Return of the liberal hawk
During the Cold War, few were more anti- Communist than the liberal hawks.
While leftish on matters of domestic social policy, liberal hawks were stridently militant when it came to dealing with the old Soviet Union.
Former U. S. president Lyndon Johnson was a liberal hawk. On the one hand, he ushered in a host of measures to alleviate American poverty. On the other, he accelerated the war in Vietnam in order to contain what he saw as Soviet aggression.
In the early 1950s, Canada’s Lester Pearson was a liberal hawk who strongly supported this country’s involvement in the antiCommunist Korean War.
Later in his career, when as prime minister he began to articulate doubts about the Vietnam War, he was less so.
Pierre Trudeau was most definitely not a liberal hawk. That former prime minister did not view the world in black and white terms and was willing to pursue friendly relations with Communist regimes in Cuba, China and Eastern Europe.
So it is interesting to see that under the government of his son Justin, the liberal hawk has made a comeback.
Modern liberal hawks are not much concerned with Communism. It is no longer considered a threat.
Rather they attempt to draw a line between regimes they see as authoritarian and those that support that combination of capitalism and democracy known as the liberal world order.
In Justin Trudeau’s government, the most articulate liberal hawk is Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland.
True, her fevered opposition to Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuelan regime and Vladimir Putin’s Russian government is based, in part, on practical politics.
Russia is not popular among many Canadian voters of eastern European descent. Venezuela is in the cross hairs of Canada’s largest trading partner, the U. S. So it is convenient for Ottawa to be antiMaduro and anti-putin.
But Freeland’s policies also reflect her view of the world. That view, as she explained in a speech last June, was forged during her time as a journalist in Russia in the 1980s and ’ 90s.
“My experience of watching from the inside profoundly shaped my thinking,” she told her Washington audience. In particular, she said, she came to appreciate the fragility of liberal democracy.
It is under threat domestically from unspecified forces who “seek to undermine our democracies from within.” (Shades of Reds under the beds there.)
It is also under threat from abroad. “Authoritarian regimes are actively seeking to undermine us with sophisticated, well-financed propaganda and espionage programs.”
Like Cold War liberal hawks before her, Freeland argues that this threat requires income redistribution at home. Otherwise domestic populations will become disillusioned with the liberal world order.
But it also demands that countries like Canada actively square off against its enemies. “Authoritarianism is on the move. It’s time for liberal democracies to fight back.”
What form will this fight take? In another speech, this one delivered in the Commons two years ago, Freeland says Canadians must be prepared to go to war if necessary.
“The dictatorship in North Korea, crimes against humanity in Syria, the monstrous extremists of Daesh and Russian military adventurism and expansionism all pose clear, strategic threats to the liberal democratic world, including Canada…
“Force is, of course, always a last resort. But the principled use of force, together with our allies and governed by international law, is part of our history and must be part of our future.”
She cited her grandfather, who volunteered to go to war against Hitler because he understood “intuitively” that it was the right thing to do.
What Justin Trudeau, whose father famously didn’t volunteer to fight in the Second World War, thinks of all of this is unclear. Trudeau’s elegy to Cuba’s Fidel Castro, where he lauded the late dictator as a “larger than life leader,” suggests that he, like his father, has a nuanced view of authoritarian regimes. However, the government he heads does not.
The liberal hawks are back. As the new cold war heats up, they promise to be a formidable force.