So, Let's Get this Straight.

Trump, despite the advice and warnings of America's security/intelligence agencies and his country's major allies, gives in to Netanyahu's propaganda campaign against Iran, and walks away from the Iran nuclear weapons deal.

Iran, therefore, in an act of crushing military stupidity, fires a missile barrage at Israeli targets in the occupied Golan Heights. So lethal is the Iranian barrage that no one is even hit.

Israel immediately retaliates, bombing the shit out of Iranian military installations in Syria.

This couldn't possibly be a set-up, could it? The timing of these events is pure coincidence, right?

Why does Reichstag Fire keep coming to mind? There's just that powerful stench of someone really spoiling to start a war.

Meanwhile, today's Guardian editorial contends that Trump is sowing the seeds of war on Iran. Foreign Policy columnist and Harvard prof, Dr. Stephen Walt, sees the same war clouds gathering.

Well, With the Week He's Had Who Wouldn't Want to Let Off a Little Steam?

The United States has launched missile strikes against government targets in Syria. This time Britain and France tossed in a few missiles of their own, brothers in arms sort of thing, I suppose.

Trump announced the strikes in an address to the nation Friday evening. “The purpose of our action tonight is to establish a strong deterrent,” he said, against the production and use of chemical weapons, describing the issue as vital to national security. Trump added that the United States is prepared “to sustain this response” until its aims are met.

Trump asked both Russia and Iran, backers of Assad, “what kind of nation wants to be associated” with mass murder and suggested that someday the United States might be able to “get along” with both if they change their policies.

Details of the attack are still sketchy at best. There's no word on any action by the Russians either. They had threatened to use their S-400 systems to shoot down incoming American missiles. Russia had also warned it would retaliate against US installations should its bases in Syria be targeted.

Trump's remarks indicate that the US and perhaps the French and British are preparing for a sustained air and missile campaign.

To See Ourselves as Others See Us

Ask anyone in the Third World where, if they had their druthers, they would choose to live and their top choice, hands down, would be the United States. Ask those same people which nation is the greatest threat to world peace and they say, you guessed it, the United States.

That may sound contradictory but it's not.  It's the United States that's contradictory.  It's this great nation of wealth, comfort and ease that never seems to get its fill of raining death from above on other lands, especially the weakest ones.

The world doesn't look like us or like our southern cousins.  We're mainly white people but today white people make up just 16% of the world population.  That's just shy of one out of six.  People of colour make up the other 84%.  To them, "rich white guy" has a special meaning.

Now imagine you're one of them, the 84%, and you keep reading about the killings in Ferguson or Baltimore or New York City or any of the other American cities where white cops are blowing away their own people of colour who are usually underprivileged and poor.  Which one of those do you identify with?  The poor person of colour or the white cop in combat gear with military-grade firepower and a fiercely itchy trigger finger?

If you're one of the 84% these are not events that make you really comfortable with white folks, especially when they come to your homeland looking for something or someone - to buy or to kill - or when you hear those drones buzzing overhead carving circles in the sky.

I cringed when Ignatieff lauded America's "muscular foreign policy" and supported Canada implementing the same (as though with Harper at the helm there was any need for encouragement).  The thing with a muscular foreign policy is that it's like Christmas.  Far better to give than to receive. It's one thing in a unipolar world but it can be enormously corrosive of superpowerdom when other nations are ascendant, especially when they're nations "of colour."

In Foreign Policy, Chandran Nair writes that this spate of white cop on black killings is exposing the hypocrisy of American foreign policy:

A recent report states that in March 2014 alone, police encounters in the United States resulted in 111 killings, twice as many as were killed by British police in the entire 20th century. U.S. police disproportionately and excessively target minorities at traffic stops, and U.S. courts disproportionately and excessively convict minorities of crimes. “African American and Hispanics comprised 58 percent of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population,” according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) — and the percentages of minorities in American prisons appear to be growing.

Until recently, many people around the world had believed that the United States had put its troubled history with race behind it. But how thin that veneer is became evident in August 2014, after the police shooting of a black teenager in the city of Ferguson, Missouri.The city’s chief of police resigned following a string of outrages, including the discovery of racist emails circulated within his police department that suggested Barack Obama “would not be president for very long because what black man holds a steady job for four years.”

This concerns more than just Americans. After all, what does it mean for the rest of the world when its most powerful nation struggles mightily with racism in its midst? For one, it contextualizes the often-heralded notion of American “exceptionalism.” At its core, that idea is an incredibly arrogant notion. It hints of racism and a barely concealed contempt of others, especially the non-Western world. But it is a doctrine that is still ruthlessly enforced in the carnival that is American politics.

...At a time when the United States has become the de-facto policeman of the world and a self-appointed arbitrator of peace, Asians have watched with concern — especially with elections looming in 2016 — at how the Republican Party has even swung further to the right. The GOP has stopped even pretending to concern itself with the welfare of non-white Americans. Many of its most prominent members display a very shallow understanding of the world and thus a lack of appreciation of the complex histories of other nations, yet seem itching to intervene on the slightest pretext. Worse, they would have the United States do so based on their prejudices and ideological fixations — some of which are likely framed by their fear of those unlike themselves.

...In Asia, many have not forgotten that the United States remains the only nation to ever deploy a nuclear weapon (twice), and did so on an Asian nation towards which many in the American leadership had deeply racist attitudes. They recall that Franklin D. Roosevelt interned roughly 90 percent of the continental Japanese-American population in prison camps during the war. His successor, Harry Truman, the man who ultimately pushed the nuclear button that brought World War II to an end, wrote to his wife: “I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman.”

All of which makes it not unbelievable to think that an irrational fear of Islam — and denigration of Muslims — may also be the primary factor behind the fanatical determination of many in Washington to keep Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. Fear and distrust of others can be found lurking in almost every corridor of power that influences U.S. foreign policy.

The rest of the world sees this. It smells the hypocrisy in Washington when leaders resort to the old saw that America “is a nation of immigrants” while kicking unaccompanied children out of the country en masse.

Unfortunately America has allowed itself to become the Plantation State of the 21st century.  As a developed nation it has no equal when it comes to inequality especially when put through the filter of white versus non-white.  FOX News and odious types like Rush Limbaugh reveal how expressions of overt racism are yet again in vogue in the US.  The face of America has turned very ugly to that 84%. This not only opens doors it paves entire roads for America's ascendant rivals, especially China.

There was a post-Civil War saying popular in the slave states, "the South shall rise again."  Too few Americans were smart enough to understand that as a warning.

