Chrétien deserves credit for trying to forestall war

www.globeandmail.com By MICHAEL DEN TANDT Thursday, March 6, 2003 - Page B2 Closing Markets Thursday, Mar. 6

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By rights, Jean Chrétien should have left politics years ago. The fact that he's still ensconced at 24 Sussex Dr., midwife to an era of renewed spending on a grab-bag of tangential "legacy" projects, is proof positive that Canada desperately needs a credible opposition.

Having said that, only the willfully blind could fail to notice that the Prime Minister is doing a good job these days at managing -- saints have mercy -- the critically important Canada-U.S. relationship.

Yes, that's right: He of the intemperate press aide, the yankee-bashing MP, the sclerotic military, and the frankly critical foreign policy speeches.

On this particular file, the man is doing a good job -- possibly even a great job. If he keeps it up, he may even manage to be remembered for this, rather than craven power-seeking.

How can this be? It's very simple. U.S. President George W. Bush's manic determination to invade Iraq, alone if necessary, regardless of costs or consequences, is demonstrably reckless and dangerous.

It has the potential to destabilize the world and torpedo its fragile economy.

The Prime Minister has opposed that policy, repeatedly and publicly, with very little ambiguity. Furthermore, his so-called "Canada compromise" is the closest thing that's emerged to a solution to the diplomatic impasse that threatens to destroy the United Nations and the Atlantic alliance.

In working toward a realistic, peaceful resolution of the Iraq crisis, however slim and dwindling the chances of success may be, he is in agreement with the majority of Canadians, and Americans too for that matter.

But, with Canada's particular economic and strategic interests in mind -- $2-billion a day in cross-border trade -- he's tended to frame his opposition in the language of a deeply concerned friend, as opposed to a fierce or resentful critic.

Mr. Chrétien's speech to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last month was a case in point.

"I am convinced that working through the United Nations," he said, "if at all possible, as difficult and as frustrating as it sometimes can be, will not only immeasurably strengthen the hand of the United States but also of those around the world who want to support it."

Whatever the Prime Minister may feel in his heart, that's not the language of an anti-American. Neither is it the language of a lapdog.

For the most part, Mr. Chrétien's strategy has worked. Mr. Bush is still talking to him. So is French President Jacques Chirac, Mr. Bush's nemesis at the UN. And 84 per cent of Canada's exports, including $10-billion or so a year in lumber, are still flowing south. The sky has not fallen.

To hear the Prime Minister's domestic critics tell it, his Iraq policy is both shameful and impossibly oblique, as well as a grave threat to Canada's interests.

Andrew Coyne fumes in the National Post that Mr. Chrétien has "taken no position that might be mistaken for a policy." Don Martin, writing in the same publication, frets that the Prime Minister has cross-scheduled a Calgary speech on May 8 with one at the same time, in the same city, by Barbara Bush, the First Mother. Heavens. Might this not draw the President's ire? And Mr. Martin is only half joking.

Underlying all this handwringing is the assumption, sometimes voiced, sometimes not, that a wrathful United States might crush Canada's booming economy, anytime it chose, simply by locking down the border.

That assumption is misguided. It ignores a plethora of facts -- most of which Mr. Chrétien pointed out in his Chicago speech, but almost none of which were reported in Canadian press accounts of it. For example, Canada is the largest foreign market for 38 U.S. states; buys more U.S. products than all 15 European Union countries combined; and supplies 17 per cent of U.S. crude imports, more than either Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

In other words, a healthy American economy absolutely requires an open Canada-U.S. border. To be sure, security trumps the economy, to an extent. But if it ever came to turning down the heat and turning off the lights in Syracuse, N.Y., the definition of security would change, and quickly.

To his credit, Mr. Chrétien knows this. He mentions Canada's energy stats in every U.S. speech, and has done so for months. That may be one reason why he hasn't shied away from pressing Mr. Bush, and strongly at that, to avoid unilateralism. He knows a pre-emptive U.S. conquest of Iraq is not in Canada's interests, or anyone else's. And he likewise knows that, should Mr. Bush ever wish to punish Canada economically for its pacifist stance, he can't. He'd be crippling his own country as well.

Is it crass, disloyal, to speak in such blunt terms about Canada's greatest friend? One could as easily ask whether it's disloyal for Mr. Bush to brush aside the legitimate concerns of every important U.S. ally of the past 50 years. He's playing hardball, in the service of what he sees as U.S. needs. Mr. Chrétien, in remarkably subtle fashion, is doing the same for Canada. Good for him.