Harper’s foreign policy a palatable formula
Stephen Harper and John Baird, foreign-policy innovators and grandmasters of soft power? Nonsense, Liberals pining for the Pearson era will say. Balderdash, the Tories themselves will scoff, at least about the “soft power” part. And yet it’s true. Prime Minister Harper, meet Lloyd Axworthy. You two have so much in common.
It is axiomatic for Harper’s critics, certainly for those who churn out talking points for the Dippers, Grits and Greens, that this prime minister is a ham-fisted and embarrassingly unsubtle foreign-policy actor. The prima facie evidence is his notorious letter to the Wall Street Journal in 2003, penned with Stockwell Day, lamenting Canada’s refusal to participate in George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
The Iraq invasion has to be counted among the most disastrous foreign policy mistakes in U.S. history; certainly the worst since the Vietnam War. From there, it’s an easy mental hop to the assumption that all Harper’s foreign-policy stances up to the present day — whether with respect to Iran, Ukraine or Israel’s war with Hamas — are further reflections of a shallow, George Dubya-esque moral absolutism and incipient incompetence. It has been pointed out before, by both liberal and conservative commentators, that Harper’s devotion to the policies of Israel’s Likud Party verges on fetish. Canada is arguably more “pro-Israel” now than are many left-leaning Israelis.
But here’s the thing: Harper and Baird’s basic positions have been borne out by events — both in the conflict with Hamas, and in Ukraine, since the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 by a rocket attack, killing all 298 people aboard.
In the first case, Hamas last week rejected an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire, which had been accepted by Israel. Conclusion: Hamas sought out the current ground invasion, and civilian casualties, and horrific images of the dead and wounded, to fan hatred of Israel. Blame for the growing carnage — there were reports of as many as 100 deaths in Gaza Sunday, as well the deaths of 13 Israeli soldiers — will be laid primarily at Hamas’ door.
In Ukraine, meantime, the evidence pointing to Moscow-backed rebels in the downing of the Malaysian airliner, carrying passengers from 13 countries, looks unassailable. The causal chain leads directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, without whose armed invasion of Crimea, and subsequent fomenting of ethnic Russian separatism in Ukraine, this atrocity could not logically have occurred. In sum, it seems we do live in a world in which, despite all best wishes to the contrary, there are bad actors who do bad things, which must be denounced by civilized peoples, as Harper and Baird have consistently done.
All of which brings us to soft power, a notion advanced by 1990sera Liberal Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and much derided by conservatives at the time. There was a period, between 2006 and 2010, when the Harper government pursued hard power, with a will. With Canadian troops in combat in Afghanistan, Ottawa poured resources into the military, purchasing new kit for infanteers, combat vehicles, helicopters, as well as short and long-haul transport aircraft.
But then came a pivot, prompted no doubt by waning public enthusiasm for the war. It was Harper who pulled the plug on the Afghan mission, before the 2011 election. And it is Harper’s government now that is quite happy to allow the Canadian military to languish with its three 1970s-era naval destroyers, its dozen 1980s-era frigates, and a dwindling fleet of obsolete F-18A jet fighters held together with baler twine and chewing gum.
The reason it can afford to do this politically, put simply, is that Washington today is more leery of foreign military entanglements than even Canada’s federal Liberals were in the Paul Martin era. There is no pressure on Canada to arm or to fight anyone, either on its own account or as part of the Atlantic alliance, because neither the U.S. nor Britain are arming or fighting just now, notwithstanding the slow-motion collapse of what used to be known as the interna- tional order.
Moreover, the federal Conservatives know that, in the unlikely event it should become necessary, they have well trained and battle-tested infantry and disaster responders who could be sent anywhere in the world on short notice, in one of the RCAF’s four C-17s. In an era of western strategic disengagement, and when any Canadian military involvement is symbolic, that’s probably all they feel they absolutely need.
Harper is a cautious, incremental politician, with a moralistic streak. It just so happens that, in today’s foreign policy context, this has become a palatable formula for Canada. There’s a reason why, when it comes to the specifics of either Gaza or Ukraine, talking points notwithstanding, there’s no material divergence between the government and any opposition party.
It’s because the old foreign-policy nostrums of Canada as “honest broker” are not just dead, but buried, by an evolving (or devolving) world. Grizzled, redshirted partisans at Liberal conventions still like to talk that old talk, in their policy sessions. It’s as unlikely to ever re-emerge as a practical governing policy as the concept of peacekeeping itself, which quietly passed away in Rwanda in 1995.