A Canadian foreign policy? The idea.

I knew a wonderful cynic long ago who loved politics and wrote like a high-strung angel. Hunched over a cigarillo and a martini, he once shrugged, “Policy is as cheap as paper and a typewriter.” 

Finally, I’ve got it: policy — without law, resources, or responsibly — is just talk, in text. And talk usually is cheap.

This thought is not welcome in modern government, especially in policy shops, in constrained circumstances. Many policy activists, in fact, have set forth the proposition that even if government can’t do anything well, it can at least do important thinking — elevating our aspirations and passing on our best practices to less fortunate societies elsewhere.

Pretentious nonsense.

Along with the regrettable squander of talent, the treatment of policy as art has a malign narcotic effect: it interferes with our proper and continuing obligation to discover how to be more effective in this challenging world.

The above musings weren’t inspired by my own lost causes as a policy writer. Rather, they crystalized as I read two high-minded essays on the esoteric topic of "Canadian foreign policy" by two eminent Canadian journalists: John Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail and Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star. Their thesis is the same: captain Stephen Harper has fundamentally changed Canada’s foreign policy — and not for the better.

This is both an easy and extravagant argument to make.

It’s easy to research. Formal government speeches and grieving former diplomats baldly tell the story: Harper is less multilateral and more bilateral in pursuing trade and upholding alliance priorities with the US. He doesn’t nurture or use soft power and he doesn’t trim alliance rhetoric in order to advance what’s called Pearsonian diplomacy. He misses chances to offer a Canadian twist on other countries’ strategic difficulties.

However, what’s the big deal? What the original "Canadian foreign policy" was and what it’s becoming now is almost entirely a domestic Canadian affair. Indeed, it is entirely possible that — apart from NSA eavesdroppers — the outside world has no appreciation that Canada’s best minds are seized with alarm because they think Canada’s government is approaching the world with a new agenda.

This leads to a twist on that nauseating conundrum about not hearing that noble tree falling in the forest: if others haven’t noticed Harper’s “Big Break," was there actually a Canadian policy there in the first place?

Canada is an American ally, with no enemies or special friends of its own. On strategic issues in Washington and in the Middle East, for instance, it supports America and Israel’s strategic imperatives. And it has done so, unswervingly, since the St. Laurent government and its popular External Affairs Secretary Lester Pearson helped Eisenhower help France and Britain surrender their last imperial illusions in 1956. Pearson was awarded a Nobel Prize, and Canada started listening to the rest of the world on behalf of Washington rather than on behalf of London.

Canada’s self-regard in foreign relations was not earned by making independently shrewd, noble, strategic policy choices. It was born of the passive crafts of diplomat.

As the senior English-speaking colony of the greatest power of the 19th century, Canada’s bureaucracy-builders decided on their own that they could be the next superpower’s empathetic listeners. They could listen knowingly to the powerful and the powerless. Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnston, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, the Bushes, Clinton (less so), and even Obama would benefit from timely gossip and nudges from Ottawa as they threw their weight around globally.

Talk in the Canadian federal government is often about policy, and talk about policy choices often leads to action. Trade policies lead to commercial initiatives; immigration policy changes affect workloads in embassies and the fates of thousands of individuals who want to live in Canada.

Talking geopolitics vicariously, however, isn’t doing strategic foreign policy. 

Have all those sophisticates in the Pearson Building in Ottawa essentially been talking to themselves? No. Tactically, Canada doesn’t send forces to every conflict or aid only to American priorities. However, Canadian foreign policy per se is pure words; their assembly and observation does little more than feed and clothe wordsmiths, who doggedly take themselves too seriously.

America’s system is still liberalism’s best bet

The Liberal Party of Canada—colonial Canada’s earliest champion of American-style direct democracy—now seems to take its inspiration from Europe’s more layered approach to politics.

Its parliamentary leadership accepts First Nation’s Chief Theresa Spence’s demand that the British Crown be represented at First Nation negotiations with Canada’s Federal Government. And Liberal leadership candidates say they would scrap Canada’s First Past the Post electoral system—a system that favors big-tent national parties over protest parties, and often elects majority Prime Ministers, as the US system elects Presidents.

