Signs of smart diplomacy, with room to improve

This week’s searing failure of leadership on the part of U.S. President Donald Trump after the brazen neo-Nazi display of muscle in Charottesville, Virginia prompts a spate of worrying questions. One of which is: Does Canada have the relationship right with this U.S. administration?

Media reports of a “friendship” between Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary, Gerry Butts, and Trump’s now ousted alt-right adviser Steve Bannon raised brief speculation that we might be cosying up to America at a too-high moral cost. Few Canadians, though, seriously thought Butts supported what Bannon represented. Our lack of general alarm over the two men’s professional relationship suggests most Canadians believe our government manages Washington well, or well enough.

A good reason to think we’re doing OK is our thorough preparation for the NAFTA talks now underway. The United States has signalled that the going will be tough. Yet Canadian negotiators and diplomats have done their homework. Early in the week, Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland spelled out publicly what our team seeks from the talks. Then she took media questions and provided serious answers. Once trade talks had opened, she answered more questions. Commendably, the minister is ensuring Canadians are looped in on the approach Team Canada is taking.

The Canadian government did something else extraordinary in recent days, too: It negotiated the release from North Korea of Canadian pastor Hyeon Soo Lim, imprisoned under a sentence of hard labour. A senior emissary for the Prime Minister’s Office led the team that secured Lim’s freedom.

These are signs of smart diplomacy, and on their face they tell Canadians that the Liberals

The Trudeau government continues to stumble over arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

— even when faced with inconsistent and mentally volatile leaders — know what they are doing on the world stage and understand they must be accountable for it.

Which makes some of our other diplomatic moves more glaringly unacceptable.

Writing in the Citizen earlier this week, Charles Burton, former senior counsellor to the Canadian embassy in Beijing, pointed out that, days before opening NAFTA talks with the U.S., Freeland met in Beijing with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (he who scolds Canadian reporters for asking about human rights), also to talk trade. Freeland didn’t hold detailed public briefings on the issue, and Canadians remain largely in the dark about how the federal government plans to resolve our fundamentally conflicting interests with China over human rights, security and commerce.

Meanwhile, the Trudeau government continues to stumble over arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Recently released video footage appears to show Saudi forces using Canadian-made lightarmoured vehicles against Saudi citizens in the eastern part of that country. This is awkward, given the Saudis’ $15-billion deal to purchase LAVs from a Canadian firm; they had said they wouldn’t use these tools of war against their own citizens.

The Trudeau government professes itself shocked — shocked! — at the video and has launched an investigation, as if it had never occurred to anyone in Canada that the Saudis, hardly known as bastions of tolerance for dissent, might not keep their word. The Liberals’ policy on arms sales remains incoherent.

In short — and quite oddly — Canada appears to be pretty good at its diplomatic dealings with unhinged leaders such as Kim Jong-un, and with incoherent and possibly unbalanced ones, such as Donald Trump.

It’s the level-headed despots that seem to trip us up. Let’s work on that.