Empire's
Ally: Canadian Foreign Policy
By Greg Albo
25 November, 2006
Socialistproject.ca
Since
the coming into power of the Stephen Harper Conservative government
in January of this year, there has been much gnashing of teeth over
the foreign policy stance of Canada. In particular, Canada's relation
with the U.S. on a phalanx of fronts has been at the centre of controversy.
One has been the softwood lumber deal cut by Ambassador Michael Wilson,
which limits Canadian lumber exports to the U.S. and allows the Americans
to keep $1 billion in duties ruled by trade tribunals as illegal. This
has been judged by the government as a necessary step to re-establishing
'good' bilateral relations to secure and deepen economic integration.
A second has been Canada's Middle East policy, in terms of the deployment
of Canadian troops into a major combat position in southern Afghanistan,
and the uncompromising support for the Israeli and U.S. positions on
the summer assault of Lebanon and Gaza by Israel. These stances have
been celebrated by the Right, especially the cynics w! ho dominate the
national media in defending U.S. policies at every turn, as bringing
a new 'ethical realism' to Canadian foreign policies.
But Liberal commentators
have lamented the break from the approach of the Chretien regime (quietly
ignoring the Martin interregnum). Indeed, the Liberal leadership race
has a bit of a mantra with respect to the 'balance' of sending troops
to Kabul to defend the new U.S. puppet Karzai regime and the navy into
the Arabian Gulf, but not directly participating in the 'coalition of
the willing' in the U.S. invasion of Iraq or openly adopting the ballistic
missile defence system. For their part, the social Left and the NDP
have cursed the drift away from a 'peacekeeping' role for Canada's armed
forces (although the NDP backed the Conservative Party Parliamentary
resolution on the Kandahar mission), and the bypassing of multilateral
institutions to support unilateral U.S. policies to remake the global
order. The NDP is now taking a soft position against the Afghan deployment,
largely on the basis of an inappropriate mix of development, peacekeeping
and military objectives.
While the Chretien government
manoeuvrings to allow some Canadian distance from U.S. policies should
not be naysayed, none of these views come to grips with the way geopolitical
alliances have shifted during the current phase of neoliberalism. Nor
do they address the particular role of imperialist ally of the U.S.
that Canada has long occupied, and the way Canadian foreign policy has
been transformed with the changed geo-political context since 2001.
American Geo-Political
Strategies
Since the military defeat
of the U.S. in Vietnam and the economic turmoil of the 1970s, the geo-political
context of the world market and North American relations have undergone
enormous transformations. Although this can now be seen as a period
of the formation of neoliberal globalization under American hegemony,
it has also been marked by different phases, contradictions and rivalries
in the world order and inter-state relations. The early 1980s, for instance,
were dominated by the 'second cold war' military build-ups in the old
U.S.S.R. and the U.S., and the rising trade and competitive capacities
of Europe and East Asia. The emergence of the neoliberal policy framework
in the late 1970s was a means to reassert U.S. primacy in the world
order and address questions of American economic decline.
The cold war division began
to shred at the end of the 1980s, as the Soviet bloc collapsed and China
made an explicit turn toward capitalism. The construction of a new system
of regional alliances and international policy developments - notably
the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
East Asia trade and production networks encompassing China, and the
World Trade Organization (WTO) - gained momentum through the 1990s.
These alliances both responded to and fostered the internationalization
of capital. The relations of cooperation and competitiveness between
the advanced capitalist countries became redefined, as did the relations
between the dominant countries of the centre and the dominated countries
in the peripheries of the world. As these processes of 'globalization'
moved to the centre of political debate and government calculation,
neoliberal policies became widespread as few states and their ruling
classes dared break from the world m! arket and the 'Washington consensus'
pushing economic liberalization.
It is a striking fact of
this phase of neoliberalism that the end of the cold war did not lead
the U.S. to dismantle its military empire and regional alliances. Indeed,
it extended them and added additional overseas military deployments
under both the Bush-Republican and Clinton-Democratic administrations.
