Canada balks on Iraq effort: Amid some debate, a resistance rises to the US demands

By Colin Nickerson, Boston Globe, 2 February 2003

OTTAWA—The country that depends most upon the United States for its prosperity and national security has become the dithering ally, its top politicians offering vague and often wildly contradictory statements as to whether Ottawa will back a US -led military campaign against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

How confusing is Canada’s stance on the looming war?

After Prime Minister Jean Chretien spoke to reporters on the issue recently, the Toronto Star ran a Page One headline proclaiming, Chretien supports US push for war. The same day, a banner headline across the front page of the Globe and Mail read, PM to Bush: Hold off on war.

Canada’s waffling has added another layer of frost to a relationship that has cooled markedly amid trade disputes, disagreements over how to guard the continent against terrorism, and—perhaps most critically—the view that the country can maintain its sovereignty only by refusing to support US foreign policy.

The United States and Canada remain each other’s most important trading partners, by far. And the bonds of blood and culture are as powerful as ever. But on the government-to-government level, relations between Ottawa and Washington seem to be at their lowest ebb in four decades—with Chretien barely bothering to disguise his personal dislike for President George W. Bush.

There is a real chill at the top of the relationship, said Joseph T. Jockel, professor of Canadian Studies at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York. Chretien’s Liberal Party government tends to be more nationalist. Chretien himself has not paid a lot of attention to maintaining the relationship. And many Canadians are becoming more mistrustful of the US.

Canada only reluctantly, and at the last moment, committed troops to the US-led campaign against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And soon after 750 soldiers of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry arrived in Kandahar, four were killed in a friendly fire attack by US fighter jets. The accident shocked Canadians but drew little notice in the United States.

Meanwhile, many Canadians deeply resent what they perceive as heavy-handed US attempts to force changes in Canadian immigration and border policies as part of the war on terrorism. And the two countries are locked in an unusually ugly dispute over soft-wood lumber that has forced closure of dozens of Canadian mills and has cost thousands of jobs.

So far, Chretien has refused to say whether Canada will join a US-led military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader, without full approval from the United Nations.

But his Cabinet appears to be deeply divided between a small pro-US clique, led by the deputy prime minister, John Manley, and those who say Canada should follow the examples of France and Germany and refuse to support a US-led war. Polls indicate that roughly half of all Canadians oppose going to war with Iraq without unequivocal sanction from the UN Security Council.

Manley insisted in a news conference on Thursday that there is no policy rift, just a variety of views. But in recent weeks, he has gone out of his way to warn against growing anti-American sentiment in Canada.

>From a military point of view, Canada’s participation in a war against Iraq would mean little. Ottawa has slashed spending on its armed forces by nearly 25 percent since the end of the Cold War, and its once-proud military, which played a vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany, is now probably incapable of conducting major combat operations. It lacks the airlift capacity to fly soldiers and equipment to trouble spots.

Nonetheless, Washington very much wants a strong show of support from its traditional allies, in advance of any decision by the UN on war against Iraq.

The American sheriff likes to ride with a posse, Jockel said. The US attaches great significance to going to war with allies—even when their military contribution is only token.

A high-ranking US official said that Ottawa’s support matters very much to the White House both because of Canada’s international stature and because of its name recognition among Americans who care about world opinion. Americans see Canadians as a people who share common values, democratic traditions, and way of life, he said on condition of anonymity. So Canadian support possesses much more symbolic significance than, say, support from Turkey or Spain.

In hot parliamentary debate last week, Canadian politicians were often bitterly divided over joining an American war.

George Bush is very trigger-happy, said Benoit Serre, a Liberal member of Parliament. He is making the world upset.

But conservative opposition parties charged that fence-straddling by the Chretien government is endangering relations with a country it cannot afford to offend. Eighty percent of all Canadian exports go to US markets.

Our foot-dragging is costing the country a loss of diplomatic credit in Washington, said Stephen Harper, leader of the Canadian Alliance, the largest opposition party in Parliament.

He said Canada should be embarrassed to see Britain, Australia, and others pledge support for military action against Iraq while Ottawa hems and haws. We should be at the front of the parade, not the back of the parade.

Some analysts say that the real problem is not so much Canada’s internationalist principles but Chretien’s refusal to take a clear stand one way or the other—combined with what they see as the holier-than-thou posturing of many Canadian leaders.

It’s not so much that Canada is for or against US policies, wrote Jefrrey Simpson, a columnist for the Globe and Mail. It’s more that Canada cannot make up its mind, or delays so long, or backs the US with what a Canadian diplomat has accurately called ‘calculating calculation.’ These habits are layered with that reflexive and, to US ears, intensely irritating and totally groundless blather about Canada’s moral superiority.