I've Got an Idea to Rescue Justin From His Slump

Unfair or not, Justin Trudeau has taken a hit in the public's mind over his pretty clumsy trip to India. With JT et famille sporting an elaborate wardrobe of Bollywood's best fashions, the Indian press took the piss out of him pretty relentlessly. The local scribblers piled on.

Now Trudeau's approval numbers have dropped to within spitting distance of Tory leader, Andrew Scheer's. That's Andrew "Chuckles" Scheer people, a guy with all the charisma of a recycled catheter.

Maybe JT should consider upping his game. He could start by reversing himself and honouring a major campaign promise - electoral reform. I would like it even better if he went for electoral reform and pipelines but that's probably too much to ask. 

Trudeau promised that 2015 would be our last first-past-the-post election. In short order he reneged on that committment but his "can't" sounded more like "won't."  His claim that it wouldn't work here, even though it works elsewhere, was utterly unconvincing. We would even accept the preferential ballot option if he insisted. Just do it.

Or maybe Justin can change course. Maybe he should transform himself from just another free trade mule into a Renaissance Man befitting of his legendary father. (full disclosure. what follows is taken from an email I wrote to a fellow blogger this morning)

I have long argued that Canada needs some serious redecorating. Ever since George H.W. Bush started this “coalition of the willing” business, America has treated certain allies, Canada included, as its de facto Foreign Legion.  Desert Storm was, arguably, a good cause – driving Iraq out of Kuwait. Kosovo – meh. Afghanistan, well we all lost our minds at the 9/11 attacks streamed live into our livingrooms. We even bent the rules around Article 5 in that, 1) – the US never attacked by Afghanistan, and 2) – at the time the US invoked Article 5 it was not truly “under attack.” Picky, picky.

Where we lost the plot was when Bush/Cheney decided America should turn to invading Iraq rather than finishing what it had begun in Afghanistan. We knew from Hans Blix and his team of UN inspectors that Saddam wasn’t hiding a mountain of WMDs. It was pretty obvious that Washington thought it could roll in and basically grab the oil for US energy giants. Why was the only Iraqi ministry US forces secured the oil ministry?

The US decided to offload much of the Afghan mission to free up troops for Iraq and wanted a Foreign Legion. Rick “Big Cod” Hillier talked Paul Martin into taking the combat gig in Kandahar with a laughably token force of just 2,000 personnel, no more than half combat ready, to a province whose area and population mandated a combat force of between 20 to 30,000.  Martin didn’t know any better. Hillier probably did know, definitely should have known , but obviously didn’t tell his prime minister. It’s right there in the US Army/Marine Corps field manual, FM-3/24.

We lost our war in Afghanistan, the first military defeat in Canadian history. We lost badly. War is a state of armed conflict used to achieve a political outcome. That sought outcome was defined by Stephen Harper. We were there to stay. We would never cut and run. We would stay until the Taliban had been vanquished, effectively eradicated. We would make Afghanistan safe for democracy and a restoration of human rights (as they had once enjoyed under the country’s last king). We did none of those things. The Talibs are resurgent. The government is a hopelessly corrupt amalgamation of warlords from five main ethnic groups. Little boys’ bums are all the rage again and the struggle for women’s rights languishes. Meanwhile we definitely chose to cut and run.

Then along came Libya, a not so tidy war that Obama basically offloaded on Europe. Harper staged a victory fly past over Parliament Hill for that one even as Libya itself descended into an intractable, second phase civil war, this one substituting Islamist radicals for Gadhafi.

Syria? ISIS has been driven out, more or less, for now. It has been reduced from a rebellion to an insurgency to what is today essentially a terrorist movement. That’s the thing with these guys. They can morph from one state to another, often rather effortlessly, and that enables them to be flexible, mobile. They’ll be back, probably in another guise.

I have gone on at some length on these events because the world has become no safer for all of our post 9/11 misadventures. If anything we’ve demonstrated, repeatedly, that all the King’s Horses and all the King’s Men are no longer a sure path to a meaningful, lasting victory. We have all the watches but the bad guys have all the time.

We are returning to a more challenging era, one akin to the last Cold War, another win that we utterly failed to consolidate as we allowed triumphalism to get the better of us. That Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has been since the Cuban missile crisis. Around the world but particularly in Europe, Eurasia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the greater Asia Pacific region all the way to Australia, Russia and China, everyone is madly rearming.

