The US is in no mood for this nonsense
To recap: The government of Canada has refused to participate in the American missile defence system. It refused, after setting several conditions on its participation -- no missiles on Canadian soil, no financial contribution of any kind, etc etc -- all of which were met. Had we participated, we would have been protected by the Americans, in return for nothing but our moral support. Having refused to participate, we still expect them to protect us, in return for nothing at all.
In short: The government that rejects participation in principle has already consented to it in practice, having earlier agreed to let NORAD, the binational air defence command, provide information on incoming missiles to the Americans. Of course, that’s what NORAD does now. The government’s position is that Canadians should participate in a system that tracks enemy missiles all the way until they land in a Canadian city, but not in one that has any chance of shooting them down before they get there.
In sum: We weren’t asked to do anything, the system doesn’t depend on us doing anything, and we’ve already done whatever it was the Americans needed us to do. They weren’t asking us to participate, they were offering to let us: for with participation comes consultation, and a role in our own defence. Yet having rejected the offer of consultation, in the name of our sovereignty, we now demand to be consulted, on grounds of sovereignty. And the result of these affirmations of our independence is to make us utterly dependent on another country for our defence.
It would be funny, if it were not so serious. All the Americans were really asking us to do was to say we supported them in a project that, if it works, would protect both themselves and us, and if it doesn’t would be paid for entirely by them. It was a layup, a cost-free gesture of goodwill that might repair some of the damage from our refusal to participate in Iraq. And since we are, in fact, supporting them, albeit minimally, it amounted only to acknowledging in public what we are doing in private.
But there is a rule in Ottawa: You can say you are doing something without doing it, or you can do something without saying it, but under no circumstances can you say and do the same thing at the same time. So we couldn’t even manage the insincere gesture; empty symbolism was beyond us. When our newly appointed ambassador to the United States made the mistake of conceding the reality of our participation, the Prime Minister instantly contradicted him. If there were any symbolic gestures to be made, he wanted them to be in the opposite direction.
The consequence of this foolishness may be to finally goad the Americans into questioning our clinically dependent relationship, and their own role as our enablers. The Wall Street Journal editorial reprinted nearby is an ominous sign. I had thought the Americans would simply shrug and move on, confirmed in their impression of us as a terminally feckless and unreliable ally. But it turns out there are limits to American forbearance. The President who had publicly pleaded with Canada to sign on does not like to be publicly embarrassed. Imagine that.
Already there is talk of NORAD being in jeopardy. The Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, has “postponed” her visit, a sure sign of displeasure. American officials are expressing bafflement and amazement at Canada’s behaviour. Previous fits of footdragging, from Bomarc to cruise missiles, had never excited this attention. Even the Iraq fiasco was not so damaging as it might have been, since it did not directly involve the defence of the continent -- the common defence to which we have been committed by treaty for more than 60 years.
But now we have achieved every Canadian’s dream -- they noticed us! -- and the results may not be quite what we would have wished. It was one thing for the Americans to protect us when there was some strategic value to the relationship. The Lester Pearson invoked today as the avatar of “internationalism” was the Lester Pearson who put nuclear warheads on Canadian missiles, whose government spent nearly 4% of GDP -- a quarter of its budget -- on defence. But today? What’s in it for them?
A good many Canadians, well represented in the Liberal party, have persisted in the delusion that we were some kind of neutral power: the first in world history to depend on somebody else to defend it. Like the Europeans, we have been infantilized by America’s protective embrace, lulled into thinking that defence itself was unnecessary. But now the Cold War is over, and a new war has begun, and the Americans are reassessing a lot of things. The days when we could count on the Americans being our allies, without us being theirs, are coming to an end.
I’ve said this is not like Iraq. But in some ways the comparison is apt. Then, as now, the Prime Minister had no real objection to Canadian participation. Then, as now, Canada did not take a principled stand, but waffled and fudged until the last possible minute. Then, as now, we were not being asked for much more than moral support, and then, as now, the matter was finally decided on the basis of internal Liberal politics and the latest poll out of Quebec.
So the damage will be redoubled, the more so for the hopes that had been invested in Mr. Martin. We could have taken our place beside the United States, Great Britain and Australia, the great alliance that fought and won two world wars and to whom literally dozens of countries owe their freedom. Instead, who are our new best friends? The Chinese, the Russians, the Germans and the French, who between them have never liberated a single country, including their own. How very sad. How unspeakably silly.
