Canada-U.S. Relations

History shows that requests for changes to Canadian defence policy are more likely to succeed if made in private rather than in public.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was bold to publicly call on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to reconsider his decision to withdraw the Canadian Forces from Afghanistan in 2011. Whether her approach was the most effective way to convince Ottawa to alter its plans is another question.

Historically, public requests for changes to Canadian defence policy by great power leaders on Canadian soil have rarely achieved their ultimate aims.

Canadians are exceptionally sensitive to defence policy advice from major allies, and it is therefore wise to seek their support with greater tact than Clinton exhibited.

Just over sixty-five years ago, in the later stages of the Second World War, the British ambassador to the United States, Edward Halifax, gave a speech in Toronto that called on Canada to embrace greater Commonwealth strategic cooperation. Working alongside governments in Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, he claimed, Ottawa could maximize its international influence. Together, the Commonwealth states had the resources necessary to compete with the superpowers.

Halifax’s ideas were neither new nor particularly provocative. Nonetheless, they ignited a political crisis across the country. Although some Canadians were sympathetic to Commonwealth cooperation, others saw it as an attempt by a foreign representative to impose his country’s strategic interests upon them.

With his voting public dangerously split, the most successful prime minister in Canadian history, William Lyon Mackenzie King, almost immediately denounced the ambassador’s ideas in the House of Commons. Canada made its own decisions in world affairs, he argued proudly, and it cooperated with the entire international community, not just with the Commonwealth.

When King ended his remarks, any chance of closer Commonwealth in any form, at that time and in the near future, was effectively over.

More recently, having unofficially agreed to participate in a United States plan for North American ballistic missile defence, Prime Minister Paul Martin refused to follow through on his commitment after President George W. Bush made a public call for Canadian support.

Martin had already painted his Conservative opponents as too close to the Americans, so he could not afford even the appearance of subservience to Washington, regardless of what to most analysts were the clear benefits of greater bilateral defence collaboration.

It follows that, however reasonable, Clinton’s specific suggestions as to how NATO might best put 600 Canadian Forces personnel to use post-2011 are no longer an option for the current government.

Under the unwritten rules of Canadian defence policy, even the perception of being forced into a decision by a more powerful ally is unacceptable to a public whose nationalist insecurities can quickly spin out of control.

Just like the prime ministers that came before him, Stephen Harper recognizes that when it comes to world affairs, he must tilt to the political centre and maintain domestic harmony at virtually any cost.

In this case, that means recognizing that the Canadian public that has a limited understanding of the strategic goals in Afghanistan, and of Canada’s role in achieving them. Moreover, what the public does seem sure of is that too many soldiers have lost their lives, and that Canada has already sacrificed more than a majority of its NATO allies.

For Canada to extend its military contribution to the Afghanistan campaign beyond 2011, a Conservative government in Ottawa must be able to present its decision as a Canadian response to a global need, not an American one.

At least for now, Secretary Clinton has made that all but impossible.

Some might argue that Clinton’s speech will force the Canadian political elite to discuss an issue that they have tried to ignore. That without it, there would be no chance of a reasoned dialogue about the links between the situation in Afghanistan and Canada’s national interests.

And perhaps they are right. But even if that dialogue takes place, when it is over, the optics will remain problematic for a Canadian prime minister who has already faced charges from the opposition of being too much in the pocket of the U.S. administration.