It became common across the political spectrum to speak of a 'new imperialism'
(with the political Right in both the U.S. and Canada actively endorsing
the project), given U.S. assertiveness over global security and economic
issues in a unipolar world of a single global superpower. Universally,
inter-state relations in the world order became defined, in the first
instance, by particular relations to the global hegemon. This was the
case even in the context of deep historical and geographical relations
apart from American state interests. A new American empire had emerged
out of the debris of the Cold War system. It is a particular empire
of global capital, operating thr! ough the hierarchy of the nation-state
system dominated by Western capitalist interests, and the economic,
military and diplomatic hegemony of the USA.
It needs to be underlined
that the post September 2001 geo-political context intensified rather
than transformed the developments that had been evolving over the 1990s.
The attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York City gave the U.S.
state the opportunity to place its post-Cold War objective of American
primacy in the world order in a new set of security doctrines. It also
paved the way for the extension of its overseas military capabilities,
most importantly over varied contested oil supply routes in the Middle
East and Asia. The new U.S. agenda became enshrined in the September
2002 U.S. national security statement laying down the Bush doctrine
of pre-emptive deterrence (although in practice it has been one of preventive
intervention without any serious possibility of imminent attack of the
U.S. to pursue American imperial strategies). This doctrine claimed
the right for the U.S. to act on its own apart from sanction from multilateral
institutions, namely the United! Nations (UN) Security Council (that
it in any case dominated), or concerns for cooperative security as negotiated
with its NATO allies.
The recasting of American
foreign policy in terms of a globally assertive national interest meant
an even greater willingness to act unilaterally than had been the case
in the past, when cold war politics compelled nominal consultation with
key allies. This was the basis for the U.S. bullying the UN to support
the intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, and the decision to attack
Iraq, under publicly stated specious grounds, without UN approval. It
has also meant that the U.S. has become more aggressive in the governance
of the world market, as in the scuttling of the Doha round WTO negotiations.
It has been willing to sacrifice the purity of neoliberal doctrines
of free markets in pursuit of its own trade interests and currency policy.
Even with the Republican
defeat in the November congressional elections, with its indirect rejection
of the American intervention in Iraq, it is necessary to be quite sceptical
that this will mean a turn in American primacy objectives as they have
evolved over the last decades. The bipartisan Iraq Study Group under
the leadership of James Baker, former central advisor to the earlier
Bush presidency, is essentially an effort to retain the primacy strategy.
It will reposition the American intervention in Iraq in a way that would
allow engagement with a wider set of states in the region, that neoconservative
dogmas blocked. This would shift some balances of power in the region,
but not deliver a fatal blow to American positions. It needs to be underlined
that both Iran and Syria want to normalize their relations with the
global capitalist order and not at all to withdraw from it. The ruling
classes in these states would be quite happy to have greater freedom
to pursue neolib! eral strategies with the support of the international
economic agencies. Even the continuance of the chaos in Iraq, or a messy
withdrawal, would only initially signal a specific defeat for American
strategy in the Middle East region. The American position in the greater
Middle East would still likely be ahead of where it was pre-1990s in
terms of alliances and military bases; such a defeat would not mean
a recasting of the overall objectives of the American primacy strategy
or its operational modalities (and the Baker initiative will forward
proposals to re-establish this on other fronts); and the European Union
and China are still far away from being able to offer any alternative
(capitalist) world order to the American one (the ruling blocs in these
zones remain quite interdependent with the U.S., although they are competitive
rivals for market shares).
Canada, the U.S.
and the World Order
The U.S. remaking of inter-state
relations over the period of neoliberalism has posed several key issues
for Canada, in both its immediate relationship with the U.S. and place
in the world order. This must first be understood not in the details
of the policy shifts that have taken place in the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, but in the dynamics of global power relations. First, capitalism
is a social order in which a basic contradiction resides in the institutional
separation of territorially-based sovereign states and the global accumulation
of capital that systematically traverses international borders. The
geopolitical relations between states manage this contradiction, and
maintain the hierarchy between them in particular institutions such
as the WTO or NATO. For Canada, this is foremost the bilateral relationship
with the U.S. maintained through the institutions of NAFTA and the North
American security complex. These institutions sustain Canada as a subordinate
ally of ! U.S. imperialism, but with Canada's own imperial interests
also being advanced within them.
