Will the real author of Canadian foreign policy please rise!?

General Rick Hillier, Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, seeking to get the Canadian public’s support for a new offensive role for Canadian troops in Kandahar, Afghanistan, says; “We are a force for good, everything we do is about protecting the weak and vulnerable because they can’t protect themselves. ... We as a country, we as Canadians refuse to accept terrorism and its indiscriminate violence as a way of making change.”

With all due deference to these noble declarations, can Hillier tell us how this rhetoric differs from that used to promote support for the war in Iraq, or were his own comments identical with respect to the Iraq war?

Elsewhere we are told that Gordon O’Connor, Canada’s new Minister of Defence’s first priority is to make sure Canadians understand that the mission in Afghanistan falls in line with Canadian foreign policy and traditional values of peacekeeping around the world.

Sounds like the Canadian public is the recipient of a ‘fait accompli’ since there has never even been a parliamentary debate on flipping from a ‘help protect Afghan citizens mission, primarily in Kabul, to this new ‘smoke out the terrorists’ (insurgents?) offensive in the hills of Kandahar.   As in the US, we are seeing the same rhetorical packaging of support for the troops bundled in with the delivery (foisting?) of foreign policy, ... making it appear that if we do not get on the US-led bandwagon and support the global ‘Good-Guys against the Evil-Ones’ war (better done on someone else’s homeground than one’s own) then we are demeaning our own sons and daughters in the forces, a manipulative tactic which uses those in the service as a political football.   

We haven’t yet sorted out the difference between what is ‘terrorism’ and what is civil insurgency.   Hillier claims that we no longer have the situation where war is undertaken by two belligerents where resolution comes in the form of a peace treaty.  He claims that “we face an enemy that lacks a postal code”.  But the Taliban very recently had a Kabul postal code.  In the wake of US-led post 9/11 retaliatory attacks, this has been replaced by an unlisted ‘rural route’.  In the beginning of 2005, there were reconciliation/power-sharing talks between the Taliban and the US-supported Hamid Karzai government which unfortunately but perhaps not unexpectedly broke off, the more militant Taliban officials vowing to continue their war against the Karzai government and foreign forces.

Amongst the ‘weak and vulnerable’ that Canada will be protecting are those who will be working on the UNOCAL gas pipeline which is to pass right through Kandahar on its way from the Dauletabad gasfield in Turkmenistan, a mere 40 kilometers from the Afghanistan border, on its way to Multan, Pakistan and markets in Pakistan and India.  The US consulting firm of DeGolyer-McNaughton has audited Dauletabad and puts its reserves at 159 trillion cubic feet, roughly THREE TIMES Canada’s TOTAL natural gas reserves of 57 trillion cubic feet (Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers).  The Dauletabad field is on same geological megatrend as the world’s two largest gasfields, the South Pars field in Iran (300 trillion cubic feet) and the North Field in Qatar (270 trillion cubic feet) and the US-interests led pipeline via Afghanistan are likely to ‘short circuit’ gas sales sought by Iran and Russia.

Without mentioning opium production and the long history of CIA and extremist political intrigues that spiderweb the region, might we not question the simplicity with which Hillier portrays this armed offensive intervention by Canada’s “peace-keeping” forces?  And why should Canada’s first offensive action in the US-led war on terror slip through without public and parliamentary debate, particularly when participation in Iraq, promoted in the same terms, was resoundingly rejected by the Canadian public.

General Rick Hillier has a reputation for advocating a modernized Canadian Armed Forces structured around interventions in so-called “failed states” rather than peacekeeping. Hillier not only wants to help out the people of Afghanistan, he wants to give Canadian business a helping hand as well; "I think it's a Team Canada approach that we need," he told the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies. "We need private industry involved ... you want to come in and make money from us, build our camps, fill our contracts or do our maintenance for us and then 10 years later when everything's stabilized and secure you can come and start operating your business.”

Where IS “Canadian” foreign policy being made these days?  Many have had their doubts about where US foreign policy is being made, and as Eisenhower observed, if the public doesn’t take an active interest, you can be sure that the military-industrial complex will manage your foreign policy for you.  Canada hasn’t yet gone as far down that road as its neighbour, and now’s the time to stop the drift.