National Post, Canada
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Harper leaps into the foreign policy pond
Mike Blanchfield, CanWest News Service Published: Saturday, September
16, 2006 OTTAWA – Stephen Harper had every intention of spending his
first hours over the Atlantic Ocean as Canada’s new prime minister
squirrelled away in the front of his government Airbus poring over his
briefing books, to prepare for upcoming meetings with Britain’s Tony
Blair, and his first major summit, the Group of Eight in Russia.
But, as he soon found out, a troubled world does not allow its leaders
such luxuries.
Just before Harper’s plane took off, Israeli bombs tore up the runway
of Beirut International Airport and a new war was breaking out in the
Middle East — something Harper could not ignore.
Harper soon found himself in a familiar pose of travelling prime
ministers: commenting on a world gone wrong to the journalists at the
back of his plane. He voiced unwavering support for Israel in its
quest to rescue two of its soldiers, kidnapped days earlier along the
Lebanese-Israeli border by the Hezbollah terrorist group. Harper said
Israel had a right to defend itself, and that it had shown a "measured
response" in its attack on Lebanon.
For many, Canada’s 22nd prime minister had redefined his country’s
position towards the intractable Middle East conflict by showing such
clear support for one side of the conflict over the other. Harper was,
quite literally, making foreign policy on the fly.
For all his efforts to focus his agenda on five domestic priorities,
Harper was forced to face a sixth, one that comes with the job of
being prime minister: defining Canada’s role of the world.
So far, Harper has offered no grand sweeping vision of Canadian
foreign policy. There have been clues and fragments, some more obvious
than others: the military mission in Afghanistan and the need to
support our allies in the war on terrorism, especially the United
States; the need to strengthen that relationship with Washington after
years of tension under the Chretien and Martin Liberals and his
unequivocal support of Israel in the Middle East.
Along the way, he has lashed out at Iran, snubbed China, recognized
the Armenian genocide thus angering NATO-ally Turkey, and his was one
of the first western countries to cut aid to the Palestinian
Authority, after the stunning election victory of the Hamas terrorist
organization in January.
Overall, this has made Jews and Americans, in particular, quite fond
of Harper, while Arabs, Muslims and peace-loving, war-loathing
Quebecers who kicked the Conservative party’s tires during the last
federal election are getting their backs up.
Former Liberal foreign affairs minister John Manley — who was an
outspoken U.S. supporter when he held the portfolio at the time of the
9/11 attacks — says Harper has hurt himself in Quebec because of his
foreign policy shift on the Middle East.
Manley said he was pleasantly surprised by how well Harper’s rookie
minority government had been performing — until the Middle East
reared its head, forcing Harper to react.
"When you venture into foreign policy shifts, you want to be really,
really sure that you understand how you got to where we were," says
Manley. "It wasn’t a Liberal policy on the Middle East. It was a
Canadian policy, and the policy that I was responsible for as foreign
minister was in every significant respect the same that it was when
Joe Clark was the foreign minister for Brian Mulroney."
Manley says Harper has broken the most important rule of Canadian
foreign policy: don’t get too close to the U.S. and don’t get too far
away from the U.S.
"That’s unpopular with a lot of Canadians, especially unpopular in
Quebec where they hoped to get their majority. I think the war is
unpopular in Quebec. All wars have been unpopular in Quebec," says
Manley.
"On the Middle East and Canada-U.S. relations, they kind of plunged in
with gut reactions before really fully understanding what the delicate
balances were."
But, changing the way Canada operates in the world is not a bad thing,
according to the experts. How you do it, though, is important.
"There are certainly the ingredients there to articulate a policy
framework that would resonate for Canadians," says Fen Hampson,
director of the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at
Ottawa’s Carleton University.
"We’re missing a policy. A policy that is one that sets clear goals
and strategies, has conceptual underpinnings that explain why we’re
doing certain things."
Hampson says Harper’s take on the world could best be defined as "high
principled multilateralism" because of the close ties he is fostering
with the U.S. through fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan.
Hampson gives Harper an A for his management of Canada-U.S. relations,
resuscitating it after the rampant anti-Americanism of the Liberals
under Jean Chretien and Paul Martin effectively silenced Ottawa’s
voice in Washington.