Netanuyahu's Win Could Be Israel's Greatest Defeat

Tossing ideas around yesterday I came to a "What If" moment.  What if, I wondered, Israeli prime minister re-elect, Benjamin Netanyahu, has destroyed Israel's lifeline - the backing of the president of the United States of America.

It's been the American president, who alone controls his country's veto at the United Nations Security Council, who has intervened dozens of times over the years to prevent the U.N. from responding to Israel's excesses, particularly its half-century of mauling of the captive Palestinian people.

What if?  Could it possibly happen.  Then, this morning, Boris from The Galloping Beaver left a comment to the effect that Gwynne Dyer sees that security council business pretty much the same way.


...Netanyahu’s entire political career has been dedicated to sabotaging the 1993 Oslo Accords (which envisaged Israeli and Palestinian states living side-by-side in peace) and planting so many Jewish settlers on the Israeli-occupied territories that a separate Palestinian state becomes physically impossible.

He largely destroyed the Oslo agreement in his first term as prime minister in 1996-99 (the creation of a Palestinian state was scheduled for 1998). Almost 10 percent of Israel’s Jews now live in the occupied Palestinian territories (east Jerusalem and the West Bank) that would make up a Palestinian state. But to keep his American allies and his European supporters happy, he never actually said he would not allow an independent Palestine.

Netanyahu finally spoke the truth on Monday because that’s what the settlers and their supporters wanted to hear, and he needed those votes in order to survive politically. But it destroyed the myth, useful to the United States and the European Union, that there is some surviving “peace process” that must be protected by keeping the Israelis happy. The “peace process” is dead, dead, dead. Has been for years. There is no “two-state solution” on the table.

This makes it a lot harder for the U.S. to veto resolutions critical of Israel at the United Nations, as it has done 51 times since 1972. Without the cover of peace talks, these vetoes become votes for perpetual Israeli rule over the Palestinian people. And it will accelerate the broader erosion of the old pro-Israel reflexes of people in Europe and the US who needed the reassurance that some day, somehow, there would be a just peace settlement.

Netanyahu made matters considerably worse during the campaign by openly showing his contempt for President Barack Obama. His panic-mongering speech to the U.S. Congress, painting Obama’s quest for a nuclear deal with Iran as a naive surrender to Iran’s alleged desire for nuclear weapons, was an unprecedented foreign intervention in the U.S. political process. It will not be forgiven or forgotten by Obama.

His election promise to speed up Jewish settlement in the Palestinian territories (which is illegal under international law) was another nail in the coffin of peace negotiations. Still, it did help to get Netanyahu re-elected, and for him that’s all that counts.

He still truly believes that only he understands the real and existential dangers facing Israel, and has the will to do something about them. Except that all he ever really does is kick those dangers down the road a bit. Unable to believe that a peaceful settlement is possible or even desirable, he condemns his country to perpetual conflict and growing isolation.

Benjamin Netanyahu has given the finger to his best ally, his indispensable ally, and not just once.  He did it so that Bibi could remain the prime minister of Israel.  Before Tuesday it was unimaginable that a president of the United States would not call a prime minister of Israel to congratulate him/her on an election victory.  The unimaginable has happened.  Obama has nearly two years left in office and he doesn't have to seek re-election.  John Boehner and Mitch McConnell don't get a vote at the U.N.  From here on,  we're sailing in uncharted waters and there are storm clouds gathering.

How a Court Pushed Israel and the United States into Meltdown

What is it about the International Criminal Court that has so inflamed Israel and the United States?  It's a court of law and a pretty good one at that.  It's a venue to prosecute those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.  Who would be bothered by that - except perhaps war criminals and those who commit crimes against humanity?  Oh, I get it.

Israel is afraid that its war crimes in Gaza will come before the ICC where Israel won't be able to control the narrative and manipulate the press and public opinion.  The United States fears for what that could mean to Israel.  The US doesn't hold a veto over the International Criminal Court so it can't protect Israel as it has for decades on the UN Security Council.  Washington is used to being able to simply nullify any effective intervention by the United Nations.  Can't do that with the ICC which is one reason the US hasn't joined the court.  It can't. Too many presidents and cabinet secretaries might find themselves in the prisoner's dock.

So what is America's response to the audacity of the Palestinians in joining the community of nations through the International Criminal Court?  They're going to cut off American aid to Palestine and the Republicans who now control both houses of Congress will push that through.

[Lindsey] Graham, the chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that governs aid to Palestine, said Israeli officials are no longer opposed to efforts to chip away at the roughly $400 million of aid the United States sends to Palestine every year — a policy change he plans to capitalize on.

“I’m going to lead the charge to make sure the Palestinians feel this,” he said.

Others on Capitol Hill feel similarly emboldened.

On Wednesday, Jan. 7, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul introduced legislation to prohibit all assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it withdraws its request to join the International Criminal Court. “Certainly groups that threaten Israel cannot be allies of the U.S.,” said Paul. The United Nations has confirmed that the Palestinians will become part of the criminal court in April.

Brian Darling, a spokesman for the libertarian-leaning Republican, said his office hasn’t received any pushback on the legislation, a shift from just last spring when the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a Likud-flavored lobbying organization with close ties to the Netanyahu government, immediately came out against his previous bill to defund the PA.

On Monday, Haaretz reported that Jerusalem would be contacting pro-Israel members of Congress to ensure that aid to the PA is cut off. While pro-Israel lawmakers such as Graham, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) told FP they’re not aware of an overt push by the Israelis to defund, the understanding is that Jerusalem will no longer actively protect Palestinian aid on the Hill.

Maybe it's time for another benefactor, China perhaps, to step up and provide the aid America cuts.  China could easily stare down an Israeli naval blockade.  It's time to break this poisonous American hegemony.

Welcome to the New Planet Earth

A lot of Americans will be spending this 4th of July indoors, at home.   At least those who still have electricity and air conditioning perhaps.  

Reuters reports that scorching heat and extreme dry conditions are causing plenty of cities and towns across the U.S. to cancel 4th of July fireworks displays.

In places from Montana to Tennessee, communities have canceled or restricted fireworks celebrations. Others have banned pyrotechnics or advised residents to exercise caution with everything from sparklers to barbecue grills because of the soaring temperatures and dry conditions.

"All it would take is one spark from a shell to get away, and it could go everywhere," said Bruce Jones, the mayor of Douglas, Wyoming, where the annual fireworks display has been called off for the first time in memory. "It's the better part of valor not to do it."

And it seems the heat waves, wildfires and freak storms have finally emboldened climate scientists to proclaim that, yes, these are the effects of global warming, they're here to stay and there's plenty more to come.

