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COMMENTARY
June 26, 2004
Perfectly irrelevant
We are now within 48 hours of a national election in which foreign affairs have gone undiscussed. No one had a motive for raising the subject: especially not Stephen Harper the opposition leader who is best placed to see the dangers in the Canadian-style "neo-isolationism" of Paul Martin and his Liberals. Fearing an all-channel media onslaught for standing with "Bush" he politely proposed some post-necessary spending on the military and then changed the subject. Now at least on the map Canada is a large patch of space in a world that is lurching towards catastrophe (see previous columns passim). It is odd that no one has noticed. The point becomes the more startling when the view is reversed. Let the reader for a moment imagine himself to be Osama bin Laden or someone of that ilk trying to contrive incidents of mass carnage. There might be some potential benefit in arranging an explosion on the eve of a national election in order to change the result -- in almost any other Western country. In Canada there would be none. This is because Canada has made itself almost perfectly irrelevant on the world stage. I think it is a point worth noting. And because we believe nothing can happen we are ready for nothing to take place. There is no qualified person inside or outside Canada's armed forces willing to deny the pathetic state of their equipment or readiness with a straight face. And after resignations from senior command that have followed various Liberal budget cuts dodges and spacey deployment decisions over the last decade one begins to wonder about the quality and motivations of the officers who remain. A country with very proud martial traditions -- punching far above our weight in two World Wars and Korea -- has been reduced to an insignificant conversation piece wrapped in the enigmas of political correction. According to a Queen's University study at the present rate of shrinkage -- which the incoming Liberals accelerated after Brian Mulroney left office in 1993 -- the Canadian Forces will become entirely extinct within fifteen years. And yet Canada continues to make rhetorical statements about world affairs. How are we to continue keeping even the modest promises we've made? The Liberals' answer as we were reminded in an announcement yesterday by Gen. Ray Henault chief of defence staff has been to bite the bullet. Since their own polled political constituency is allergic to any form of military spending they will just have to stop making promises. In the last year they have reduced Canada's overseas "peacekeeping" and all other deployments by more than three-quarters quietly extracting themselves from previous commitments in Afghanistan Haiti and elsewhere. This cuts a few more budgetary corners while leaving enough troops hanging around home to at least dress for an appearance after a major terrorist incident or natural disaster. Our (presumably) unarmed delegation to the NATO summit in Istanbul is thus at this moment a significant part of total overseas deployments. We will soon have only 1 200 men (and women; don't forget the women) scattered over the continents of Asia Europe Africa and South America to put the meat on Canada's extraordinary claims to moral leadership. During the brief election campaign the opposition parties failed to make hay over the government's own "secret agenda" -- its low-profile counter-terrorism agreements with the U.S. to open Canada's borders to the American military in the event of a national emergency. These illustrate the direct relation between military "downsizing" and national sovereignty. We have to this day no serious preparations for a terrorist strike beyond waiting for American help. So far as I can discern any policy it is to assuage such terrorists as may be lurking with assurances about the pleasure we take in multiculturalism. This plays into a rather sleepy national mood which anticipated the Spanish response to the Madrid strikes of 3/11: the belief that we can become invisible by burying our heads in the sand. This may work for some time to come as it worked for Indonesia. That was after all a country doing everything in its power to avoid participating in anyone's coalition owing to the large number of Jihadis accumulating in local mosques. But then Bali happened. Why? Because the Jihadis needed something to hit and felt incapable of reaching Australia. Add two and two: the more effort the U.S. puts into homeland security and the less we do the more attractive Canada becomes for the grand symbolic sucker punch. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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