America is being overtaken, economically, by China which is fast making inroads into the Middle East, Africa and even South America (whatever happened to the Monroe Doctrine anyway?). We have seen a number of these major power transitions over the centuries. At various times in the modern period the dominant spot belonged alternately to the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the Brits and now the Americans. Before that came the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, etc.

Here’s the thing. History tells us that these transitions tend to be difficult. Two-thirds of them result in war. Is war in the offing between the U.S. and China? From what I’ve read over the past ten years, China’s military leadership is quietly bellicose.  At some level they want to exact revenge for China’s “century of humiliation” at the hands of us white folks – Opium Wars, etc.?  That thought came to mind when I found an essay in the Proceedings of the US Naval Institute wherin an acting service officer complained bitterly that China was overtaking the United States “without a fight” as though that was unthinkable.

It would be tempting to dismiss that view as the work of a hothead only his sentiments go deeper in that, all the way back to the Project for a New American Century, the neo-cons (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Feith, Perle, Wolfowitz, Libby et al)  developed an “over my dead body” policy prescription that was subsequently embodied in the Bush Doctrine. That doctrine provided that America reserved the right to institute pre-emptive war against any nation or group of nations that challenged America’s economic and military domination.  Seriously, look it up.

The backbone of American airpower today and into the future are its stealth warplanes, the F-22 and F-35. Those are not dual purpose aircraft. They’re not defence oriented. There are simply too few F-22s to handle the job and the F-35 has a series of deficiencies that make it marginal in the air defence role. They are primarily offensive weapons designed to “take the fight to the enemy” and not just any garden variety enemy either.  They are purpose built to operate in heavily defended, hostile airspace.  One American general called the F-35 his “kick in the front door” weapon. Do you remember that the Japanese ran a dress rehearsal of their Pearl Harbour attack to test their shallow-draught Long Lance torpedoes in an appropriate anchorage? The USAF staged a similar “proof of concept” exercise called Operation Chimichanga that simulated a stealth first strike attack on China. Do you the Chinese maybe didn’t hear about that?

Whether it’s North Korea or the South China Sea or maybe just two countries getting into each other’s faces, this is not a very placid time. For Canada, however, it may be a time to begin loosening the ties that bind us to American foreign and military policy, perhaps by aligning Canadian  policy more directly with our western European allies. It doesn’t mean we won’t pick up the phone when Washington calls but maybe just not on the first or even the twenty-first ring.

If you follow this global rearmament business as I do you’re drawn to the conclusion that the world has absolutely no shortage of state of the art weaponry. State of the art everything. Hell even the city state of Singapore has six modern and very capable submarines.

How about we zig where everyone else chooses to zag by decoupling ourselves from Washington and restoring our credibility as an honest broker nation? Communications between rival nations (at all levels) are apt to become more strained in this overheated and armed-to-the-teeth milieu that has become our new reality. The need for a trustworthy intermediary may be greater now than ever before in Canadian history. It's a job suitable for the nation that gave the world the concept of peacekeeping, an initiative that earned Mike Pearson the Nobel Peace Prize.

World Court to Rule on Kosovo Independence

No matter which way the decision goes, it will be a legal ruling with enormous political consequences.

The World Court, formally the International Court of Justice, will hear Serbia's claim that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence is illegal.

The decision will likely define the limits of self-determination, an issue that goes to the very heart of the Abkhazia and South Ossetia situation where they claim independence from Georgia. It may potentially hold an even greater significance in Ukraine where the pro-Russian population of Crimea, home to the Russian navy's Black Sea base of Sevastopol, wants no part of Ukranian efforts to join NATO.

CBC News reports that a decision isn't expected for two years.

Kosovo - Who Didn't See This Coming?

There aren't many places that achieve independence and failed state status on the very same day. Welcome to Kosovo. More or less sovereign since February 17th, the notional state appears to be on the verge of itself breaking apart. According to the International Crisis Group, Kosovo is teetering on the edge of de facto partition:

“Major violence has been avoided but the calm is deceptive”, says Alexander Anderson, Crisis Group’s Kosovo Project Director. “Divisions between Albanian and Serb areas have widened. If de facto partition continues, Kosovo’s Serbs south of the Ibar River will be at risk, pressure will mount to redraw borders on ethnic lines throughout the states of the former Yugoslavia, and EU membership prospects for these countries will fade”.

Meanwhile Serbia is putting its own chances at EU membership at risk by, "pressing the UN General Assembly for an International Court of Justice opinion on the legality of Kosovo’s independence." Can't be having that now, can we?

