# Canada loses in "The New New World Order"



## Edward Campbell (27 Feb 2007)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions (§29) of the Copyright Act, is an interesting piece from the March/April issue of _Foreign Affairs_:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070301faessay86203-p0/daniel-w-drezner/the-new-new-world-order.html 


> The New New World Order
> 
> By Daniel W. Drezner
> From Foreign Affairs, March/April 2007
> ...



The key points, for Canada, are:

•	We must recognize the essential truth of Prof. Drezner’s thesis – power is a zero sum game.  The power gains for China and India will, *must* come at the expense of the power of the USA, the EU and Canada.

•	We need to promote, actively, the “ALL INCLUSIVE” _strategy_.  We need to convince the USA and the EU to bring China and India into the _club_ without expelling small, weak members, like Canada.

•	The BRIC is outdated and should be discarded.  Brazil’s potential is, indeed, great, so is Russia’s, but both have been very poor performers, quite unlike China and India.

•	We need to _court_ both China and India as _independent_ great powers and, simultaneously, try to reduce the EU to a single voice and to add the Latin Americans (ALADI/MERCUSOR) and Asians (ASEAN) as additional single voices.  In so doing we may have to accept a subordinate role as an American NAFTA partner.  The key is to accept subordination if that avoids exclusion.  Thus the *New* G7 would be:

1.	ALADI,
2.	ASEAN,
3.	China,
4.	EU + Council of Europe (includes Russia and e.g. Norway, Switzerland, etc),
5.	India,
6.	Japan,
7.	USA + NAFTA


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## GAP (27 Feb 2007)

I may be out to lunch here, but I do not view Canada as a major player. We are a bit player, but a player. Our loyalties basically lie with the US and Nato, et al....Sometimes we puff up with importance, but really, we have little influence.


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## KevinB (27 Feb 2007)

GAP - you see that, however the majority of Canadians incorrectly feel the world revolves around them....


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## Edward Campbell (27 Feb 2007)

GAP said:
			
		

> I may be out to lunch here, but I do not view Canada as a major player. We are a bit player, but a player. Our loyalties basically lie with the US and Nato, et al....Sometimes we puff up with importance, *but really, we have little influence*.



Bingo!  And we have to maximize the benefits *we* derive from using whatever influence we have in each situation.  We can, as we have in the past, "punch above our weight" if we clearly and coolly identify *our own* self interest and then pursue it with vigour and effect, for oue own benefit.


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## GAP (27 Feb 2007)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Bingo!  And we have to maximize the benefits *we* derive from using whatever influence we have in each situation.  We can, as we have in the past, "punch above our weight" if we clearly and coolly identify *our own* self interest and then pursue it with vigour and effect, for oue own benefit.



We have not been doing that. We confuse selfish interest with self interest and end up looking like whinny little kids, wanting everything just because we ask. There are some who have represented this country admirably and have done exactly what you suggest, but anyone looking at this country's internal turmoil would only see a weak vacillating crowd that don't know sh*t from shinola.

I guess we are normal


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## Bigmac (27 Feb 2007)

I agree we will never be a military superpower but economically with forestry, oil, natural gas, water and other resources we are no slouch. We may look small from a G8 perspective but we are significant.  Also nobody has a better diplomatic voice in the world than Canada. India agrees with me!



> Russia and Canada – the two emerging economic superpower
> Balaji Reddy
> Feb. 18, 2007
> 
> ...


http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/15697.asp


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## GAP (27 Feb 2007)

Just wait until somebody notices that and we will become a territory.  ;D


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## Bigmac (27 Feb 2007)

GAP said:
			
		

> Just wait until somebody notices that and we will become a territory.  ;D



     That is what is great about having economic power. Make friends with everyone and make money off of the big military dogs selling them your resources and other products. If any country threatens you sick one of the big dogs after them.  Ergo no requirement for a large military. We rock!  ;D


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## a_majoor (27 Feb 2007)

Bigmac said:
			
		

> That is what is great about having economic power. Make friends with everyone and make money off of the big military dogs selling them your resources and other products. If any country threatens you sick one of the big dogs after them.  Ergo no requirement for a large military. We rock!  ;D



Unless one of the Great Powers decides it is in its best interests to take the resources (and deny them to the other power(s)) instead.