"...the run of extreme weather offers real-time proof of the consequences of climate change, said Kevin Trenberth, who heads climate research at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado – itself the scene of devastating wildfires.

"'We are certainly seeing climate change in action,' he said. 'This year has been exceptionally unusual throughout the United States.'

Jeff Masters director of meteorology at the Weather Underground website, told Democracy Now: 'What we're seeing now is the future. We're going to be seeing a lot more weather like this, a lot more impacts like we're seeing from this series of heat waves, fires and storms.'

He added: 'This is just the beginning.'

"...Since the start of the year, the United States set more than 40,000 hot temperature records and fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Ordinarily, scientists would expect those numbers to be about the same [a roughly equal number of high to low-temperature records], but the hot temperature records were falling at a ratio of about 7-1."

It will be fascinating to watch now long the U.S. Congress, bought and paid for minions of Big Fossil, can hold out and continue to reject any linkage between these extreme weather events and global warming.   Climate change is imposing great stresses on large parts of the United States and they're somewhat cumulative.    These stresses are being compounded by America's overall excessive ecological footprint.   This chart shows the environmental footprint of the average American measured against the country's biocapacity.   Climate change impacts such as extended droughts and floods are reducing America's biocapacity.   Something has to give.

Oooh, This Could Get Nasty

China has provoked outrage in the Philippines by deploying this oil platform, the country's first deepwater drilling rig, into the South China Sea.

The rig, CNOOC 981, began drilling operations yesterday in disputed waters 320 km from Hong Kong.

According to Reuters, civil society and political groups with links to Philippine President Benigno Aquino III's political allies plan to take to the streets on Friday to "protest the Chinese presence" in waters near Huangyan Island.

The Chinese embassy in Manila has issued a safety alert, advising Chinese nationals to enhance safety awareness, avoid going out and stay away from protesters.

Ctrip.com International Ltd, a leading online travel service provider in China, decided to suspend trips to the Philippines Wednesday, citing safety risks of tours as tensions over Huangyan Island escalate.

A Global Times correspondent in Manila said the Chinese communities there are calm despite Friday's looming protest.

"Issues concerning sovereignty are non-negotiable for China. The Philippines took China's restraint for granted and kept staging provocations," a researcher surnamed Ma with the Southeast Asian Institute of the Guangxi Academy of Social Sciences, said.

"The planned global protest against Chinese embassies has shown Manila's intention to internationalize and complicate the issue. Beijing will lose its patience if Manila doesn't back off," Ma said.

Hard as this may be for Canadians to believe, the BBC is reporting that the Chinese do seem to be spoiling for a military confrontation.

War talk, it seems, is all the rage in China at the minute.

Yes, there are serious people in serious publications seriously advocating war.

...At the heart of the issue is what is called Scarborough Shoal by the Philippines and Huangyan Island by China, a little more than 100 miles (160km) from the Philippines and 500 miles from China.

...The odd thing here is that the Philippine navy consists of just one proper ship and that is an ancient US Coast Guard cutter which is hardly a match for China's navy, as this online commentary by "The Comparativist" makes clear.

The Comparativist writes: "I think this is happening because the Philippines is so weak. The Chinese government can beat the war drums all they want, and as loud as they want, and no war is going to happen. It's akin to bullying someone in a wheelchair that you know can't punch back."


But there are dangers here too. The president of the Philippines has tweeted this statement this week, making clear that the Philippines believes America will help protect it from any Chinese aggression. So a dispute could lead to a very tense situation.

China's policy in the South China Sea is not a simple matter, directed clearly from the top as the International Crisis Group has detailed, but affected by many different players.

It's a dangerous dynamic that could escalate much further yet.
A few other things to consider.   The United States recently conducted Operation Chimichanga, a stealth bomber, fighter live-fire exercise simulating a first strike against China.   There are escalating tensions developing between an ascendant China and a U.S. is slow decline that could quickly transform into a new Cold War. And last month The Guardian reported on recent war games between US and Chinese military leaders during which Chinese hostility toward the United States seethed to the surface.

Finishing Reagan's Work

It's always grim when a major client goes through some upheaval.   The tighter your own fortunes are tied to that client, the more severe the repercussions you endure.   That sort of describes the United States and Canada.   Which is why we should brace ourselves and prepare for the upheaval coming south of the border.

Can you even  get your head around the idea that, within a decade or  two, the Yuan could well replace the US greenback as the world's reserve currency?   Oil priced in Yuan, debt written in Yuan?

At an annual conference of leading American economists now underway in Denver, optimism is in short supply.  Reuters reports that the buzz this year is America's decline and China's ascent.

Leading thinkers in the dismal science speaking at an annual convention offered varying visions of U.S. economic decline, in the short, medium and long term. This year, the recovery may bog down as government stimulus measures dry up.

In the long run, the United States must face up to inevitably being overtaken by China as the world's largest economy. And it may have missed a chance to rein in its largest financial institutions, many of whom remain too big to fail and are getting bigger.

...Harvard's Martin Feldstein said he believes the outlook for U.S. economic growth in 2011 is less sanguine than many believe.

First, the boost to growth from government spending will be drying up this year, he said. Renewal of expiring tax cuts is no more than a decision not to raise taxes, and the impact of one-year payroll tax cut is likely modest, he said.
...On the other hand, there is the race with China and the dynamic Asian economies, including India. Most estimates put the size of the Chinese economy on par with the United States by the early 2020s, said Dale Jorgenson, also of Harvard.

...The United States will need to come to terms with the fact that its prevalence in the world is fated to come to an end, Jorgenson said. This will be difficult for many Americans to swallow and the United States should brace for social unrest amid blame over who was responsible for squandering global primacy, he said.

MIT's Simon Johnson put it more bluntly, saying the damage from the financial crisis and its aftermath have dealt U.S. prominence a permanent blow.

"  The age of American predominance is over,"   he told a panel. "  The (Chinese) Yuan will be the world's reserve currency within two decades."
There you have it in a nutshell.   America's collapse into recession was bad but not bad enough for a "bought and paid for" Congress to act decisively and reform America's toxic financial institutions.   To the contrary, congressional Republicans with the full backing of Tea Partiers and a few conservative Democrats are intent on further deregulating the financial sector and entrenching tax cuts their nation simply cannot afford.   These are the political class intent on finishing Reagan's work.

And, rather than salvaging and reforming America's economy, at the end of the day it will come down to finger pointing as each side blames the other for "squandering (America's) global primacy."

