Trudeau’s foreign policy a tragic tale

Tragedies are curious things to watch. The conclusion is foregone and ruinous. Yet despite knowing this, we watch them anyway, and are even surprised when the ruin comes.

Such has been the sufferance of Michael Spavor — an innocent man who was sentenced last week by a kangaroo court in China to 11 years in prison. We suspected this was coming, but were pitifully surprised anyway. More ruinous is that his country stood by and did nothing effective to save him.

This, of course, is a subplot in the larger tragedy of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s foreign policy, which has totally destroyed our global reputation. Our debacle in Afghanistan is just the most recent implosion.

Left to his own devices, Trudeau’s naivete has turned Canada — once a victorious Allied power and mature G7 state — into an irrelevant spectator on the world stage: we sit on the sidelines, signalling our virtues, while real players run the game.

The remaining cast of characters — Chrystia Freeland, Harjit Sajjan and other Liberal lackeys — have stood by as Rome has burned, or fanned the flames with occasional stupidity. It would be comic relief, if the consequences weren’t so dire.

The opening act was prophetic enough, when, in 2015, on the day he entered office, Trudeau yanked our Air Force CF-18S from the fight against the Islamic State. If there was ever a clear-cut moral and political issue — the world united against a genocidal Jihadist regime — it was this one, which he abandoned in disgrace. He talked about Canada being back, at the same time as he turned his back on our allies and, quite literally, flew away.

Our military was embarrassed, and things have only gone downhill since. With crumbling ships, submarines, jets and bloated costs to replace them, our failures to spend NATO’S targeted two per cent of GDP on defence and ongoing sexual misconduct scandals, the lost morale of our troops will take years to recover.

Under Trudeau’s leadership, we have completely given up the pretence that Canada should take some responsibility for its own self-defence. Instead, we continue to rely on the United States for our security, and just about everything else. And like a medieval serf, Trudeau allows his powerful lord to the south to continually push him around.

“It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” wrote the Bard in Othello. Green-eyed, indeed, has our petulant monster been, with fanaticism on climate change overwhelming all policy with religious fervour, even at the expense of our energy jobs.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s shuttering of Keystone XL was met with silent acquiescence, while the fight for Line 5 against Michigan’s dogmatic governor has been meek, at best. By contrast, former U.S. president Donald Trump — correctly seeing Trudeau as a “punk kid” — took him to task on trade. “I think Trump versus Trudeau is Godzilla versus Bambi,” said Kevin O’leary of NAFTA renegotiations. And he was right: Trudeau was forced to yield market access to American dairy giants and got nothing in return.

But don’t be disheartened, for comic relief did come as Trudeau left on his unforgettable trip to India. Though a catastrophe-cum-family vacation according to both countries’ press, Canada did manage to stage a clown show for 10 days — complete with colourful dresses, funny dancing, cameo appearances (e.g., Jaspal Atwal) and the bizarre accusation that the Indian government may have tried to sabotage the trip. For their tolerance, Trudeau sent India a backhanded note of gratitude two years later, which included comments on the farmers protests that dug the hole even deeper.

To be fair, there were some faint glimmers of hope along the way, where this story’s protagonist could have shone. Trudeau’s “feminist foreign policy” was initially well-received, and his ambition for a United Nations Security Council seat was, at the very least, commendable.

Yet both were executed with incompetence. His feminist foreign policy hurt our relationship with Saudi Arabia and was exposed as a sham when he blatantly left behind Afghani women, who aided Canadian troops, to meet their fate at the hands of the Taliban. As for the Security Council, falling commitments to foreign aid and peacekeeping made Trudeau’s campaign a foregone failure. What surprised everyone was the depth of his loss, yielding a number for how low our stock has fallen on the world stage.

With this cascade of errors, our long national nightmare has come to the end of its second act, and now demands you buy tickets for a third. There’s little more to watch, however. For after multiple mortal wounds, Canada’s foreign policy has met its tragic end. Justin Trudeau buried it alive under six years of failure.

Fittingly, with Spavor’s verdict, the Chinese Communist Party hammered the last nail in its coffin. At the end of all tragedies, we expect a catharsis — where the hero confronts his errors with suffering. Will Canadians get one? I hope so. I think not.

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE HAS COME TO THE END OF ITS SECOND ACT, AND NOW DEMANDS YOU BUY TICKETS FOR A THIRD.