Foreign Policy

Once again the situation in the Middle East has flared, with Israel launching air raids and ground incursions into Gaza. I find this particular action unsettling and risky for the simple reason that Israel does not seem to have defined what precisely they are trying to accomplish. Insofar as they have done so, it seems the offensive is unlikely to achieve the goals that have been set. In the meantime, the increased violence will only serve to strengthen radicals on both sides.  

This past weekend, on a quiet hillside in Kyiv along the Dnipro river, Ukrainians and dignitaries from around the world gathered to mark the 75th anniversary of one of the darkest periods in modern Ukrainian history, and one the greatest crimes of the twentieth-century. 

The Holodomor is the name given to the famine that broke out on the territory of Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933. The mass starvation that ensued claimed the lives of somewhere between six and ten million Ukrainians. What makes the Holodomor stand out is not the fact that a famine occurred or that millions died, but that the Soviet authorities were complicit in the deaths, and even intentionally caused them. 

Barak Obama has said repeatedly that as President, if he had actionable intelligence about the location of al Qaida leadership in Pakistan and the Pakistanis were unable or unwilling to act, that he would authorize a military strike without the Pakistanis consent. Of course he would, any President would. But saying he would is extremely dangerous. 

Bush has repeatedly launched covert operations inside Pakistan, while publicly stressing partnership and cooperation. In the case of Pakistan, it could even be argued that in certain circumstances the actions that Obama is talking about would be legal under Article 51 of the UN Charter, which allows states to take action in self defence. 

McCain’s proposal for a “League of Democracies” is an absurd idea. McCain argues that the world’s “more than 100 democratic nations” should form this league to work in concert on issues such as terrorism, Russia’s turn towards authoritarianism, and climate change.   

There are two fundamental problems with McCain’s plan for a League. First, it views the world as a place in which democracies share values and interests that are consistently opposed to those of non-democracies.  The truth is that on each of the issues that McCain mentioned, various democracies — the United States, Europe, India for example — have drastically different interests and positions. And the United States’ interests are often closely aligned with those of very undemocratic states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE.   

Yesterday, in a desperate effort to stop worrying about the prospect of a Conservative majority, I went for run along the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey. Perhaps it was the foul odour of the Hudson River, or the intense rhythm of “Eye of the Tiger” blaring from my IPod, but I just couldn’t rid my mind of these thoughts. Harper was haunting me — what would he do with the power of a majority government?

As I ran some stairs at the Stevens Institute, my thoughts turned to the death penalty. Now I’m not going to argue that Harper will bring back the death penalty in Canada; he’s too savvy to do something so provocative.

Instead, Harper will exploit executive power to implement a pro-capital punishment policy, particularly in the context of foreign affairs. He’ll do it through the backdoor and most Canadians won’t even notice. By the time they do, Canada’s decades-old opposition to capital punishment will be reduced to hypocrisy. Let’s call this plan Death by Stealth.

If Stephen Harper gets a majority government, I’m seriously going to have to re-think my travel plans. I might get detained in a foreign country and the Conservatives might decide, after reading this blog, that I should rot in jail, regardless of the circumstances and regardless of whether my human rights are being violated.

That’s absurd, you say. All Canadians have fundamental rights and the federal government is prepared to go to the mattresses to make sure that they’re respected abroad. So I can relax and enjoy my pina colada. Well, that’s technically true, but the Harper Government has demonstrated that nothing — not even the human rights of Canadian citizens — is beyond politics, meaning that travelling abroad has become a risky propostion.  

Watching last night’s Presidential debate in a local pub, I was suddenly struck by something (not a dart, happily). These guys don’t really disagree on much of anything when it comes to foreign policy.

How is this possible, you may ask. These guys couldn’t be more different, you may say.

Fair enough. But, let’s look at the actual transcript of the debate.

The debate on foreign policy (which followed extensive debate on the financial crisis) consisted of 5 “lead questions”. Here are the questions, and the candidates’ heavily redacted answers. (I have tried to cut out everything that did not directly answer the question posed by the moderator, Jim Lehrer).