Smart people like the British, and Canadians too, can manage with today’s mixed monarchic, theocratic, and democratic system. Surrounded by danger, smart people like the Israelis can survive using a Proportional Election system that favors small parties and, consequently, puts a dozen party bosses in charge of hammering out—after national elections—the leadership, orientation, and priorities of the Israeli Government. 

According to past liberal principles and instincts, however, both of those models are second best. The monarchal model confuses people and thereby makes it more difficult to figure out who’s accountable and how to vote for effective change. Multi-party systems make it easier to be a politician, but it's next to impossible for voters to decide directly who should be in charge and whose vision should hold sway.

The direct election of political heads of state does make cautious people nervous. The US presidential system and the quasi-presidential Canadian party system can accommodate intemperate swings in the popular mood. That’s why 18th-century liberals favored a written bill of rights, federalism, and executive and legislative checks. Their conservative counterparts in Britain and Canada successfully preserved an un-elected Upper House and celebrate the magic (confusion) that goes with a hereditary, constitutional monarchy.

The First Past the Post system, along with the national election of the President, has been hard on new and uncompromising interests that want to speak for themselves. However, as instruments of direct democracy, they have made it possible for Americans to elect working majorities and influence national choices.

It’s passing strange that after all America has accomplished in the last century, after witnessing the success of Barack Obama in winning two liberal national mandates, that Canadian liberalism’s republican and pan-Canadian ambitions are now so feeble.

Surely, the key to inspire interest in progressive politics and to solve problems like the woeful state of First Nation communities in Canada is to champion an electoral system that can actually mobilize the will of the people. This year, the President’s Inaugural Address took less than twenty minutes. However, tens of millions in every state paid attention, and over half the people could claim a piece of its authorship.

The First Past the Post system now favors the center-right in Canada because they are united. It would continue to work for Canadian democracy and, again, for the center-left, if they united too. 

Newt Gingrich’s contract with big money

Call me a conspiracy theorist but I don’t think Newt Gingrich is just another “cheerful” loud mouth or an original voice in American public life. As a Republican presidential candidate, I don’t think he really has a mind of his own.

CNN just reported that Sheldon Adelson and his wife will pump millions more into Gingrich’s super-PAC “Winning the Future.” The Adelsons have already invested $11 million in Gingrich’s primary win in South Carolina and his life support systems ever since. It’s questionable he’d still be a candidate without their help.

Click on: www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/

Gingrich’s benefactor, of course, hasn’t put him on a leash and Gingrich needn’t expect to be cut off arbitrarily. Adelson didn’t make an estimated $22billion being temperamental.

Furthermore, Adelson isn’t doing something that actually hurts the front-runner right now—Romney’s anemic campaign needs a divided opposition. Furthermore, Adelson has made it clear that he’ll generously provide millions later if the Republicans eventually put Romney up against Obama. The New York Times reported that he’s simply a fervent Zionist who opposes any territorial compromise to make way for a Palestinian state and has “long been enamored of Mr Gingrich’s full-throated defense of Israel.”

Click on:http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/sheldon_g_adelson/index.html?scp=1-spot&sq=Sheldon%20Adelson&st=cse

There is, however, a contract between Gingrich’s throat and Adelson’s ear:

Newt Gingrich’s throat will crowd out any fresh intelligence or reflection on the last ten years of carnage in the Middle East that might worm into his head and threaten to move his rhetoric even an inch away from the most extreme and belligerent champions of the government of Israel.

He exercised his part of this contract during last week’s Republican debate. On the existential Iranian threat to Israel, Adelson’s ear was reminded by Gingrich that Barack Obama is the “most dangerous president in modern American history.” The rest of us—including long-time supporters of Israel, independents, conservatives, libertarians, Muslim-Americans, and liberal veterans, for that matter—might as well have gone to the kitchen, knocked back a double, and come back with a beer.

(Sure, Santorum and Romney sounded like warriors, too—naturally, they wouldn’t hesitate to send their boys. But, the former was simply being himself and the latter can’t act out of character anyway. Imagine finding, tracing, and then making a drama out of the convictions of Mitt Romney. They made only one Shakespeare and he always played with the facts.)

The Supreme Court and many thoughtful liberals and conservatives are reluctant to limit political advertising expenditures by the super PACs, unorganized groups, and individuals. Limiting free expression at all should be extremely hard to do and it’s impossible to prove that advertising “buys” elections or that, by itself, it suppresses voter turn-out.