Kosovo currently gets a staggering 30% of its GDP in the form of transfers from ex-pats living in countries that have functioning economies. Much of the rest comes in the form of foreign aid. As an independent state it just doesn't make much sense, except in fulfillment of Washington's foreign policy.

Curiously, in its 4 September, 2008 update on Kosovo, the CIA World Factbook has excised any reference to what had been one of Kosovo's biggest economic sectors - the smuggling of cigarettes and cement. Oh well, maybe they've all kicked the habit. With a per capita GDP of just $1,800, Kosovo has a fast lock on the title of Europe's poorest state.

Just What NATO Needs - Another Failed-State Dependency

The North Atlantic Treaty Alliance has yet another failed state to defend - this time it's Kosovo. Like Afghanistan, the newly-minted Kosovo doesn't have a viable economy. Like Afghanistan, Kosovo is insanely dependent on foreign aid. Like Afghanistan, Kosovo has a burgeoning criminal element. Like Afghanistan, Kosovo faces an existential threat that requires NATO to secure its borders. Like Afghanistan, Kosovo shows no signs of getting better anytime soon. Like Afghanistan, NATO is going to have one hell of a time walking away.

Kosovo - instant failed state, just add water and stir.

Like Afghanistan, NATO went into Kosovo without the slightest idea how it would ever get out.

Kosovo - Europe's Newest and Poorest State

Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia. Now it's going to have to figure out what to do with itself and that ain't gonna be easy.

Kosovo begins life as an economic disaster. It's not only the poorest remnant of the former Yugoslavia, it's getting poorer by the day. Here's an insight from Business Week published back in 2004 that remains disturbingly current:

"The massive U.N. presence in Kosovo has created an artificial bubble in Pristina and a few other spots scattered around the province, while the rest of the economy languishes. Foreign investment is practically nil, unemployment runs as high as 70% in some areas, and imports are outpacing exports by 26 to 1. And now the Kosovar economy is starting to slow, from 4.3% growth last year to an expected 4% this year, as the U.N. scales back its presence and as international donors withdraw. Of the $2.9 billion in aid committed, only $2.2 billion has materialized.

It's easy to blame the U.N. for mismanaging the reconstruction. But long before the international community came to town, Kosovo was already mired in poverty. Back in the days when Yugoslavia was still a country, Kosovo consumed 80% of the total federal development aid.

With a per capita income of $1,100 a year, Kosovo is by some estimates the poorest province in Europe.In many ways, Kosovo looks doomed to failure. It is landlocked, with crumbling infrastructure and hopelessly outdated factories. But perhaps Kosovo's biggest problem is demographics. Its population, which is 90% ethnic Albanians, has tripled in the past five decades. In addition to being the fastest-growing population in Europe, it's also the youngest. More than half of its citizens are under 24, and almost one-third are under 15."

Updated information from Wikipedia is hardly more optimistic. While per capita income has increased modestly, Kosovo's trade deficit stands at a staggering 70% of GDP. The country's strongest economic sector seems to be its thriving black market where smuggled cigarettes, gasoline and cement are key commodities. The country has a well-corrupted government and an abundance of criminal gangs.

For Europe's first Muslim country it's not an auspicious start but it's nonetheless "Mission Accomplished."

First Kosovo, Then Israel and Can Texas Be Far Behind?

Kosovo, or at least its ethnic Albanian majority, has declared its independence from Serbia. The seminal words there are "ethnic Albanian." Kosovo has historically been Serbian through and through. It's cherished by the Serbian people. But, mainly as a result of centuries of wars between the Slavs and the Ottomans, they allowed ethnic Albanians into the area and those folks settled in and bred themselves into a tidy majority. A dust up ensued and "bingo" they've taken the place as their own.

Israel is facing a similar demographic problem. Can't live with the Palestinians but not prepared, at least not yet, to live without them. The window may be closing on the two-state option and that's terrifying to a lot of Israelis. If the situation defaults to a one-state solution, the Palestinians would quickly be the majority, capable of voting their interests - if they were ever given a vote. Israel would have to maintain a South African-style apartheid or lose Israeli control of their homeland. Yikes!

Best of all there's the American southwest. A lot of Americans are becoming alarmed at the demographic explosion of the Latinos. It's believed that Latinos could become an ethnic majority in various southwestern states before too long. What then? What if they use their voting power to "have it their way"? It's not too hard to imagine that "their way" wouldn't be entirely comfortable for America's caucasian majority.

Hasta la vista, Yanquis! You're not the only ones who "Remember the Alamo."