Second, the world market
under neoliberalism has been characterized by asymmetries in trading
relations and an explosion of financial capital. This has meant a growing
interpenetration of capital across states. New forms of global economic
governance and regional trade blocs foster and sustain these economic
processes. The preferential trading arrangements of NAFTA, as well as
the numerous other trade agreements guiding economic relations across
the Americas, are meant to support the internationalization of capital
as much as to free cross-border trade. This has built up material as
well as ideological support for projects of 'deep integration' amongst
capitalist and state interests in Canada. Canadian foreign policy positions
defend the institutions of NAFTA and these material interests even when
NAFTA blatantly fails, as in the case of the continual U.S. usage of
countervailing measures against Canadian lumber exports in the face
of NAFTA dispute settlement rulings. Ind! eed, defence of the general
economic interests of Canadian capital, which necessarily includes the
American capital invested in Canada and Canadian investments in the
U.S., has recast the entire foreign policy apparatus of the Canadian
state.
This raises a third point:
to sustain global accumulation, foreign policy, as well as the defence
and security arms of the state, increasingly become drawn into defending
economic and geo-political interests. Indeed, the period of neoliberalism
has seen a consistent increase in the relative power of the international
and coercive apparatuses of the state in support of capitalist market
interests domestically and internationally. The 'economic security'
of NAFTA for business interests has become directly linked to 'North
American security' and thus 'imperial security'. This has steadily made
more untenable the small independent space for foreign policy that Canada
had opened up for itself during the postwar period. At that time, Canada's
foreign policy projected itself as a middle-level power. This meant
working as an ally of the U.S. through multilateral institutions, pushing
for cooperative negotiation of security amongst the capitalist powers,
and carving out spac! e for particular international positions with
third world countries (although the last was hopelessly both imperial
and cooperative in nature). An attempt was made to re-invent this orientation
in the late 1990s under then External Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy
and his 'soft power' proposals for human and collective security as
the central focus of Canadian foreign policy. But this agenda was dead
even as the ideas were being drafted. Neoliberalism and the American
empire swept aside any such attempts at embedding ethical norms in international
relations and expanding autonomy in foreign policy positions. The signing
of the initial Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. in 1989 had effectively
already killed this orientation on a bilateral basis.
Reorienting Canadian
Foreign Policy
Since September 2001 Canada
has substantially re-organized its security and international policies
to support the new geo-political context established by the USA. The
Canadian state has had the support of key economic interests - notably
the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and all the business think
tanks like the C.D. Howe Research Institute - in doing so. It fits their
common project of deepening integration with the United States.
First, the immediate response
after 9/11 was to develop parallel tracks between a new security agenda
to keep pace with U.S. developments and maintaining North American integration.
This included: a new Cabinet National Security Committee; budgetary
increases for all the agencies involved in policing, anti-terrorism
and security work; extension of funds and powers for policing borders
and airports, linked to a new Smart Borders Act; new legislative powers
in the form of an Anti-Terrorism Act, which widened the definition of
terrorism and scope for investigation, allowed for preventive detentions
and issuing of security certificates, and extended the range of the
Official Secrets Act; and an immediate increase in the military budget,
particularly for the JTF2 special forces for rapid deployment and to
deploy troops to the Gulf and Afghanistan as a direct contribution to
the U.S. War on Terror. These measures set in motion wider negotiations
between Canada and the U.S. over! 'Fortress North America.'
Second, the architecture
of the Canadian state was significantly re-designed so that security
and military capacities, over and above increased budgets, were given
increased prominence. The list is sweeping: strengthening the security
and defence committees and secretariats in the PMO and Privy Council
Office; raising the profile of Canada-U.S. relations in Parliament and
giving the Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. cabinet access; a new Public
Safety Act (2004) and a New Ministry of Public Safety and Emergency
Preparedness, paralleling and co-ordinating with the U.S. Department
of Homeland Security; an Integrated Threat Assessment Centre under CSIS;
under the RCMP, Integrated Border Enforcement Teams and Integrated National
Security Teams, coordinating with U.S. policing agencies; new coordinative
relations between CSIS and the CIA; extending the capacities for coordination
at the Canada-U.S. border via shared data-bases, joint screening, limits
on 'safe third country' pro! visions for refugees, and plans for biometric
screening; and extensive interdepartmental co-operation between Canada
and U.S. for all departments having either a security or borders dimension
in their mandates. This reorganization of the state strengthened the
role of the security and policing apparatuses in all dimensions of Canadian
foreign policy. The Harper government has sought only to tighten these
structures administratively, make the PMO the fulcrum for security and
foreign policy decision-making, and to push ahead the Fortress North
America agenda, notably adding securing the Arctic to the mix.