Then, let’s agree to this: while you can’t corrupt the people with cheap advertising, you can effectively corrupt a politician by giving millions to his campaign.

It’s clean, efficient, and transparent. You don’t need focus groups and a sociologist; just read your benefactor’s profile in the New York Times.

Maybe no law can now be passed against it. Americans, however, still have the power of buyer beware. Does it pass the smell test to know that at least one intellectually curious candidate for president of the United States knows that the wheels will come off his campaign if he dares start thinking out loud on America’s interests internationally?

Harper’s advice to Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu

Next Friday, Benjamin Netanyahu will be meeting Stephen Harper in advance of his visit to Washington for further talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel, the United States, Canada, and their western allies are trying to bully Iran into giving up its efforts to become a military nuclear power. The bullies are not always of one mind, and their collective success requires a high degree of uncertainty in Tehran about how far they will go. Consequently, many scary things get said and many difficult meetings must be held.

Matters must be coordinated because things can’t get out of hand—for instance, an unintended war. The US cannot afford to conquer Iran, Israel cannot secure the peace alone, and none of the politicians can get re-elected if they crash the world economy.  

After watching Republican presidential candidates (excepting Ron Paul and his billionaire bagman) saber-rattle last night, it’s clear what Harper should say to Netanyahu:

—Taking military action now, without US government support, would be indefensible.

—The alliance and the sanctions that the United States has put together have Canada’s full support. As the sanctions tighten, diplomatic opportunities and change will emerge in Iran.

—Acting as an alliance allows for future vital cooperation with Russia and possibly even with China. Unilateral action, however, will isolate Israel.

—If Harper doesn’t want to sound like an old softy, he can get personal: “My closest political ally is Barack Obama and if you go to Washington and embarrass him again I’ll be disappointed.”

—If Netanyahu pulls out a Wall Street Journal clipping about the delay of the Keystone Project, Harper can, in truth, say, “If you screw up Obama’s economic recovery and re-election chances by unilaterally bombing Iran you’ll not have a tinkle of support from Canada, your new best friend.”

After the meeting, Stephen Harper, prime minister of the country with the world’s best listeners, will call Barack Obama to tell him what he may expect.

Israel’s borders: spin or substance between Harper and Obama

The impression has settled in that Stephen Harper blocked the inclusion of a specific reference the 1967 borders as the basis for Israel-Palestine peace talks in the final communiqué of last week’s G-8 summit (Canada, US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia).

That impression—launched by European diplomats who were in the room—has been widely reported and unchallenged in the Middle East and Canadian media.

In the bloody hall of mirrors of Middle-East diplomacy it’s impossible to know what any impression will accomplish or even its intended target. However, the story of Harper’s “veto” must serve some purpose.

In Canada, the Prime Minister has been made to appear off-side yet again: that he rejected a statement enunciated by President Obama in his speech of May 19th, a speech that was widely praised in Europe and repudiated by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Yet, obviously, Canada was not the final target for this story. A ‘rogue’ Canadian Prime Minister is strictly a Canadian worry. Furthermore, Harper’s position was eminently palatable to the others in the room—he simply didn’t think one element of a speech that one of the leaders in the room had given and that all the others had endorsed should be cherry-picked for inclusion in the formal communiqué.

Surely, the central character in this little drama is Barack Obama.

The White House’s silence on whether Harper was rejecting a draft statement on Israel that Obama agreed to include in the G-8 communiqué, however, leaves the impression that Stephen Harper is measurably more emphatic in his support for Israel. On the face of it, Harper looks more committed than Obama to the package of negotiating positions that Obama clearly spelled out in his speech of May 19th.

Maybe, Obama feels at home having Harper on his wing on Israel. However, it’s one thing to remind Israel that the US has a mind of its own. It’s quite another to appear less committed to his own balanced approach than his Canadian ally.

Clearly, Harper’s position better reflects the US position, as enunciated by Obama, than a draft statement that only mentioned the 1967 borders. Israel can’t respond positively to a call by the G-8 to negotiate on the basis of those borders without also insisting that the Palestinians respect Israel’s security concerns and the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state.