But, pumping money into the military and making speeches about how
Canada stands with its number one ally and neighbour fighting
terrorism in Afghanistan does nothing to address other issues such as
how he views the massive economies of China and India, or what Canada
really thinks of the United Nations these days, let alone navigating
the political minefield of the Middle East.
"For the rest of the world: C minus," Hampson says.
"He has to look at his other subjects if you want to use the report
card analogy. He’s still got a lot of homework to do."
**** That work continues this week when Harper gives his first major
speech at the United Nations General Assembly. He will follow that by
hosting Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Ottawa. During his short
televised address last week on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11
attacks, Harper gave indications he supports the UN, reminding
Canadians their troops are serving on a NATO mission in Afghanistan
under the authority of the world body.
But Harper has given no indication he wants Canada to be a major
player in UN reform, and he’s not one to go around spouting the
"responsibility to protect" doctrine Martin was so passionate about,
especially when it came to helping the war-ravaged people of Sudan’s
Darfur region.
Some say Harper has also given short shrift to the epic humanitarian
disaster in Darfur.
"Paul Martin took on personally the role of moving Canada into the
dossier of Darfur," says Liberal Senator Romeo Dallaire, the retired
general who headed the UN’s ill-fated mission to Rwanda that was
ignored and understaffed and was powerless to stop the 1994 genocide
there that cost 800,000 lives.
In Darfur, a three-year-old conflict that has displaced upwards of two
million people and claimed at least 200,000 lives, Canada committed
about 100 armoured personnel carriers as part of a commitment of about
$210,000, a pledge that that includes $40,000 Harper added in May.
But Dallaire says that since taking power in February, Harper has
dropped the ball on Darfur, silencing Canada as a major international
player, which included playing an active role in hammering out the
shaky Darfur peace agreement in Abuja, Nigeria.
Allan Rock, Canada’s ambassador to the UN and an active Darfur
advocate, has since moved on. And Harper sacked the Darfur advisory
team that Martin had created that included Dallaire, fellow
Sen. Mobina Jaffer and former UN ambassador Robert Fowler.
"Unceremoniously, sometime in February we were simply dumped by the
current government, no thank you, no nothing, just we don’t need you
anymore. I’m sitting there with all this information, possibly advice,
and I’m still waiting for somebody to call," says Dallaire, an author
and activist who has a stellar international reputation as an Africa
advocate.
Dallaire said he offered his services to the new government in a
45-minute meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay several
months ago — and that’s the last he’s heard from the government.
"Certainly the information I am getting from staff is that Africa is
not very much in the target area of this government’s foreign policy,"
says Dallaire, who has continuing contacts with the Canadian
International Development Agency, Foreign Affairs and the Defence
Department
And that, says Dallaire, is an abandonment of a major foreign policy
priority considering that African development was the main subject of
Canada’s 2002 chairmanship of the Group of Eight, not to mention the
hard work that was taking place behind the scenes with Darfur.
"On the political side, we were in Abuja, we were pushing the
belligerents, pushing the yardsticks in New York. We had Allan Rock
there, all working in a leadership role," says Dallaire.
Harper has also managed to snub and anger the world’s fastest growing
economy — China — first by taking a broad public swipe by accusing
them of fostering economic espionage in Canada, and then by ignoring
them; as of last week, the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa was still waiting
for the their first meeting with MacKay.
China is not used to being treated that way. Chretien made building
economic ties with Beijing a cornerstone of his foreign policy,
something Martin carried on. The Liberals were accused of doing this
at the expense of human rights.
But Harper has swung the pendulum back the other way — too far, says
Hampson.
It is simply not in Canada’s long-term interest given its high-level
of immigration and growing trade with China "to build a policy on
single pillar, the human rights pillar."
And, Harper has also managed to alienate Canadian Arabs and Muslims
with his vocal support of the Israeli military’s attack on Lebanon in
an attempt to crush the Hezbollah militia.
A recent poll commissioned by the National Council on Canada-Arab
Relations found that one-third of those surveyed believe Harper
favours Israelis over Arabs.
The same poll, conducted by SES Research, also found that 54 per cent
said they would consider changing their vote in the next election
based on the government’s policy towards the Middle East.
"It quite well may be that foreign policy may play a significant role
in the dynamic of the next federal election," said SES President Nik
Nanos.
Ottawa Citizen