Monday, November 03, 2003

GRANATSTEIN: BILATERALISM v. MULTILATERALISM AND WAR IN IRAQ

Granatstein argues that while multilateralism has its advantages bilateralism with the United States will almost always serve Canada’s national interests better. He focuses specifically on the decision over the war in Iraq as an example.

Granatstein argues that the United States is always working towards its own self interest and that Canada should work more closely with America so as to have an influence over those actions. In one way this makes sense. If we ignore the U.S it will go ahead and shape policy that may adversely affect us. However, Granatstein’s argument assumes two things: one, that we will be able to influence the U.S, two, that their interest are the same as ours. Compromising our own ideal position so as to gain influence with the U.S may be advisable in some circumstances, however we must be sure that we will have influence. If the U.S simply assumes that Canada will go along with everything it wishes our level of influence may be severely diminished. Secondly, Canada should not necessarily join an American initiative simply to curry favour with the Americans if the initiative does not serve our interests. Granatstein points to the project of ballistic missile defence as an initiative that Canada should support and be involved in so as to gain influence over its implementation. However, it is questionable how much influence Canada will gain by joining the project, the U.S will likely shape it to best protect them. Secondly it is not necessarily in Canada’s interest to become involved in a project that is very expensive, currently does not work, and runs counter to Canadian values.

With the war in Iraq Granatstein believes that the debates in the security council showed the failure of multilateralism and that Canada’s foreign policy was held hostage to a blind support for it. Granatstein quotes Paul Martin who said: "with Iraq, we witnessed a failure in the capacity of the international community to forge a shared consensus on how to proceed." Granatstein sees this as reinforcing his argument. However this is a typically nebulous statement and Granatstein falls for the Martin ploy of making statements so vague they can be all things to all people. I see Martin’s statement as putting blame on the international community for failing. He does not imply that the international community should stop working multilaterally to form consensus, only that this time it did not work.

Granatstein goes on to say, "Canadians cannot ever again allow their government to put them in the position of opposing for the sake of opposition as the Chretien government did over the Iraq war." This is a serious misunderstanding of the governments position of the policy on Iraq and suggests that the government deals with extremely serious issues on the basis of spite. The Chretien government opposed the war for several reasons none of which were "the sake of opposition." Primarily, the nations was opposed to the war. Chretien read the mood of the country correctly and kept us out of a war we did not want a part of. These days that decision is looking better and better. Secondly, Canada’s foreign policy in the past has supported operating through multilateral institutions. This is not simply a result of narrow self interest as it is with France. Canada supports multilateral institutions because Canadians believe that eventually world multilateral institutions will create greater peace and justice in the world. Again its our naïve idealism coming through.

Posted by Matthew @ 12:10 a.m.