Will Canada Play Nice With Other Countries?

Harper needs to learn that true friendship is about hard truths, not self-interest.

In a recent comment on his vision for Canadian foreign policy, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said, “We know where our interests lie and who our friends are, and we take strong, principled positions in our dealings with other nations” – enemies, presumably – “whether popular or not.” It is too early to say how this claim will translate into concrete foreign policy, but it’s a worrying sign that Harper doesn’t seem to understand what friendship means, and that he hasn’t learned much since 9-11 about dealing with enemies, either. Aligning friendship with interest, and enmity with principle, is a dangerous mistake. We must also be principled with our friends, and pursue our interests thoughtfully in relation to our enemies.

Treating enemies solely according to “principle” is a problem for three reasons. First, if we treat our enemies according to principle alone, we risk becoming brutal toward them for the sake of preserving our principles, including the freedom, toleration, and rule of law for which Canada has stood – in principle, though not always in practice. Second, slavish adherence to principle can make us brutal toward our own people when they begin to question our attempts to preserve those principles. Lastly, adherence to principle in dealing with enemies can give rise to costly and unnecessary strategic errors that harm our interests.

The U.S. domestic and international responses to 9-11 taught us all of these things. In the name of freedom and toleration, innocent citizens of foreign countries – including Canadian citizens Maher Arar – were incarcerated, tortured, and sometimes killed in countries that conveniently lacked the freedoms for which the U.S. claimed to fight. Moreover, the chill toward – and occasional violence against – those on the political and academic left who challenged the conduct of the “war on terror” showed an abandonment of principle at home. Finally, the foreign incursions and invasions launched after 9-11 – the legacy of which continues, and is even being expanded, today – have won the U.S. few friends abroad, and have deepened enmities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, mostly recently, Pakistan, in exchange for no clear strategic benefit. Canada ought to learn these lessons well – especially if Harper envisions a more assertive Canadian foreign policy.

The problem with Harper’s view of friendship is more complicated. He neatly aligns the pursuit of Canadian interests with the cultivation of international friendships: Our friends can be useful as we pursue our ends. But that is an impoverished understanding of friendship. Friends should not just be useful; they should also be admired and loved, and they should challenge us as much as we challenge them. They should not be inert tools that we employ when it suits us.

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Source: The Mark