Greg Quinn: Canada's allies won't like Carney's kowtowing to Trump
Canada's reputation in allied capitals has been slowly recovering under the new PM. He shouldn't go out of his way to squander that.
By: Gregory Quinn
That Prime Minister Mark Carney found it necessary to apologize to U.S. President Donald Trump for television ads quoting Ronald Reagan’s anti-tariff views, ads that were run in U.S. TV markets and paid for by the government of Ontario, is something that was noticed far beyond North America’s shores.
Not in a good way.
I am, quite frankly, dumbfounded by such an apology. What in the world was PM Carney thinking? It will do nothing to mollify the president. Instead, Trump will no doubt take this capitulation as proof that his pressure — and abuse — achieves results. The prime minister should be ashamed of himself, and his advisors even more so if they encouraged this apology.
The message this sends to Canada’s friends and allies around the world is equally poor. At a time when Carney is globe-trotting to drum up new business for Canada, and with some success, we are treated to the demeaning spectacle of him kowtowing to Trump. And for what — for Premier Ford daring to tell the truth?
I doubt this will have gone down well in the corridors of power among certain allies, who will surely understand that such an approach is unlikely to produce any real benefit for Canada. Instead, it will be seen as a sign of weakness and, more importantly, will cast doubt in their minds about how much they can trust Carney and, by extension, Canada. What is to stop him whispering something confidential in Trump’s ear, or disparaging them to Trump behind their backs?
The United States is already increasingly seen as an untrustworthy ally. Canada surely does not want to be placed in the same category.
Indeed, Canada’s reputation as a reliable and strong partner has been building in recent months. Carney’s initial firm response to Trump was well-received in allied capitals. His clear opposition to the bizarre suggestion that Canada become the 51st state has shown the country in a good light — even if some folks inside Canada seem oddly amenable to such a notion.
More importantly, Carney’s commitment to actually spending proper amounts of money on defence has demonstrated that Canada is ready and willing to step up in a way it hasn’t for years — putting its money where its mouth is after the Trudeau era of fine words but little action.
At the same time, Canada seems to have realized that lecturing the world about what it should do — again, we’re back to Trudeau — is not the way to make friends and influence people. So long, “feminist foreign policy.” Pretty speeches don’t replace action; in Canada’s case, especially under the former prime minister, they’ve underlined the lack of it. You need to be in the game, fully committed, not standing on the sidelines taking the moral high ground.
This all suggests the Canadian Armed Forces have a bright future ahead of them (notwithstanding many comments about whether the procurement system is up to the job). That is something many of us welcome. Canada is back, and many of us are glad to have you in these trying times.
But this sort of positive momentum can be undone in a second by a careless word. Or an apology to the man wrecking the Western alliance without apparent cause of strategy.
Some might say I am over-egging the pudding or making a mountain out of a molehill. But words matter, and words are remembered. If Carney’s first instinct, upon seeing what Ford had done, was to apologize for it, what else should we expect from him?
No wonder Trump and his ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, think bullying and name-calling work when this was Carney’s response to a simple act of truth-telling — a response that, I fear, failed to account for the wider message being sent: one of weakness.
Signs of weakness are seized upon by others, and will only make matters worse in the long run. Carney and his administration need to think carefully about how to rectify this mistake — how to make clear to Canada’s allies that this is not the beginning of a weaker, more deferential approach to the United States. Indeed, they must make it clear this was a one-off, done for whatever reason.
Only then can those allies focus on the positives, and perhaps put to rest the nagging doubt of unreliability.
Greg Quinn, OBE, is a former British diplomat who has served in the former Soviet Union, United States, Canada and the Caribbean, in addition to postings in London. He now runs his own consultancy business: Aodhan Consultancy Ltd.
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Canada's "allies" have been largely silent while the Americans rat fuck us. Forgive me if I think this criticism rings hollow.
Was it "weak"? Who gives a shit if it works in the long run. Like it or not, Canada has an 8000+ KM border with the Americans. We don't have the luxury to tell them to fuck off.
Sophistry from a former representative of the United Kingdom, a group who grovelled their way to a trade deal with Mr. Trump. At no time during the annexation hoax did our putative allies publicly support the post-nation state. The economies of Britain, Germany and France are flat lining, a situation that is only going to get worse. Strengthening our alliance with Europe is pointless, as it is a lost cause, so Mr. Carney's apology, while poorly received, is understandable. Geopolitics Rules OK.
"Trump will no doubt take this capitulation as proof..." If the author could predict the most capricious of world leaders, he would not be writing for The Line. With friends like these...