Trudeau quietly strikes the right notes on North Korea

It’s an odd notion: Canada works with Cuba to get them to work with North Korea to get them in turn to work with the United States on cooling their nuclear ambitions.

But it’s a worthwhile approach and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appears to have quietly positioned Canada to a play role in this global fiasco proportionate to what we can reasonably hope to accomplish.

“I’ve had surprising conversations with places you wouldn’t expect, including places like Cuba, where they actually have decent diplomatic relations with the North Korean regime,” Trudeau said on Thursday in Charlottetown, as reported by the Canadian Press.

“And can we pass along messages through surprising conduits? There hasn’t been huge amount of discussion around that, but it was a topic of conversation when I met President Raul Castro last year,” the PM added.

The idea of Canada strategizing diplomacy with Cuba might leave many Canadians a little queasy, just like how the warm tone of Trudeau’s statement upon the death of Fidel Castro caught the world off guard.

But the truth is that Cuba is an entry point into North Korea. Back in 2013, a North Korean vessel was detained in the Panama Canal on its way home from Cuba. It was carrying both sugar – something they normally trade – and secretly holding Cuban missiles.

They’ve clearly got a lot going on together. And with Cuba being firmly opposed to any country holding any nuclear weapons, they’ll hopefully sound at least some of that message with their isolated trading partner. It’s not like China, the country with the most economic leverage over the North, has yet delivered meaningful results.

How big of a role can Canada play though? And how successful will we be? Minimal. That’s probably the answer to both of these questions. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Chipping away at the right points still has value.

Trudeau’s statements also show he’s on the right page on two related issues that there’s a troubling amount of dissent over.

The first is whether or not the threat of Kim Jong Un striking North America is genuine. “If you look at the flight path, there’s potential challenges for intercontinental missiles ( ICBMs) from North Korea passing over Canadian territory,” Trudeau said Thursday.

This is an element that’s been downplayed too frequently and it’s refreshing to see no less a figure than the PM show concern. If Kim Jong Un perfects his ICBMs, that spells trouble for Canada. And as Lt.- Gen. Pierre St. Armand, our rep at NORAD, told parliamentarians in September: “The extent of the U. S. policy is not to defend Canada.” We need to be our own voice on this matter.