As a footnote I'd like to point out that these assessments, like so many political, economic and military evaluations, leave out one critical factor - the fallout from climate change and associated environmental challenges that, within 20-years, will be impacting and likely destabilizing China, India and the United States.

A second footnote.  Deutsche Welle reports  that China isn't alone in wanting to drop the US dollar as the world's reserve currency.  French president Nick Sarkozy, whose country will host this year's G8 and G20 summits also wants a new reserve currency that reflects today's reality:

"  The system put in place in 1945 is for a world that doesn't exist anymore,"   the French president told the nation [in a New Year's Eve address].

He suggested that the current model which uses the US dollar as the primary reserve currency was "  unstable"   and "  makes part of the world dependent on American monetary policy."

The Golden Rule and the G20

He who has the gold, rules.  We're beginning to see that Golden Rule applied to our trade umbilical, the United States, and we can expect to see more of it whether we like that or not.

At various times in recent years outfits as diverse as China and OPEC have pondered the merits of dumping the United States dollar as the world's reserve currency.  In a world in which trade is tied to one country's currency, that nation can reap significant advantages from its fiscal and monetary policies.   When everybody holds your debt in greenbacks but you have the greenback printing press, you see there's a certain leverage there.   But if they start writing up your borrowing in Euros or Yen or Yuan and you can only print greenbacks, everybody is in a really different position.

America isn't the same country it was before Ronald Reagan ushered in the Age of Ruin.   America previously ran on well balanced books.   Every president from the end of World War II to the arrival of Reagan, Democrat and Republican, had actually reduced America's debt as a percentage of its GDP.   The halfwitted movie star still beloved to this day by the American people actually sold his country into today's penury.   Rightwing America is so damned dumb they haven't figured that out yet.  Well, dinner's over, their wallet is empty and the waiter is coming over with the bill.

When Carter left office the United States was still the world's greatest lending/creditor nation.   That was the U.S.A. inherited by Ronald Reagan.  By the time he left, eight years later, Reagan had transformed America into the world's largest debtor nation.  There are those who claim Reagan undid the Soviet Union.  In fact, he probably did more damage to his own country although the effects were slower in arriving.  They're certainly here now.

Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman puts it this way:

"Again and again, it has always been the world's leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence, and cultural influence.  It's no accident that we took over the role from the British at the same time that we took over... the job of being the world's leading lending country.   Today we are no longer the world's leading lending country.  In fact we are now the world's biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone."

Which brings us to Bush/Cheney.   They played America's last ace, it's unrivaled military power, in Iraq and Afghanistan, counting on 'shock & awe' to bring the Middle East and the rest of the world firmly into line with American policy.  The world had a decade to watch as America's unrivaled power unravelled.

The hyper-aggressive "Bush Doctrine" threatened the pre-emptive use of American military might against any country or group of countries that dared rival America's military or even its economic dominance.   Think about that.  "If your economy gets bigger than ours, I'm sending in the bombers."   Yet that's exactly what was proposed by the neo-conservatives in the manifesto of the Project for the New American Century.

Which brings us to next week's G20 summit.  Both China and Germany are already taking swipes at Washington.  From Reuters:

China rebuffed on Friday a U.S. plan to set limits for trade imbalances and Germany dubbed the Fed's money-printing policy "clueless," setting the stage for what could be a fractious G20 summit next week.


The waters of the debate have been muddied by the Federal Reserve's decision to buy $600 billion in long-term bonds with new money in an effort to revive the flagging U.S. economy.

Resentment is rumbling worldwide that the initiative will generate even more instability by ramping up currencies against the dollar, inflating asset bubbles and increasing inflation.

 "With all due respect, U.S. policy is clueless," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a conference.

"(The problem) is not a shortage of liquidity. It's not that the Americans haven't pumped enough liquidity into the market, and now to say let's pump more into the market is not going to solve their problems."

The Euros and the Chinese are afraid the hillbillies are going for the printing press.  It's hard to see how this one ends but then again this is just one chapter in a book that's not yet half written.

Troops Not Militarizing Mexico Border. Really?

The US ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, says the 1,200 National Guard troops president Obama has ordered to bolster security along the US-Mexico border is not a militarization of the frontier. From Reuters:

"This isn't a militarization of the border. In fact the overall share of the military is still relatively small," Pascual told correspondents at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City. He said with the 300 National Guard troops already stationed at the border, the total number would not surpass 1,500.

"I think it is important that we continue to reinforce in our strategy that we are putting civilian law enforcement agencies out front and that they have the lead," he said.

The troops, rather than carrying out operations to dismantle drug cartels or human smuggling rings, will be working in back offices helping intelligence officials process information, or be posted as lookouts between ports of entry.

Border experts and human rights workers say the border is already militarized with parallel steel fences backed up by sensors and patrolled by helicopters and armed border agents."

I suppose the argument can be made today that 1,200 Guardsmen does not a militarized border make. However there are a lot of people, including some senior folks in the Pentagon, who can easily foresee the day when the military presence grows vastly bigger as America is compelled to rely on force to thwart climage migration out of Central America.

The World Has Moved On

It's interesting to see the near total absence of angry resentment as Americans settle in to the idea that the United States' global supremacy is over.

The screeching chants of "USA, USA, USA" and "We're Number One, We're Number One" seem to have had their last gasp at Sarah Palin rallies this fall.

From what I've been reading in the American media, it seems that most US citizens might actually welcome stepping out of the constant spotlight, even if that is for good. And why not? They've seen their country's treasure, even its promise for future generations, squandered on foreign wars which have failed to produce any winners, any victories. They have watched their jobs disappear and working and middle-class incomes stagnate even as those at the very top, who have alone reaped great rewards are now exposed as having sabotaged their nation's economy out of sheer greed.

The word is definitely and clearly getting out that America's unipolar world is over. From the Chicago Tribune:

"There is no return to the time when the United States was the 'indispensable power,' " said Stewart Patrick, a former State Department official at the Council on Foreign Relations. "The world has moved on."

A decade ago, the United States might have been able to bring enough economic pressure on its own to force an end to Iran's disputed nuclear program, said Nikolas Gvosdev, professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College.

But Iran by now has built economic ties to China and India, among others, so the United States has to assemble a much larger group if it hopes to force Tehran's hand.

"Ten years ago, the U.S. was generally the only game in town, and it had the power to close or crack open the door to Iran," Gvosdev said. "Now other countries have more options. … This doesn't mean the United States is weak, but it can't unilaterally impose what it wants."