Third, a new strategic framework
for foreign policy has been evolving. The Chretien government's Securing
an Open Society: Canada's National Security Policy (2004) moved away
from Axworthy's human security agenda, and also took distance from the
most vociferous dimensions of the Bush Doctrine.
But it also aligned Canada
with American security concerns and committed Canada to meeting the
new U.S. security requirements. The International Policy Statement (2005)
released by the Martin government and the NAFTA leader's Waco Declaration
on a Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (2005), however,
more strongly aligned Canada with U.S. security and economic concerns.
The Harper government has largely left these documents to the side,
but he has pushed even more strongly in the direction they point of
more closely defining Canadian foreign policy interests as tied to U.S.
security concerns and imperial agendas to ensure Canadian cap! italists
access to U.S. markets for their goods and capital.
Finally, the Canadian military
has been systematically renovated in its operational capabilities and
its flexibility for overseas deployment. Canada has depleted its peacekeeping
missions to almost nil, and has become by many tallies the third largest
contributor to the 'War on Terror' after the U.S. and Britain. The Chretien
budgets had begun to expand military budgets; Martin had pledged in
2005 almost $13 billion over five years; and the first Harper budget
pledged an additional $5 billion beyond committed defence outlays. This
has been for expanding troop levels, their operations in the 'field',
and new armaments. It is also matched by a shift in Canadian military
doctrines toward 'networked joint capabilities' and 'inter-operability'
for 'multi-force, multi-country' operations. This essentially means
improved capacity to support U.S. military operations in pursuit of
its - and Canadian - imperial ambitions. The increasing role of the
Canadian military in southern Afg! hanistan - and the general belligerence
of Canada over the last months on the need for wider NATO mobilization
in the war effort against traditional docile Canadian stances on NATO
- is a key symbol of the shift of Canadian military agendas.
Canada and the Middle
East
The Middle East has, literally,
been the battleground where Canada's new foreign policy has been foremost
tested (although the Western and Canadian intervention against democratic
processes in Haiti is just as telling). Although Canada has long toed
British and then American positions on the Middle East, there was some
very minor measures adopted to push for Middle East democracy and Palestinian
rights over the 1990s. This was the so-called 'balance' of Canada's
position. But the previous Liberal government of Paul Martin had already
begun moving to tie Canada closer to American policies in the region
and Israeli positions. This could be seen in the Martin government endorsing
Canadian military deployment into a combat role in southern Afghanistan,
and breaking with the Chretien policy of 'peacekeeping' in Kabul. But
it could also be seen in the Martin government shifting UN votes, after
extensive lobbying by Zionist forces in Canada, to side with the U.S.,
Israel and a f! ew other American vassal states in resolutions before
the United Nations on Israel's failure to uphold United Nations resolutions
on Palestine and other human rights issues. In November 2005, Martin
put this before the United Jewish Communities as "Israel's values
are Canada's values."
These were symbolically significant
shifts, acknowledging the break with what had been the precepts of Canadian
international stances. Rather than continuing with Canada's historical
support for multilateralism and international rule of law, Canada now
openly defended the right to exercise unilateral military measures for
the U.S. and Israel, and also separate international rules on a host
of issues for the two major 'rogue' states from the rules and laws binding
others. (At the same time, Canada hypocritically followed the U.S. in
claiming only to want to hold North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, and others
to international rules and norms in pursuing various sanctions and measures
against these states.) According to Canada's new foreign policy position
on the Middle East, some states have the right to extra-territorial
sovereignty, while other states can exercise their sovereign rights
only at the discretion of the major powers.
