Joe Clark’s new book, How We Lead: Canada in a Century of Change, is a weighty tome that shows that there is no love lost between Mr. Clark, a Tory of the old school, and Prime Minister Harper. But, as the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson points out, this volume has all of the excitement of shadow boxing because there is no opponent in the ring.
On the essentials of foreign policy, Clark concedes that the Harper government has done all of the right things. It has moved to embrace the emerging markets of the Asia-Pacific and done a 180 on China after it realized its earlier frisson was pointless and self-defeating.
Following the catastrophic meltdown of the global economy and financial markets in 2008-09, the prosperity agenda move centre-stage to Canada’s international relations as indeed it should have. We were a central player in the G8 and G20 where both the Prime Minister and former Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney played key leadership roles in helping to right a global economy that was listing perilously close to the waterline — an example of “soft power” execution in spades.
The Harper government not only revitalized Canada’s military after years of not-so-benign neglect by a succession of Liberal governments, but stayed the course in a difficult and costly campaign in Afghanistan alongside our key NATO allies. We led in Afghanistan. We also led—in the truest sense of the word—the NATO campaign to unseat Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at a time when America chose to take a backseat role and in the memorable phrase of its President “lead from behind.”
On immigration policy, the Harper government has also done the right thing with a series of reforms that will ensure that Canada not only remains one of the most open and welcoming societies in the world, but will also attract those can make a useful contribution to life of this nation.
Clark is critical of the government on the environment and climate change. But what he fails to mention is that because the Canadian economy is so deeply integrated with the United States we can only move in lock-step with the Americans on carbon reductions. We can chirp all we want, but Washington has both the bark and bite on this one.
Although there is a chapter on Canada-US relations in the book it is largely historical and focused on politics not economics, a serious omission at a time when trade with the US is in decline, the border has been thickened by the heavy hand of regulation under the guise of “security,” a major pipeline initiative that would serve both economies is stymied, and sluggish US growth will impact on our future prosperity. Understating the significance of economic relations is consistent with a view that tries to sidestep the hard fabric of where our interests lie. An aspirational, worldly view, detached from national interest.
It’s also time we stopped our self-flagellation about Kyoto. That package of commitments was all too hastily scripted. Kyoto was not a failure of diplomacy, but rather inept political direction obliging us to sign on for commitments without calculating the costs of compliance. It is why a succession of Liberal and Conservative governments have failed to deliver the goods because Kyoto set a series of unattainable goals without a game plan.
In the interests of full disclosure, we are both friends and admirers of Mr. Clark who served with extraordinary ability as Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs under Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in what was surely the second “golden age” of Canadian diplomacy in the contributions that Canada made to ending apartheid in South Africa, being the first to step up to the plate to deal with famine in Horn of Africa, negotiating a free trade deal with the United States, and preventing a train wreck in the first Gulf War when Brian Mulroney successfully persuaded American President George H.W. Bush not to follow Margaret Thatcher’s advice but to take his case against Saddam Hussein to the United Nations and get its approval.
Mr. Clark was a pivotal player in all of this and represented Canada consistently with dignity and class.
Alas, it pains us to hear the old refrain that Canada has lost its “multilateral vocation” under the Harper government. Yes we lost our bid for a non-permanent seat on the Security Council, but the world did not end nor did the depth of our commitment to that body. We are still the 7th largest contributor to the UN budget. We should be using that leverage to secure the reform of an institution that is fast losing legitimacy and effectiveness on the world stage through its own ineptness in dealing with a succession of global crises of which the Syrian conflagration and humanitarian disaster is but the latest chapter.
The problem is that wherever you look—UN-sponsored negotiations on climate change, UN discussions about the future of the internet, or seemingly mundane but no less vital negotiations on trade in the WTO (World Trade Organization)—global multilateral institutions have hit a brick wall. We need innovative diplomacy to address these and other pressing global challenges.
And there’s the rub. Like so many other recent nostrums about Canada’s place in the world, Mr. Clark is urging us to gaze through a rear view mirror to find direction for the future. Foreign policy is derived more from what we do rather than what we say or with whom and how we consult. It flows best from clear, not fuzzy, leadership.
In the second decade of the 21st century the world has changed. We are living increasingly in what Washington’s Ian Bremmer and David Gordon call a G-zero world—a world where the influence of Western nations is in decline, democratic values have lost their allure, the liberal international order forged out of the ashes of the Second World War is being challenged by emerging powers, and the United States, in particular, is losing its capacity and influence to lead.
Mr. Clark underestimates the scope and scale of global change and a very fluid G-zero world where each nation has to pursue its own interests. Rather than a false choice between hard and soft power, we need to use smart power, which involves the careful calibration and use of both sets of instruments.
Our biggest challenge in this new world is complacency, relying too much on unearned strengths (natural resources, agriculture, etc.) and a failure to marshal them more effectively against objectives that will serve our interests. That is the cold hard truth and the central challenge we wish Mr. Clark had probed more deeply.