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## Edward Campbell (28 Feb 2007)

Here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of Copyright Act, is an interesting pice from today’s _Globe and Mail_.  I include it in this thread because I think it illustrates the dilemma facing Canadians – closing the gap between deeply ingrained myths and reality:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070228.wxpeacekeeping28/BNStory/Afghanistan/home/?pageRequested=2 


> The myth of Canada as peacekeeper
> *Despite high-minded policy statements and public perception, Canada's global role, Michael Valpy reports*
> 
> MICHAEL VALPY
> ...



(Data included in the original _Globe and Mail_ article.)

A few points:

First, UN Peacekeeping – the *myth* so loved by so many – is neither dead nor buried but it has _morphed_ into something Ralph Bunche,* Sir Brian Urquhart* and Lester Pearson would hardly recognize.  Peacekeeping has changed because the UN has changed, markedly, since Bunche, Urquart and Pearson tried, with considerable success, to *contain* conflicts which threatened to expand and suck in the great powers,  The UN changed because the world changed – as Messers Dorn and Heinbecker explained to Valpy.  The cold War is over; conflicts increasingly involve ‘non-state actors’ and the _Three Block War_ is the norm, not the exception.  That does not mean that the UN cannot or should not do peacekeeping, it just means that *how* the UN _manages_ peacekeeping must change; see Ruxted’s  “Changing the Guard”, here.

Second, R2P (Responsibility to Protect) may well, as Prof. Hampson says, be a “hard sell.”  Well, perhaps the dimwits in Canada’s foreign affairs bureaucracy, led by Pink Lloyd Axworthy, should have thought about that before they invested so much of Canada’s good name and reputation in it back in the ‘90s.  Hard sell or not, R2P *is* our baby and Canada has assumed a moral obligation to promote and give effect to that doctrine.  The fact that R2P has consequences which Axworthy and his minions failed to appreciate is neither here nor there.  If we, Canadians, believe in R2P – and the polling cited by the _commentariat_ says we do – then we need to put money and guns where our mouths are.

Third, Heinbecker _pooh-poohs_ the ‘Canada first’ idea because, he suggests, we are not threatened.  He is (intentionally) naive and dangerously wrong.  Canada is threatened because it is part, indeed a charter member of the secular, democratic, largely liberal West which is, right now, squarely in the sights of the extremist _Islamist_† _movements_ which have declared us – the West – to be the enemy.

In fact ‘Canada first’ is the only acceptable policy for Canada – just as ‘America first’ or ‘Britain first’ or ‘Chile first” and ‘Denmark first’ are the only appropriate policies for other countries.  Our foreign policy must be about what we do *about, with, to* and sometimes even *for* other countries – in order to protect and promote our own vital interests.  Sending money and soldiers off for something, anything other than *our own* interests is silly, wasteful and, potentially dangerous.

The fact that there is no immediate, direct military threat to our claims of sovereignty over our territory does not, in any way, indicate that we are not threatened.  Prof. Heinbecker knows better but he, apparently, believes Canadians so ill informed - even less well informed that I routinely suggest – that he can fool them with a bit of juvenile sophistry.

Finally, the new, more complex international security environment ought to create opportunities for Canada to play a leadership role and, thereby, burnish its credentials in other, more important, political and economic domains.  We can, for example:

•	Work within the UN on measure to increase the UN’s capabilities to _manage_ the crisis resolution process – in those diplomatic and political areas in which the UN has great strength and skill; and

•	Work with other nations to create _coalitions_ to _manage_, *with a UN mandate*, the military aspects of crisis resolution: peacemaking and then peacekeeping.

