Could NATO pact drag Canada into an Iran war?
NATO pact puts Canada in difficult spot
We don’t have any polling data on whether Canadians would support joining the United States if it comes to war against Iran — but we can take an educated guess.
In 2003, polls suggested nearly three quarters of Canadians opposed George W. Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq and, as it descended into a quagmire, many Americans came to sympathize with then-prime minister Jean Chrétien’s decision to stay out of it.
There is mounting evidence that the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani was not thought through by President Donald Trump, who has threatened to bomb Iranian cultural sites if the Islamic Republic retaliates.
Reza Marashi, a well-respected U.S.-Iran analyst, quoted a number of unnamed U.S. officials on his Twitter feed. “We have no functioning national security decision-making process in place. We have no plan for what comes next,” Marashi credited one official as saying.
How many Canadians would be comfortable sending their sons or daughters to war in such circumstances? Yet, if Iran retaliates directly against U.S. military sites, that scenario is entirely possible.
After all, NATO’s Article 5 collective defence clause commits each member state to consider an armed attack against one member state to be an attack against all of them. The military adviser to Iran Supreme Leader, Maj. Gen Hossein Dehghan, told CNN on the weekend that reprisals would come from Iran itself, not from allied militia in the area.
After the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. invoked Article 5 for the only time in NATO history. John Manley was deputy prime minister in the Chrétien government and said Canada had already committed to action in Afghanistan. Thus, when George W. Bush sought Canadian support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Chrétien was able to refuse on the grounds that the attacks had not come from that country.
“We thought the UN inspection process (for weapons of mass destruction) needed to run its course. It was challenging — there was quite a large body of opinion in the business community in particular that wanted us to stick with our U.S. allies,” said Manley.
Given the commitment to Afghanistan and the weakness of the Canadian military, he said the Liberal government did not feel any pushback from the Bush Administration. “We didn’t pay the price on trade. We got more pressure from (British prime minister) Tony Blair, who was four-square behind the U.S.” he said.
“We were leery of whether the UN process had been allowed to run its course. Saddam was a bad guy who had used chemical weapons against his own people. But he was not threatening his neighbours. He was just one more autocrat on the world stage. It was not something the West knew how to fix.”
Without explicit support from the UN, the Chrétien government felt it was on solid ground to refuse to participate in the 2003 invasion. But Canada’s position today is more tenuous, which is why it is doing its utmost to de-escalate tensions in the region.
It is a baptism of fire for new Foreign Affairs Minister François-Philippe Champagne, who is trying to straddle the line between sympathizing with the Iraqis and upsetting the Americans. The statement issued Friday was classic bureaucratic hedging — on the one hand, expressing concern about Soleimani’s “aggressive actions”; on the other, urging restraint to preserve a stable and united Iraq.
But if American interests are attacked by Iran, and Trump invokes Article 5, Justin Trudeau will be faced with an extremely unpalatable decision — support Trump’s slapdash adventures in foreign policy or risk the collapse of NATO.
In the end, just as in 2003, Canada must act in the best interests of its own security, which may or may not coincide with those of the U.S.