Before I even get to Canada I want to make sure it’s understood how critical the next year or two will be. I consider myself fairly well informed and I regularly find myself having to be reminded of the seriousness of things on the global stage.
Foreign policy has been pushed a bit to the side lately. The economy has become a blockbuster, breakout issue; climate change and green initiatives continue to simmer away on the stove; health care is of perennial concern; and of course, in both Canada and the US (in very different ways), the question of who should represent our interests at the executive level has occupied a huge amount of resources and attention.
Meanwhile there are difficult wars going on, which don’t seem to be nearing any acceptable or feasible end. I don’t know if it’s just that I’m paying more attention to this stuff now, or whether these confrontations and tensions are truly approaching a more advanced phase. I’m easily concerned when I read things like this from Foreign Policy’s Passport blog:
But here’s the problem: At the same time as al Qaeda appears to be getting its collective ass kicked, native Pakistani and Afghan militants appear to be getting stronger, not weaker, just as Pakistani analysts have been warning for months.
Just today, militants in Pakistan’s Khyber Agency cut the chief supply route to U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Obama team appears to be shocked at how bad the situation in the region has gotten. Fareed Zakaria is talking about Obama’s Vietnam [also, Juan Cole]. And in what is either desperation or brilliant diplomacy, NATO is reportedly considering turning to Iran – Iran! — for logistical help.
This Reuters Global post goes more in-depth on those logistical problems, noting (for example),
There are still lots of stray threads in this struggle for influence in Central Asia. Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon just reversed an earlier decision to cancel a trip to Moscow, in what was seen as an attempt to put pressure on Russia to increase financial support for Tajikistan. Meanwhile the United States is quietly rebuilding ties with Uzbekistan, despite its human rights record, according to this article in the Christian Science Monitor. Uzbekistan evicted the U.S. military in 2005 after Washington and other Western governments called for an inquiry into the reported massacre of hundreds of civilians during a protest in the city of Andizhan.
There are always a lot of factors and hidden angles when it comes to foreign policy, but I get the sense that now not only are there many factors, but it seems virtually immanent that some of these factors will combine to generate new ‘superfactors’ and unprecedented new paradigms that shift our whole set of assumptions and aims.
We’re not just dealing with (relatively) straightforward territorial conflicts or megalomaniacal dictators or ideological standoffs or even a “clash of civilizations”; we’re dealing with black box scenarios that combine mob-style power struggles and tribal relations with religious fanaticism, sophisticated intelligence and espionage (and media savvy), international finance and big-money natural resources, nuclear weapons… — and then on top of that there’s still plenty of good-old territorialism and megalomania and ideology to go around.
Canada meanwhile — which in theory ought to be a leader, or at least a ‘strong mediator’ in these matters – is involved physically but not really in mind or spirit. I mean, our hearts and thoughts go out to the troops and their families when we hear about the new casualties every week, but we’re not truly absorbed by the war, and we’re not taking on any intellectual responsibility for the outcome in Central Asia. We know our soldiers are fighting for “Canada” and “freedom” but do we have any sense of what those concepts really mean anymore?
If you don’t like thinking about things on that level, consider the more immediate, practical problem of representation and leadership. This is from John Ibbitson’s must-read column in yesterday’s Globe and Mail:
When Ms. Clinton meets Mr. Cannon for the first time, she will know this latest placeholder in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s musical-chairs cabinet is part of a government more focused on surviving for a few more months than in meaningfully participating in the global conversation. Canada has a series of positions on things, but, in the larger sense, our country no longer has a foreign policy.
Paul Wells (who complained about the musical chairs, in Foreign Affairs in particular, at the time of last cabinet shuffle) was less charitable:
Germany’s foreign minister didn’t bother to call Ottawa to inquire about a stopover on his way to or from Washington to meet Hillary Clinton: he had been snubbed too often over the phone, by too many random interchangeable muzzled apathetic tenth-rate Canadian foreign ministers, to waste any more of his time. Any conversation with any foreign diplomat stationed in Ottawa turns, lately sooner rather than later, to the mind-boggling autism of the Harper regime.
Fortunately, Canada being a liberal democracy, we don’t have to sit around waiting for politicians to decide when to decide how they should move forward with a decision-making process. We have more than enough tools available for anyone to gather enough information to be reasonably informed, and then turn around and participate in a discussion about Canada’s role in the world.
Get involved by starting your own blog, using Twitter, following RSS feeds, get in the habit of sharing what you read with social bookmarks and other services.
There are also projects like the Globe and Mail’s Public Policy Wiki and Canada’s World (blog here) – both of which I arrived at via Twitter — two great examples of exactly what we need more of. They’re only as good as the people participating in them…
Don’t feel obliged to start by taking a side in the debate for the sake of being “active.” You don’t have to be an “activist” to be involved. In fact, that’s precisely the wrong thing to do. Take an interest, become more educated every day. Ask questions. Seek answers — and don’t be frustrated if you don’t find them right away.
All of the major challenges we face are going to require our attention and energy over a long haul. It takes a long time and a lot of muscle to steer a country, but it must be steered somehow. Right now (as anyone who has followed my writing will know) I don’t have a lot of faith in Canada’s politicians. If they’re not going to set the example, then the rest of us must.
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