It doesn’t matter that we contribute fewer and fewer troops to UN missions, but when we do those troops ought to be specialists, *never* combat troops because the UN is demonstrably unable to _manage_ combat operations.  We should, as we do now, choose only to contribute combat forces through a coalition of militarily capable nations – on a mission by mission basis.  What matters, what Canadians should appreciate is that we are bearing a fair (given our limited capabilities) share of the current burden.  We should do more; we are amongst the world’s most favoured nations – rich, sophisticated, stable, peaceful etc – so we can do more.  If Canadians do, indeed, want to play a useful role in the world as “agents of peace” then we must step up and do a *full* and fair share of the peacemaking so that we can then help other, less capable nations do the peacekeeping.

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* The two fellows (Bunche, an American, and Urquhart, a Brit) who really ‘invented’ UN peacekeeping back in 1948 – eight years before Canadians believe that Lester Pearson ‘invented’ peacekeeping. 

† I hate that word because it tends to suggest that Islam, _per se_, is the enemy.  That’s not the case.  Some _movements_ are using Islam as a centrepiece in their campaigns to return the world to some culturally specific medieval _mores_.  _”Islamist”_ saves a paragraph or two of explanatory text so I will continue to use it.


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## Kirkhill (28 Feb 2007)

"Many poor countries are afraid of it because they think it will be used against them. The U.S. did not help by at one point citing R2P as a rationale for invading Iraq, Mr. Heinbecker said. At the same time, several powerful countries, such as China, don't like it because it might interfere with their interests."

"Second, R2P (Responsibility to Protect) may well, as Prof. Hampson says, be a “hard sell.”  Well, perhaps the dimwits in Canada’s foreign affairs bureaucracy, led by Pink Lloyd Axworthy, should have thought about that before they invested so much of Canada’s good name and reputation in it back in the ‘90s.  Hard sell or not, R2P is our baby and Canada has assumed a moral obligation to promote and give effect to that doctrine.  The fact that R2P has consequences which Axworthy and his minions failed to appreciate is neither here nor there.  If we, Canadians, believe in R2P – and the polling cited by the commentariat says we do – then we need to put money and guns where our mouths are."

Further to your comments Edward and those of the author - I wonder what Lloyd et al envisage R2P as looking like if it doesn't look like Iraq and Afghanistan.

In every case of "R2P" we are looking at taking the side of "the peepul" against their agent "the state".  Given that the state is personified in a head of state with access to all the tools of the state, and even in a poor country the worse dictator will always have allies how exactly do they intend to get the party in power, and all its supporters, to accept being replaced by outside forces.  They can't help but see it as a punishment.

I still get a chuckle out of those that think that adjusting the severity of the punishment will have an influence on the resentment of the miscreant after the punishment is over.

Beating, time-outs (jail-time), fines, writing lines, essays, listening to speeches, forced community service, denying them Jello and Video Games, telling them it is for their own good, none of them produce somebody that is grateful for being chastised.  The best you can ever hope for is resentful and obedient.  The worst you should expect is a killing rage.

The only sure cure is lethal.  But that only cures the individual, not the group.

Beyond that it is time, money and effort - and lives, unfortunately.


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## a_majoor (1 Mar 2007)

Kirkhill said:
			
		

> In every case of "R2P" we are looking at taking the side of "the peepul" against their agent "the state".  Given that the state is personified in a head of state with access to all the tools of the state, and even in a poor country the worse dictator will always have allies how exactly do they intend to get the party in power, and all its supporters, to accept being replaced by outside forces.  They can't help but see it as a punishment.



What makes this observation so interesting is the mdern version of "Liberalism" (as embodied in Canada by the Liberal party) pretty explicitly works on the vision of the State dictating to the People (for thier own good, of course). Since R2P explicitly inverts this, I would be comfortable in suggesting that "Pink Lloyd" Axeworthy and his minions knew and expect3ed that R2P would never be instituted; rather R2P was created as yet another stick to use against the United States in cases like Rwanda or Dafur where there is no national interest to attract the attention of the world's superpower.

+1 to Edward for his succinct deconstruction of yet another piece of MSM silliness. What our place in the "New World Order" will be remains to be seen, but I can say that without a lot of thought and hard effort, we will sink into obscurity and irrelevance.


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