providing fuel to drive the car in the new direction. The prime minister’s recent insistence that all initiatives be spending neutral hollowed out any real possibilities for stronger bilateral ties or new partnerships. His government is thereby breaking one of the cardinal rules of strategy: when emphasizing a priority, be prepared to transfer significant resources to the new area of focus.
But the more problematic feature of Harper’s agenda for the hemisphere is its design, and specifically what it leaves out. To be worthy of its name, any Americas policy must include a well-crafted engagement strategy for Brazil, the region’s rising power. This is doubly true given Canada’s long-standing interest in Haiti, where Brazil currently leads the United Nations stabilization mission, and the significant levels of Brazilian foreign investment in Canada. But here, de Tocqueville’s warnings about democracy play out vividly. In the long term, Canada would clearly benefit from stronger trade, investment, and energy ties with Brazil. But several powerful domestic constituencies — in particular ethanol and agriculture — are wary of such a partnership. And some of these constituencies, such as farmers in Ontario, loom rather large in the electoral calculations of the Harper government. Annette Hester, an expert on Brazil and the Americas based in Calgary, sums it up well: “Harper is just counting votes, like anybody else. Until there are more powerful constituencies in favour of engagement, those groups who fear Brazil as a competitor will hamper any hope of an Americas strategy.”
Again, we might be prepared to cut Harper some slack, given that most democratic governments have to contend with powerful economic interests that can scupper more principled foreign policy goals (just think of the damage done to the Canada-US relationship as a result of softwood lumber). But underlying the problems with the Americas strategy is a failure to understand what matters to our potential partners in the region. The Tories have been spectacularly tone deaf on this front, doggedly pursuing trade at the expense of the priorities of most countries in the region, including the United States.
1 comment(s)
After the sound.
In the air,
with the voice
of a clarinet,
I hear a luminous
sound that tries
to discover a
little emotion,
a charming behaviour
and the tender
delight....
Francesco Sinibaldi