A report this year by the U.S. National Intelligence Council cites a shift of economic power from the West to the East that is "without precedent," and this will mean that the United States by 2025 will "remain the single most powerful country but will be less dominant."

In every corner of the world, regional blocs are becoming established. No longer is the United States necessarily a welcome presence either. Even the South Americans, so long under the boot of the Monroe Doctrine, are coalescing into economic and defence alliances that exclude Washington.

American power, economic and military, will remain great but the United States is going to have to find better ways of using it. The Bull in the China Shop days are over. Ostracism is also a form of unilateralism, something that the neo-cons stupidly never grasped.

Canada needs to come to grips with this shifting reality because the consequences of what lies ahead for America and how that will bear on our country are far from predictable and only a fool would assume they'll be to our liking, much less benign. The bottom line is that it's going to take somebody a lot less star-struck with all things American than Stephen Harper to chart the course for Canada.

Continental Drift

Continental Drift is a reality and it's happening before our very eyes. Europe, Asia, Africa and now even Central and South America are steadily drifting away as they shrug off the political and economic domination of the United States that has held sway for the past six decades.

With varying degrees of bitterness (Venezuela would be a 10, France a 2) nations around the world are looking to chart new, independent paths more closely reflective of their individual and regional interests.

The United States, which just six years ago proclaimed itself World Hegemon pursuant to the Bush Doctrine, is now in decline and adjusting to the ascendancy of new powers such as China, India and Brazil. Some of this was inevitable but the process has been greatly accelerated by anger and distrust sparked by the fallout from American cowboy capitalism. The Wall Street meltdown really couldn't have come at a worse time.

Now, according to McClatchey Newspapers, the arrival of the Obama presidency may usher in the end of the Monroe Doctrine:

In just three short paragraphs buried deep into his State of the Union speech on Dec. 2, 1823, President James Monroe proclaimed one of the most enduring tenets of U.S. foreign policy.

He warned Europe that Washington would not tolerate any interventions from outside powers in the affairs of Latin America's newly independent states. But it turned out to be far from a selfless declaration of solidarity.

The U.S. government has invoked the doctrine as a justification for imposing its will on its neighbors to the south.

Foreign intervention in Latin America remained acceptable for the United States, as long as it was the one doing the intervening. And it did so dozens of times - at great cost to democracy and human life.

Monroe's speech planted the seed of the notion that Latin America is the "backyard" of the United States - a label resented throughout the region.

Obama would do well to depart from this bipartisan consensus and truly chart a new course for change, one that respects the independence of Latin American countries and one that is in keeping with the values that he espouses.

In any event, Latin America is leaving Washington behind.

On the economic front, China has emerged as a major trading partner. Latin American trade with the Asian giant has grown explosively, from $13 billion in 2000 to $100 billion last year.

Trade with the emerging economies of India and Russia is also growing steadily; trade with each is expected to reach a record $15 billion. And the European Union is Latin America's largest source of foreign investment.

For similar reasons, some countries in the region have reoriented their arms purchases. Venezuela has purchased more than $4 billion in jets, helicopters and rifles from Russia. Several other governments in the region - the world's third-largest arms market - followed suit.

Brazil, a rising power on the global stage, is planning a massive overhaul of its military worth billions of dollars in the coming years. Instead of relying on the Pentagon and U.S. defense contractors, Brazil is turning to Russia and France to refurbish its military.

Can Washington give up the masquerade of playing nasty, vengeful Uncle Sam to Latin America? Maybe it has no other choice.

What's Next, Forcing Canadian Airliners to Land in the US?

The Americans are demanding to know who's aboard commercial airliners transiting American airspace even if those flights don't land in the United States. I wonder what Maher Arar thinks about that?

The Toronto Star reports that the US Transportation Security Agency is behind the scheme:

"The name, gender and birth date of Canadians flying to destinations such as Cuba, Mexico or even Europe will be transmitted by airlines to the TSA under its Secure Flight program, to take effect next year. The agency will then vet the names against watch lists aimed at keeping dangerous people on the ground.
Washington recently published rules for the initiative following consultations with parties including the Canadian government.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says Secure Flight, which transfers the task of watch list screening to the TSA from individual airlines, will reduce the number of false matches and clear up mistakes more quickly.

Roch Tassé, of the Ottawa-based International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group, says the program is a threat to Canadian sovereignty.

"It's the United States having control over which Canadians are allowed to board a plane or not," he said. "So it's a big political conundrum. It's a Kafkaesque situation where our Charter rights will be breached by another country."

The potential ramifications of this policy are indeed bizarre. Does it mean that Canada will have to adopt America's ludicrous "no fly" lists? Could it lead to American authorities ordering Canadian airliners to land in order to inspect and possibly apprehend people like Maher Arar? Let's say the Americans mistakenly conclude a person associated with al Qaeda is aboard a Canadian flight transiting their airspace. Does anyone believe they won't force that plane to land, adopting their standard "shoot first and ask questions later" policy?

I think it's time for America to decide whether it's going to respect Canadian sovereignty and I think it's a question that ought to be put to them with clear consequences if they won't.

How Do You Say "We're Number One" in Chinese?

By 2025 America will no longer dominate the world as it has ever since the end of WWII. Says who? America's 50-billion dollar a year intelligence community, that's who.

An intelligence briefing prepared for president-elect Barack Obama paints a picture of an emerging world that will be both different and more dangerous than anything we in the West have known. From The Guardian:

The United States' leading intelligence organisation has warned that the world is entering an increasingly unstable and unpredictable period in which the advance of western-style democracy is no longer assured, and some states are in danger of being "taken over and run by criminal networks".

Looking ahead to 2025, the NIC (which coordinates analysis from all the US intelligence agencies), foresees a fragmented world, where conflict over scarce resources is on the rise, poorly contained by "ramshackle" international institutions, while nuclear proliferation, particularly in the Middle East, and even nuclear conflict grow more likely.

"Global Trends 2025: A World Transformed" warns that the spread of western democratic capitalism cannot be taken for granted, as it was by George Bush and America's neoconservatives.

"No single outcome seems preordained: the Western model of economic liberalism, democracy and secularism, for example, which many assumed to be inevitable, may lose its lustre – at least in the medium term," the report warns.

It adds: "Today wealth is moving not just from West to East but is concentrating more under state control," giving the examples of China and Russia.

"In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, the state's role in the economy may be gaining more appeal throughout the world."

Obama got an earful, none of it very good. Two bright spots - al Qaeda isn't expected to fare very well although terrorism is expected to evolve into a nuclear threat and, by 2025, the world may have found an alternative to oil.

