Secret strategy: Get it right with America
J.L. GRANATSTEIN and DENIS STAIRS AND GORDON SMITH
From Monday's Globe and Mail
September 30, 2007 at 9:59 PM EDT
Canada's future strategic environment is a threatening one. We live in a dangerous world of terrorism, climate change and natural disasters, and nations losing – and gaining – power. Are we ready? Most critically, how can Canada deal with the United States?
Looking ahead two decades, there are two possible and incompatible ways in which the U.S. might develop. We have been through a period of American unilateralism, tempered slightly with “coalitions of the willing.” These coalitions are as much a matter of convenience as necessity. The Bush administration has not been interested in strengthening the international order, if by that we mean international institutions and international law. Indeed, it has weakened both.
The U.S. feels threatened, and is threatened, by terrorism, above all of the al-Qaeda, jihadist kind. We condemn those who kill indiscriminately to advance sectarian visions, but we recognize that there is also a political impetus in the U.S. (and other countries, too) to identifying an enemy with whom one is “at war.” The Cold War is over, but having an enemy is a political convenience, and the U.S. seems to find it difficult – as the history of its relations with China, Cuba and Vietnam illustrate – to let go of old animosities. If the U.S. is unable to come to terms with political Islam, or if the Islamists are unwilling to moderate their unrelenting hostility to the United States and the West, we are surely faced with a period of prolonged conflict.
This is puzzling on one level, because it is clear that successful nations such as the U.S. and Canada – and failed states, too – benefit from international stability. Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Haiti and Afghanistan could greatly improve their peoples' lots with stability. For its part, the industrialized world, especially the U.S., has much to lose from uncertainty, instability and conflict. Moreover, the U.S. led the world in the creation of international regimes, particularly in the postwar 1940s. The winner of next year's presidential election will need to consider whether the U.S. should return to leading the advance of liberal internationalism.
There are signs pointing in both directions. Recent reports and books by Joseph Nye, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Strobe Talbott all delineate the need for the U.S. to work with the international community to a much larger extent. That community, including Canada, also has a vital interest in keeping the Americans involved. As former Liberal defence minister David Pratt said at the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, “Like the rest of our NATO allies, Canada looks to the United States for leadership on strategic issues. When that leadership is absent, Canada's strategic objectives suffer. Whether we like it or not, on a geostrategic level, we are joined at the hip with the Americans. We succeed when the Americans succeed, and attempting to decouple ourselves from this equation is an absolute and utter waste of time.” Mr. Pratt is surely correct.
But there are also contrary indications pointing the United States away from liberal internationalism. U.S. exceptionalism is strong, and both the Republicans and Democrats use exceptionalist rhetoric to justify their positions on foreign policy. The rise of the Christian right in the U.S. brings to a substantial portion of the American population (perhaps a third) the conviction that God and U.S. foreign policy are inseparable. For many, therefore, the U.S. has a duty to advance its God-given values – sometimes truly universal values, sometimes just better – in the world.
It is not a big jump from there to unilateralism or isolationism. Even among American liberal internationalists, there is a tendency to think of multilateral institutions as vehicles for advancing what are really unilateral interests. This tendency is not confined to the U.S., but the American version of it leads more seamlessly to the notion that the good multilateral institutions are the ones the Americans can dominate, and the bad are the ones in which they have to compromise.
For Canadians, this situation will pose serious problems. We do not simply want to be a minor regional power. We need to work with the United Nations, ideally a much-reformed world organization, and other multilateral institutions such as NATO. But preserving a fundamentally amicable relationship with the Americans must be our highest priority. It won't be easy dealing with a weaker, more anxious America, but our future security and prosperity will depend on getting this relationship right.
J.L. Granatstein is a Toronto-based historian, Denis Stairs is professor emeritus of political science at Dalhousie University, and Gordon S. Smith, a former diplomat, is executive director of the University of Victoria's Centre for Global Studies.
