John Manley, our foreign minister, says that we are "at war".
I’d like to know how it is that we came to be at war, and with whom we are at war. To the best of my knowledge the House of Commons did not hold a debate followed by a declaration of war such as happened when we went to war against Nazi Germany on September 10, 1939.
The word "war" has become so elastic that we have wars on poverty and against drugs. Now we have a war against terrorism. If wars are all around us, what of the "national interest", a concept much spoken of in the past in Canada that has now grown musty from lack of use. It strikes me that the notion that we are at war requires us to reconsider the concept of national interest, which may turn out to be useful to us after all.
If we are at war, exactly how is it in Canada’s national interest to be at war?
Many voices have been heard crying out that if America is at war, then we are at war, as though America’s paramount interests are automatically ours. The case has been made that America is the central beacon of democracy and freedom in the world and that the attack on America was an attack on democracy and freedom everywhere. I think it is much more plausible that America was attacked because it is the world’s only superpower and it is deeply involved in the power politics of the Middle East.
The heinous crime against the people of the United States appears to have been committed by the terror network of Osama bin Laden who like Saddam Hussein, was once a protégé of the United States. Bin Laden is the voice of a fascist movement whose goal is the purification of the Islamic world.
The role the United States plays in the world, with its military, economic, political and cultural impact in virtually every region, means that the U.S. is going to trigger feedback against itself, and sometimes that feedback will take a virulent form. The U.S. is not the first great power to feel such feedback. The centuries old British role in Ireland provoked terrorist attacks on the British mainland that still continue from time to time. Similarly, the historic role of the Netherlands in Asia provoked violent attacks a couple of decades ago in the Netherlands itself. And the same thing has happened to France as a result of its colonization of Algeria.
Canadians are going to have to think through their attitude to the wars America will fight in coming decades because of its position in the world. This is not the first such conflict and it won’t be the last. Interestingly, we were in much the same situation a century ago when a great debate took place in Canada about the extent to which we should go to war when Britain was at war. The debate grew intense after Britain became involved in the Boer War in South Africa in 1899. The issue was this: just because Britain was at war---Canada was a self-governing dominion in the British Empire---did that mean that Canada was at war.
Some argued that Britain, our Mother Country, was the greatest civilizing force in the world and that Canada ought to be at her side when she was at war with the opponents of the Empire. Others argued that Canadians should be responsible only for the defence of Canadian territory, that a war five thousand miles away in South Africa was Britain’s business, not ours. The Prime Minister of the day, Wilfrid Laurier, came up with a compromise solution. He sent several contingents of Canadian volunteers to fight in South Africa. Attacked by both pro and anti imperialists, Laurier’s solution satisfied neither side. In frustration, the Prime Minister declared that he was neither an imperialist nor an anti-imperialist, he was a Canadian.
Now we have to figure out to what extent we should involve ourselves in the wars in which the United States becomes embroiled.
In his speech to the U.S. Congress, President George W. Bush declared that countries are either on the side of America or on the side of the terrorists. The Bush administration is treating the conflict as a successor to the Cold War, one to which all U.S. allies should commit themselves for perhaps decades to come. Washington wants Canadians, among others, to alter their understanding of the world itself to accept the need to follow American leadership unquestioningly.
And that takes us back to what kind of war this really is. Terrorism, a weapon of the powerless against the powerful, is always the product of the wider social and political setting. As long as the causes that give rise to it remain, crushing one network of terrorists is likely to be followed by the rise of another. What looks on the surface like a war against terrorism turns out to be a much broader struggle involving the societies on whose anger the terrorists feed. The Americans will deploy force and threats, but they will also unleash covert operations, aid to shaky governments, bribery, and attempts to shape political opinion in the Islamic world. They may end up helping create new regional strong men, in the way they once sponsored Hussein and bin Laden. It will be a murky and bloody conflict in which the United States seeks to maintain its influence in a crucial region of the world.
When New York and Washington were attacked, Canadians were quick to respond with aid and an outpouring of grief. But it makes no sense for us to blindly follow the Bush administration into a gigantic power struggle in the Middle East that has the potential to trigger a real war, not just a shadow war against terrorism. Like all free people, Canadians abhor terrorism, but the Bush administration’s agenda for fighting it is far from being the only agenda.
In the coming weeks and months, as the U.S. response to the terrorist assaults and the responses to the U.S. response unfold, it could prove extremely valuable to preserve an independent Canadian voice on the issue. Canadians stayed out of the Vietnam War, which allowed us at times to play an important role as a moderating voice in favour of peace. Not least, staying out of the conflict preserves the lives of Canadians, something no Canadian government should ever squander lightly.
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