Freeland is the smart chess move It’s better in the Bahamas
Chrys tia Freeland’ s elevation to the most influential job in the federal cabinet, short of Finance and the prime ministership itself, raises interesting questions about Canada’ s future relationships with the United States, Russia and China. Freeland is a Harvard grad and Rhodes Scholar who speaks Russian, Ukrainian, French and Italian and has lived and worked in Moscow, New York and London. That and her performance as trade minister — specifically her successful landing of the European free trade deal last fall, after having abandoned talks at the eleventh hour — made her an obvious candidate for promotion to foreign affairs in a shuffle that has the feel of an all- handson-deck, ahead of the Trump presidency.
What’s more intriguing, however, is how Freeland’s background as an author and journalist gives her a two-sided perspective on the forces now driving Russian and American politics. She has written books both on the ascent of the Russian oligarchs and the explosion of income inequality that presaged the rise of Trumpist nativism in the United States.
Freeland’s position visa- vis Ukraine, Russia and dictator Vladimir Putin could not be more clear: In a Brookings essay in May of 2015 she wrote at length about her Ukrainian roots and family ties, excoriated Putin’s invasion of Crimea and was unapologetic about having been banned from Russia in 2014, along with a handful of other Canadian critics of Putin including James Bezan and Ir win Cotler.
Like Rex Tillerson, the Putin- friendly, globe- trotting oilman whom Trump has picked to be his Secretary of State, Freeland knows the current Russian context well and has met Putin personally. She interviewed him in 2000, she recounts in the Brookings piece. But unlike Tillerson, Freeland has a long history of criticizing and prodding the Kremlin, dating back to her coverage of the Russian crackdown in Chechnya in the 1990s.
The first question, therefore, is this: How does an avowed Canadian critic of Putin and champion of Ukraine handle relations with authoritarian Russia, at a time when the U.S. presidential election itself has been compromised by Russian hacking, according to America’s own intelligence agencies, and when t he president-elect seems determined to view Putin as his friend and ally regardless?
Steve Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, has mused in the past about a new Judeo- Christian nationalism in opposition to radical Islam. That cultural bloc appears to include Putin, who has made himself a cham- pion of traditional Russian culture, including the Russian Orthodox Church.
The new bloc does not appear to include the Chinese Communist government of President Xi Jinping. Though Trump will not be inaugurated until Jan 20, he has already signalled — through tweets, mind you — that he intends to be far less deferential towards Beijing’s traditional sensitivities, especially the hot-button issue of Taiwan, than previous American presidents have been.
What may be emerging in Washington is a reversal of Richard Nixon’s historic gambit in 1972, by which he normalized relations with China as a check against Soviet Russia. Prime Mini ster Pierre Trudeau, of course, beat Nixon to the punch in China, by a year — and his son, the current PM, has capitalized on that history to seek a new trading relationship with the Communist superpower.
The foreign policy highwire act to come could not be trickier, therefore: Fend off Russian advances in the Arctic, uphold democracy in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, and foster new trade ties with China, itself a dictatorship — all while shoring up a Canada-U. S. cross- border relationship that faces unprecedented uncertainty due to rising protectionism, and Trump’s vow to rip up the North American Free Trade Agreement.
The consolation, if there is one, is that Trudeau’s team understands the underlying causes of Trumpism well — and they have Freeland to thank for that, too. Her 2012 book, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Superrich and the Fall of Everyone Else, is a primer on soaring income inequality around the world, but especially in the United States.
Citing research from leading economists, Freeland’s book explores the phenomenon of income stagnation in the U. S. rust belt — the very states t hat handed Trump the presidency in the November election — and posits that, barring reform in how globalized capitalism apportions its booty, disenfranchised working people would eventually reject that system. Of course that is just what occurred in 2016, in the United Kingdom with Brexit and the United States with the Trumpist revolt.
Freeland’s thesis in Plutocrats infused Trudeau’s campaign for the Liberal leadership, and his party’s 2015 election campaign. The spine of the Liberals’ plan of government — especially the middle- class tax cut, reformed child benefit and tax increase for the wealthy — was designed to prevent U. S.- style inequality from moving north of the border.
So to the extent Trump, in his chaotic post- partisanness, explores ways of shoring up working- class and middle- class l i ving standards, he will find the new Canadian foreign minister has been there ahead of him.
It’s no small wonder Freeland got this job. She’s the closest the Liberals have to an expert, in two of the biggest problem areas they face. Re: Trudeau was New Year’s guest of the Aga Khan, Jan. 7 Never in my life have I read anything so stupidly absurd as Justin Trudeau’s statement: “. . . no matter our faith, where we were born, what colour is our skin, or what language we speak, we are equal members of this world.”
It is j ust r eality t hat some of us are more equal than the rest of us — flying down to the Caribbean with family, staying at a 349- acre $ 100- million island as the guest of a billionaire.
Poor Benjamin Netanyahu. He is embroiled in scandal for accepting cigars from a billionaire. Perhaps he should consult Trudeau to find out how to get away with such excessive perks of the trade.
Gordon Akum, Toronto
(FREELAND’S BOOK) IS A PRIMER ON SOARING INCOME INEQUALITY. — MICHAEL DEN TANDT