The report forecasts a series of climate-change driven catastrophes and predicts a wave of migration of about 250-million climate refugees. If anything, that's likely a conservative estimate.

How reliable is this latest National Intelligence Council outlook? Much of it seems to be a rehashing of what has now become conventional wisdom. We have already witnessed the evolution of "sovereign wealth funds" particularly in China where the state has amassed foreign reserves in excess of a trillion US dollars. We have seen how well capitalism thrives under totalitarian rule. Despite our claims to the contrary, we've been bloody awful at fostering democracy abroad and our old schtick isn't selling very well any more.

Also, don't assume that America is somehow going to sail off the edge of the earth into oblivion. That's not the way these things work. America will decline - but only somewhat. A greater factor will be the ascendancy of China and possibly India driven by growth in those countries.

America's decline will probably look a lot more like the British experience in the 20th century. There will be some lapses, a period of weakness and decline, and then a period of stabilization and recovery. Until it got caught up in the same fiscal madness that infected the United States, Great Britain had been doing quite nicely.

I expect the West will again find unity if only out of necessity. The trans-Atlantic bonds that have been so frayed will be rewoven. Both sides have a great deal to gain from it and risk becoming marginalized if they don't. One thing is clear. It will have to be a more co-operative effort with the United States playing the role of a major partner, not the major partner.

As the report apparently warns of catastrophic environmental impacts heading America's way it would be interesting to learn how the US intelligence community thinks Asia, which is at far greater risk of climate change disasters, will absorb the blows. By 2025 both India and China will be struggling with major decline in their already limited freshwater resources and a host of air, soil and water contamination problems. It's anything but an ideal time to be leading a nation of a billion plus people through an industrial revolution.

The newspaper account also doesn't mention how the National Intelligence Council squares its 2008 assessment with the last one it issued in 2004 when Bush won his second term.

It was called Mapping the Global Future, and looked forward as far as 2020 when it projected "continued US dominance, positing that most major powers have forsaken the idea of balancing the US".

That confidence is entirely lacking from this far more sober assessment. Also gone is the belief that oil and gas supplies "in the ground" were "sufficient to meet global demand".

Of course the 2004 assessment came at a time when Rumsfeld was still Defence Secretary and Cheney, Feith and Libby were running roughshod over America's intelligence agencies. Those were the days when intelligence was cooked according to a very specific recipe.

The report will undoubtedly dismay American imperialists, the neo-cons who hatched the Project for the New American Century and the Bush Doctrine but I, for one, am comforted with the idea of Canada going into the next several decades with a calmer, more introspective America next door.

Panic on Pennsylvania Avenue

Toles, Washington Post

Paul Simon wrote, "...it's all happening at the zoo. I do believe it, I do believe it's true." He wrote that in 1967 but it's spot on to describe the denizens of Pennsylvania Ave. (N.W.) today.

America's fiscal crisis has swept Pennsylvania Ave., from the Capitol building at one end to the White House at the other, like a wildfire racing through a zoo. The beasts are in full panic.

I got the full measure of that last night watching, you guessed it, The Daily Show, when Jon Stewart laid out the conditions US Treasury Secretary, Henry Merrit Paulson Jr., has imposed on Congress before he'll accept their $700-billion bailout money.

Basically, Paulson has described he'll take their filthy lucre but only on condition that there's no oversight on what he does with the stuff. No accountability whatsoever. He even wants a condition expressly stated that how he doles it out - and to whom can't be reviewed by any court.

The beasts, hearing the crackle of flames and choking on the acrid smoke, appear willing to agree to anything if only someone will make this nightmare go away. Anything, anything, just ask and it's yours.

Of course it's not their money anyway, not really. The $700-billion doesn't exist, not within the United States. The government doesn't have it, they're already running multi-hundred billion dollar deficits funding wars of choice and tax cuts for the rich. But there are places to get it. China has that kind of money - and they have it in US dollar holdings to boot. You know, that Wal-Mart money they rake in from filling the shelves of America's top retailer.

It's not like they're going to stiff the taxpayers with it either. No, the Chinese offer easy-credit plans that let you pawn it all off on today's voters' kids and grandkids and their kids and grandkids. Since Bush showed up, that's practically become the American Way. Do whatever you like, just keep the pain out of the immediate voting cycle and hope it won't show up at the ballot box.

Make it go away - for now.

It looks as though the beasts will get their way. The Dems are trying to draw a couple of lines in the sand. They're balking at the zero-oversight demand and they want the bailout subject to conditions that taxpayers be compensated with an equity position in the firms bailed out.

Even some Republicans are now lining up behind Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd.

The Democrats have also decided to include a group left out of the Bush Bailout - struggling homeowners. Since the Feds are going to wind up owning a lot of these bad mortgages anyway, it actually may be better for taxpayers to find some compromise that keeps these people in their homes and gets them to make payments they can afford.

Now I know a lot of you right-wingers will recoil at the suggestion of writing down some little guy's mortgage debt and settling for what they can pay but let me tell you, from lengthy personal experience, that we've been doing that for businesses for years.

I was involved in a lot of receiverships in the early 80's. Back then the banks would appoint a receiver, trigger a bankruptcy and then just have the receiver-trustee firesale the assets. That led to recoveries of pennies on the dollar. It took a while but finally the banks figured out that the trigger they were pulling led to a barrel at their own heads too. That's when they started looking at work-outs, settlements. Better to write off 20% if it keeps the business going and recovers interest and principal on the remaining 80% than get 10-cents on the dollar right now. That's the same thing they're talking about with home foreclosures.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.

Mending the Broken Harness of Democracy

Trust the New York Times' David Brooks to put a highly spun gloss on a clearly stated problem. This time the columnist weighs in on the undoing of the cohesion that once marked the major democracies:

"...Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington. Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.

This dispersion should, in theory, be a good thing, but in practice, multipolarity means that more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem.

...the Doha failure comes amid a decade of globosclerosis. The world has failed to effectively end genocide in Darfur. Chinese and Russian vetoes foiled efforts to impose sanctions on Zimbabwe. The world has failed to implement effective measures to deter Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The world has failed to embrace a collective approach to global warming. Europe’s drive toward political union has stalled.

In each case, the logic is the same. Groups with a strong narrow interest are able to block larger groups with a diffuse but generalized interest. The narrow Chinese interest in Sudanese oil blocks the world’s general interest in preventing genocide. Iran’s narrow interest in nuclear weapons trumps the world’s general interest in preventing a Middle East arms race. Diplomacy goes asymmetric and the small defeat the large.

