Returning To The Fold

Is Canada rejoining the Western alliance? For a decade, the Chretien government seemed to take pride and pleasure in tweaking and teasing the United States and Britain. On issues ranging from border security to Iraq, Jean Chretien and foreign minister Bill Graham seemed to be auditioning for roles as junior officers of la Francophonie.

True, most of the trouble-making was symbolic. A real break with the United States would have had costs and risks that the cautious Chretien would never have risked, and Graham was not a minister to venture very far on his own initiative. As if to compensate for the feebleness of his anti-American policy, Chretien tolerated an astonishing degree of personal rudeness toward the Americans from his aides and his caucus.

Those days have thankfully been left behind.

Since coming into office, Prime Minister Paul Martin has edged Canada into closer harmony with the policies of its traditional friends -- and more affirmative support for democracy worldwide.

Last week, UN ambassador Alan Rock protested that the General Assembly's Middle East resolutions are "divisive and often lack balance." Canada, he announced, would vote against two forthcoming anti-Israel motions in the Assembly.

In an interview on CNN's Late Edition on Sunday, Prime Minister Martin confirmed that Canada would offer technical assistance to the Iraqi elections in January. "We did not agree with the invasion of Iraq," Martin told Wolf Blitzer. However: "Once we're into the situation where we want to create a democracy in Iraq, take those elections and rebuild Iraq, as far as I'm concerned, that we are at one with the United States."

On Ukraine, Martin has aligned himself with Britain and the United States in strongly condemning Russian interference and supporting an honest vote count, as opposed to the more uncertain response of France and Germany.

So far, so good. But what really does it all mean? Honest speeches at the UN and brave words about Ukraine are, of course, welcome, and an improvement over what went before. In the end, though, Canada's standing in the world will depend less on words than on its capabilities and its commitments.

The embarrassing truth is that 10 years of budget starvation has reduced Canada's military power to the point where it could not have participated in the Iraq war even had it wanted to. Canada's voice in international affairs has been so quavering and timid for so long that it is hardly likely to make an impression on Vladimir Putin now.

So here are the real tests for the Martin government? Will it re-invest in Canada's military -- and do so in ways that maximize the military's effectiveness for 21st century missions?

Will it re-establish the intimate policy co-ordination with Britain, the United States and Australia that prevailed in the 1980s?

Will it talk candidly to the Canadian people about what is at stake? For all the good things that have happened in recent weeks, Martin's handling of the missile defence issue symbolizes the Liberal government's still-strong tendencies to drift and dither.

Canadian participation in missile defence is far from an urgent priority for anyone. The program will proceed whether Canada joins or no. Even from a hawkish point of view, there may be better investments for Canada's national defence dollar: An extra Canadian billion might well do more good if spent on conventional forces than piled atop the already considerable sums for R&D already committed by the United States and Japan.

It is, however, troubling that the Martin government rarely phrases its missile defence policy in those rational terms. Instead, the government keeps repeating silly slogans about "the weaponization of space" -- as if it were perfectly OK to weaponize land, sea and air, but some dreadful act of aggression to fly weapons into the unpeopled and environmentally indestructible vacuum beyond the atmosphere. The Americans and Japanese want to build missile defences not because they yearn to pollute Pluto, but because they want to protect Japan and other East Asian democracies against Chinese and (soon) North Korean nuclear blackmail.

The supreme vice of Canadian foreign policy in the Chretien years was the unwillingness to think seriously about military power. Unwilling to pay the cost of military power for itself, it refused to acknowledge that others might make different choices -- and that those choices might implicate Canadian interests. I suspect that the Martin government knows better. I suspect that it appreciates that Canada is safer in a world in which China cannot bully its neighbors than in a world in which China can. And it is for that reason that the Martin government keeps edging its way closer and closer to a missile-defence agreement.

But the Martin government does not dare say what it knows. The government's declared policy is not its real policy; its articulated reasons do not explain its policy. The evasiveness is rooted in fear -- fear of leftist and isolationist opinion in Central Canada; fear of handing the Bloc and the NDP an issue in Parliament.

So long as Canada's government is paralyzed by such fears, Canada will never play its appropriate role in the world -- no matter how much it increases its military budget. Yes, it is time to invest in new muscle. But muscle serves no purpose unless it is guided by nerve.