This is where the Liberals
had already moved Canadian foreign policy (and through the minority
Parliament had received only minimal dissent from the NDP) before their
defeat. Harper's Conservatives have taken these positions up even more
vigorously than the previous Liberals, continually invoking all the
American clichés of how the world has changed since 9/11. On
the fifth anniversary of the atrocity, Harper went so far as to term
it an attack on Canada, and the various interventions in the Middle
East as measures to prevent terrorism in Canada. Indeed, this has become
the government's principal justification for the extension of the Canadian
mission mandate in southern Afghanistan. And it was also invoked as
the reason for the September decision to increase Canadian combat troops
and to deploy a new level of arms in the form of additional fighter
jets and tanks with long-range firing capacities. Additional calls by
Canadian generals (and virtually the entire mili! tary-industrial establishment
in Canada) for increasing Canadian troop levels and weapons purchases
have continued through the fall. There is every indication that the
winter Federal Budget will meet some more of these requests. The Harper
government inherited the Afghanistan mission but they have defined it
as a centre-piece of their government, partly on its own terms and partly
in embracing the American geo-political vision.
They have done similarly
on other Middle East issues. Harper made Canada the first nation to
place sanctions on the newly elected Hamas government in the Palestinian
territories. These sanctions became the trigger that began the escalation
of hostilities in the Gaza, and the return of Israeli occupation. Canada
has worked closely with the U.S., Britain and Israel to isolate the
Palestinians, and ignore the construction of the apartheid wall, the
humanitarian disaster in Gaza, and the continued Israeli development
of illegal settlements.
The Canadian response to
Israel's aggressive assaults on both Gaza and Lebanon this summer, in
a manner that clearly violated international law in the 'collective
punishment', wholesale and blatant destruction of civilian infrastructure
and killing of innocents, was more of the same. Israel's actions faced
the condemnation of world opinion, and the vast majority of states of
the world. But Harper lined up Canada with the U.S. at the July G8 meetings
in defence of the Israeli bombardments. Indeed, Harper became - and
remained - the most vociferous defender of the 'proportionality' of
the ferocious Israeli attacks terming them a 'measured response'. In
Canada's new foreign policy, there appear to be no legal or moral limits
of acceptable international conduct being able to be breeched in the
case of Israel.
Dissent and Democracy
It is clear that a majority
of Canadians are increasingly uncomfortable with Canadian foreign policy
positions. Half of the population consistently dissents from Canadian
troops being in Afghanistan. This is even with the national media keeping
critical voices of the Canadian intervention marginal. And even higher
poll numbers time and again register opposition to American policies
more generally. They are rejecting the reckless and morally troubling
foreign policy position that Canada now endorses: closer integration
into U.S. foreign policy positions, including the doctrine of the right
of the U.S. and Israel alone to use military 'pre-emptive intervention',
apart from any sanction by the UN Security Council; uncritical alignment
with U.S. and Israeli military interventions, including more active
Canadian military deployments; and political and bureaucratic disregard
for Canadians who might get in the way of these foreign policy positions,
whether this is Canadians stra! nded in Lebanon, or Canadians illegally
extradited in the U.S. 'war on terror' sweep.
There is a growing contradiction
between the desires of the Canadian people for an 'independent foreign
policy', and the alignment with American imperialist and security objectives.
This desire is also at odds with the openly imperialist agenda that
has formed in Canadian capitalist and state elites. This has made them
one of the Empire's strongest allies. The new Canadian imperialist agenda
can be seen in the work of the North American Competitiveness Council,
where leading North American capitalists and political elites have been
strategizing on furthering the Security and Prosperity Partnership of
North America; and in the October report of the influential Parliamentary
Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence calling for
Canada to join the U.S. ballistic missile defence programme and closer
military and economic integration to secure North American interests
around the world. The political orientation of Canadian foreign policy
and the ruling classes! have parted with any popular efficacy of democracy
in Canada.
Popular social forces in
Canada do not face this alone. It is a reflection of a deeper antagonism
of the current world order. The U.S. objectives of re-establishing its
global primacy and unilateral authority contradicts the liberal promises
of a world order based on a community of equal sovereign nations governed
by international legal and policy norms. The Bush doctrine and the imperial
interventions across the Middle East, supported by Canada and the other
Western powers, is the most visible symbol of this geo-political strategy.
One of capitalism's most powerful fictions is - not for the first time
- being laid bare for what it is: naked self-interest.
Greg Albo
teaches political economy at York University.
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