Moreover, in a multipolar world, there is no way to referee disagreements among competing factions. In a democratic nation, the majority rules and members of the minority understand that they must accede to the wishes of those who win elections.

But globally, people have no sense of shared citizenship. Everybody feels they have the right to say no, and in a multipolar world, many people have the power to do so. There is no mechanism to wield authority. There are few shared values on which to base a mechanism. The autocrats of the world don’t even want a mechanism because they are afraid that it would be used to interfere with their autocracy.

And so the globosclerosis continues, and people around the world lose faith in their leaders. It’s worth remembering that George W. Bush is actually more popular than many of his peers. His approval ratings hover around 29 percent. Gordon Brown’s are about 17 percent. Japan’s Yasuo Fukuda’s are about 26 percent. Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and Silvio Berlusconi have ratings that are a bit higher, but still pathetically low.

This is happening because voters rightly sense that leaders lack the authority to address problems.

So, what would Mr. Brooks have us do? He endorses a League of Democracies, an idea conceived by several Democrats and embraced by John McCain. Like-minded nations unite to use their collective will to shape world events. What Brooks won't say is that he sees his nation, the United States, as entitled to the mantle of "world leader" it formerly enjoyed.

Washington, having made a horrible mess of its experiment in unipolar world dominance, now wants to invite its old friends to sign on to something resembling one side of the old Cold War. Let bygones be bygones. Return to the default mode. Brooks hit the nail on the head when he wrote:

"There is no mechanism to wield authority. There are few shared values on which to base a mechanism. The autocrats of the world don’t even want a mechanism because they are afraid that it would be used to interfere with their autocracy."

Brooks is inadvertently describing his own nation. America has persistently rejected multilateralism, particularly through institutions such as the UN and the International Court of Justice, and has held itself above all others, including its traditional allies.

Before there can be any genuine, effective League of Democracies, America is going to have to step down from that undeserved, unearned perch. Washington is going to have to acknowledge that the order, even among democracies, has been permanently altered - that the economy of the European Union is far greater than its own and that the role of consensus is now greater than ever. If Washington chooses to lead, it can only do that with the consent of the others and it is going to have to earn that consent. A key to that is to regain the trust of the fellow democracies it treated with such disdain for the past eight years.

In other words, if Washington does want a new, meaningful and effective alliance with like-minded states, it has an awful lot of work to do to rebuild the essential foundations. If it continues to treat its political, diplomatic and international deficits as irrelevant, it will only perpetuate the disharmony that Brooks complains of.

Have a Shot of Vodka and Chill Out

Absolute Vodka has stirred up a tempest among some Americans with this advertisement it ran in Mexico.

The ad depicts North America's borders as they were before the 1848 Mexican-American War, that is before the US conquered and seized California and most of what it now calls the American southwest.

Absolut has been barraged by angry American vodka fans mainly slagging the company on the internet.

Arms Race Update - American Procurement Blues

The Pentagon has enjoyed the Bush era, transforming defence procurement into one giant pinata party. Every defence contractor is invited, given a jug of tequila and a stick and, boy, aren't they doing some bashing.

In the War on Terror era or the time of "get as much as you can, while you still can," the US defence procurement budget has burgeoned and, with it, contract overruns. Okay, we're talking about defence contracts and cost overruns which almost go hand in hand, only this time we're talking about just under $300-billion for 2007 alone.

The Government Accounting Office ("GAO") has examined 95 major defence contracts finding overruns of $295-billion that are bloating the overall tab to $1.6-trillion. Worse yet, those contractors are so busy hauling away bags of cash that projects are coming in two years late and not one of those examined met all of the military's standards for "best management practices."

Okay, so what is $1.6-trillion in the greater scheme of things? Well, in the final year of the Clinton administration the Pentagon's procurement budget came in at $790-billion so $1.6-trillion is a whole lot more of something. Total acquisition cost increases during the last year of Clinton's presidency were 6% over budget compared to 26% for 2007.

"In most cases, programs also failed to deliver capabilities when promised -- often forcing war fighters to spend additional funds on maintaining" existing weapons systems, according to the GAO.

So what, this is an American problem, isn't it? Well, not entirely. These things have a habit of spilling across borders, especially on multinational weapons acquisition programmes. Take, for example, Lockheed's Joint Strike Fighter, which Canada, Britain, Australia and a bunch of other nations are lined up to order. The JSF cost is already 36% over budget and these aircraft are still years away from entering service.

Canada has given a letter of intent to buy 80 of the JSF aircraft for $3.8 billion only now that would come in at something closer to $5-billion and that figure doesn't include spares or support. That's one expensive airplane and no one knows yet what the final cost may be.

America has always had a healthy arms export trade. American weaponry has been appreciated for its quality and advanced technology. However now other nations are making big strides in developing their own high-tech systems - Russia and China and India, for example. It's conceivable that, within a few years, these other nations could advance in technology to the point where the US defence industry simply prices itself out of the international market. Then you'll see the fur fly.

First The Guns, Then The Paranoia

Nothing like a good old-fashioned arms race to spice up the world's problems.

It's curious how they always seem to follow the same course - first the guns, then the paranoia and then... well, let's leave that for a moment.

Guns. Nobody likes them more than the United States of America. Its economy may be in decline, it may be struggling to breathe under a suffocating blanket of debt, but there's nothing known to man or earth that'll stop it from spending more on its military than every other nation combined. Think about that. Five per cent of the world's population, twenty five per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions, fifty per cent of its military spending. Wowee, zowee!

It's a scary world when the hillbillies have all the guns.

Imagine you live in a big, old house with a big verandah where you like to sit to catch the cool evening breezes in the height of summer. In the big, old house across the street your somewhat strange neighbour also sits out in the evening. But one day you notice something different. Lined up along the porch railing you see the neighbour has leaned a couple of rifles and a shotgun. It's enough that you notice it but you don't react. Then the following night you see that he's added an automatic assault rifle. The next night it's a sniper rifle. About this time you might be getting a little worried about all this firepower and just what the guy has in mind. When you see him actually pointing a cannon at you, just that once, you realize you can't keep giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Now take that situation to the global stage. You have one country that has served notice that it reserves the right to launch "pre-emptive" war against any nation that it perceives as an emerging rival, militarily or even economically. That's right. If your economy stands to surpass his economy, he claims the right to attack you. If your military or your military and that of other countries with which you may ally yourself threaten to surpass his military might, he claims the right to attack you. On what basis? Because he can. Because might is right.

