Economy & Trade, Headlines, North America

POLITICS-CANADA: U.S. Military Ties Choke Foreign Policy – Critics

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, May 2 2003 (IPS) - Analysts are warning that Canada cannot both integrate its small armed forces with the giant U.S. military machine and maintain an independent foreign policy.

The possibility that the Liberal government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien might drop its long standing opposition to the controversial U.S. missile defence plan for North American is especially alarming, says Michael Byers, a Canadian law professor who teaches at Duke University in the U.S. state of North Carolina.

”This goes to the heart of Canada’s position in the world,” he adds.

Under the plan, land-based interceptor rockets would be deployed to knock ballistic-missile warheads out of the sky before they could hit North America.

While Canada did not join the U.S.-led coalition that attacked Iraq in March, it was one of the first nations to pledge to the ”war against terrorism” and its fleet of six frigates and destroyers make it the fourth largest U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf area.

Byers questions whether Ottawa would have the resources to engage in future United Nations peacekeeping missions in troubled areas of the world that do not fit U.S. priorities – a task on which Ottawa largely constructed its ”peace maker” reputation – and at the same time fall further under the shadow of the U.S. military umbrella.

Canada’s prudence in military affairs is in sharp contrast, continues Byers ”to the view in Washington, where if you have a hammer you use it for every problem rather than see if there are other tools”.

The Chretien government’s possible turnaround on missile defence could be an effort to appease Washington after Iraq, say Byers and former Canadian foreign affairs minister Lloyd Axworthy in an analysis in the ‘Globe and Mail’ newspaper.

”Canada thus has a choice”, they wrote this week. ”Do we hitch our country to the neo-conservative juggernaut, thereby committing ourselves to a self-perpetuating cycle of threats, armed responses and dramatically increased defence budgets?”

”Or do we maintain some foreign policy space of our own, deploying our money, expertise and considerable global reputation on strengthening a multilateral system to control this kind of criminality, and restoring our capacity to contribute to humanitarian and peacemaking missions that address the root causes, including civil conflict, the breakdown of law and order, and egregious violations of human rights?”

Support for continental missile defence would be another move by the Canadian military toward standardising its equipment and strategy with U.S forces.

Other examples include the purchase of laser guided bombs for the country’s CF-18 jet fighters and investing in data collecting technology so military commanders can helping their troops negotiate dangerous and confusing battlefield situations, says Steve Staples, a defence analyst with the Ottawa based Polaris Institute.

”The catch phrase is interoperability. And it has become a major driver in the thinking around the Canadian forces,” Staples adds.

Both Byers and Staples see a lot of value in Canada’s traditional non-aggressive stance in international affairs.

While maintaining defence arrangements with its southern neighbour, Ottawa has historically been more sympathetic towards multilateral institutions like the United Nations, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Kyoto Protocol on climate change than has Washington.

Canada has continued to trade with Cuba to encourage democratic change there rather than participate in a U.S. led-embargo of the government of Fidel Castro.

But Ottawa’s foreign policy independence is jeopardised by the fact that the Chretien government increasingly views its economic security as dependent upon continued expansion of trade liberalisation via the World Trade Organization (WTO), the pending Free Trade Area of the Americas and bilateral trade agreements with the United States and other countries, says Staples.

”This means that the government could easily define the defence of Canada’s national economic security as the defence of globalisation itself,” Staples told IPS, suggesting that the U.S.-led war on terrorism could lead to ”Canadian forces fighting wars to defend corporate investment and interests (in the South)”.

A change in leaders could also hasten the process. Chretien is stepping down early next year and his likely successor, Paul Martin Jr., indicated this week that he favours tighter bonds with Washington.

Other supporters of increased Canada-U.S. economic and military integration are business groups, like the Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE).

Canada and Washington can maintain foreign policy differences but those cannot be allowed to disrupt trade within North America, says CCCE president Thomas d’Aquino.

D’Aquino is urging Canada to support Washington’s controversial missile defence strategy, even though some military experts question its viability and cost. ”We should deploy missile defence because it is going to be deployed, with us or without us. And I would like to have a say, albeit a minor say, on what and how it is going to be deployed over Canadian territory,” d’Aquino told IPS.

But the Canadian public appears to feel differently. According to Staples opinion polls continue to show citizens want the military to participate in peacekeeping and other non-combat roles rather than an upcoming U.N.-mandated mission to Afghanistan.

Ottawa ”wrapped (the mission) around the peacekeeping flag” to inhibit debate about sending 1,000 troops on the NATO mission, says defence analyst Martin Shadwick.

Canada’s involvements in such missions that blur the line between peacekeeping and military engagements are ”inevitable”, adds Shadwick, a political science professor at York University.

But Staples says that Canadians ”may be surprised to learn that (their) government has largely abandoned the UN in its role as a peacekeeper, despite our military’s image and the government’s opposition to the war on Iraq”.