That little bit of madness is enshrined in today's Bush Doctrine. It's a perverse form of American exceptionalism that has other nations paying a lot of attention to the goings on in Washington. So, what do they see when their gaze shifts to the Potomac?

They see a nation that has gone for its guns, arming itself as though it was already in a total war and preparing for another. They see a nation bent on achieving superiority, on a generational scale, in everything from ships and submarines, to aircraft, to nuclear weapons and the militarization of space itself. They see a nation that has commercialized not just its armaments industry but warfare itself, a government whose elite friends (outfits such as Halliburton) now rake in unconscionable profits from actual warfare, an industrialized mercenary cash cow.

Bush/Cheney & Company cherish fear. It's a weapon they use on everyone, including their own people. To them, it's far easier and infinitely more effective to use fear as a motivator than to employ legitimate means of persuasion. Get'em afraid enough and they'll do anything. The trouble is, other nations aren't as easily intimidated as the American people.

As America has gone for its guns so have others. Russia, China, India, the Koreas, even Japan are all in the midst of one or more arms races. It's even rumoured Brazil may seek to establish a nuclear hegemony in South America. What else do all these countries have in common? They're all emerging economic superpowers. They're all looking to expand trade with each other. And, with the exception of Brazil, they're all geographically contiguous.

Asia Times Online has a good article on the Asian arms race: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JB14Ad02.html

Russia's Vlad Putin has been outspoken about his nation's insistence that it will not be cowed by American threats. Recently Putin said that Russia will soon field its own advanced weaponry and its own next-generation nuclear weapons with new missiles specifically designed to defeat Bush's anti-missile defence systems. He has scrapped the Coventional Forces treaty and has promised to target Russian missiles at any nation that participates in the Bush anti-missile system.

First the guns, then fear, then more guns and, inevitably, the paranoia. This is the potentially lethal cocktail produced by mixing fear, a lack of confidence, and a powerful shot of suspicion.

Here's the latest example. The United States has announced it will use a missile next week to destroy a defective spy satellite. Washington claims the satellite was launched just over a year ago, failed immediately, and now threatens to smash into earth with a deadly cargo of hydrazine fuel.

Russia, however, suspects an ulterior motive. From BBC:

Russia's defence ministry said the US planned to test its "anti-missile defence system's capability to destroy other countries' satellites".

"Speculations about the danger of the satellite hide preparations for the classical testing of an anti-satellite weapon," a statement reported by Itar-Tass news agency said.

"Such testing essentially means the creation of a new type of strategic weapons," it added.
"The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space," the statement continued.

The Russian defence ministry argued that various countries' spacecraft had crashed to Earth in the past, and many countries used toxic fuel in spacecraft, but this had never before merited such "extraordinary measures".

It troubles and perplexes me that, as far as our leaders seem to be concerned, these arms races aren't even on their radar. No one on our side speaks out demanding this be stopped and I can only assume that's because it is the United States that is driving this lunacy. The good news is that not every arms race leads to major power war. The Cold War is an example, although there was a lot of luck involved and it had an abundance of troubles of its own. However the First and Second World Wars clearly did trace back to arms races.

There are political and economic shifts underway of a tectonic scale. It'll be tough enough travelling that rocky road without everyone pointing guns with hair triggers.

The Trouble With Stephen Harper

Adbusters has published an interview with Dr. Michael Byers who holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia:

His most recent book is Intent for a Nation: What is Canada for?, a title inspired by conservative philosopher George Grant’s influential 1965 work, Lament for a Nation, in which Grant grimly predicted the inevitable absorption of Canada by the United States.

On Stephen Harper:

"The first thing to understand is that Mr. Harper is an economist, so he thinks that economics are of paramount importance. And I’m pretty sure that he buys Grant’s thesis, and that there’s not really much we can do to avoid it because we are so dependent on the US economically. So the question for Mr. Harper would be how to manage dependency. I really don’t think that he’s capable of believing that Canada can chart an independent course. Add to that the fact that ideologically he is essentially an American Republican, he wouldn’t see a whole lot of downside to going along with the policy decisions of the Bush administration. For him, it’s a convenient default position.

"I’ll give you the three most obvious examples. One, Harper’s long-standing position on climate change, which he has recently altered – ostensibly – because he’s finally realized the political reality that lots of Canadians are beginning to care a great deal about climate change, and that it has become hard to deny at a scientific level, especially for an Arctic country like Canada. But Stephen Harper as a policy wonk has always doubted the reality of human-caused climate change, and has resisted any effort to deal with it, especially in a multilateral manner involving any international organizations. In that respect, he shares an awful lot with key members of the Bush administration.

"The second example concerns the use of the military abroad, and what Mr. Harper has sought to do with the Canadian forces – his absolutely gung-ho support for the counter-insurgency mission in Afghanistan, his public criticism of Jean Chrétien’s government for not sending troops to Iraq in 2003. This is a man who believes that foreign policy at a primary level involves shooting people overseas. He’s not a peacekeeper. He’s not a diplomat. He shares the tough-guy position of the Bush admin, in the belief that the way you exert influence is by exerting military power.

"I guess the final issue that stands out is Mr. Harper’s aggressive policies on the Middle East, such as his comment that Israel’s response to Hezbollah’s abduction of an Israeli soldier last summer was “measured.” And his refusal to back down from that, even after eight Canadian citizens were killed in the bombings. That was staggering for me, because the Middle East was one of the important areas in which Canada had traditionally and successfully steered a different course, all the way back to 1956 and the Suez Crisis. That was Lester Pearson and Canadian diplomacy’s greatest moment, using middle-road, pro-active diplomacy and the imaginative construction of solutions – in that instance, the pioneering of un peacekeeping. That’s what we did. That’s why we have the reputation we have. There was no need for Mr. Harper to make that comment, and to side unequivocally with the Israeli Defense Forces last summer. Even within Israel there was a lot of public discomfort with what the IDF was doing, but you would never have suspected the slightest doubt in the Canadian government. We’ve seen similar things happen with the issue of funding the Palestinian Authority or the listing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. And as a result of this, the Harper government is essentially writing Canada out of the script in the search for Mid-East peace. We don’t matter anymore.

"The Bush administration’s greatest failing, I think, is missing the importance of soft power. Mr. Harper makes the exact same mistake, but it’s magnified ten-fold by the fact that Canada relies much more on soft power than the US. It’s the one thing that has really made us matter in the past. The combination of our size, our location, our resources, with a very sophisticated use of soft power – that’s what enabled us historically to “punch above our weight.” The Harper government doesn’t get that. It’s our most treasured asset, and it takes decades to build it up and only months to waste it away."