Categories: World

The new world order

The U.S. says it will do more for its allies, writes Paul Wells, but it wants more, too

by Paul Wells on Monday, February 16, 2009 10:50am - 41 Comments

Until the Georgia war, the greatest source of irritation between the Bush administration and Russia was Bush’s plan to install missile-defence batteries in Poland and the Czech Republic. Vladimir Putin saw the bases as a threat against Russian security and responded with plans to install short-range Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad, directly endangering Poland’s population.

Biden told the Munich audience the Obama administration will keep working on missile defence—but “in consultation with our NATO allies and Russia.” Ivanov said he’d rather see the planned bases in Poland and the Czech Republic scrapped outright, but privately Russian officials welcomed the Americans’ openness to co-operation.

And where was Canada in all this? Not absent, for the first time in a while. Defence Minister Peter MacKay showed up in Munich, making him the first Canadian cabinet minister to attend since the Conservatives were elected in 2006. (Liberal foreign ministers John Manley and Bill Graham both used to attend in their time.)

MacKay is said to be campaigning for the job of secretary-general of NATO, which Jaap de Hoop Scheffer is slated to vacate later this year. Such campaigning, if it takes place, is done sotto voce; European sources interviewed by Maclean’s could not come up with any reliable list of candidates. One senior NATO source said MacKay is highly regarded in the organization for his blunt talk, but as a Canadian with a short CV he has a long way to go in convincing people he can navigate the Byzantine relationship between NATO and the European Union.

Appearing on the same panel as Holbrooke and Petraeus, MacKay pitched Canada as a determined ally that is already implementing the sort of well-coordinated, “whole of government” approach to military and civilian intervention in Afghanistan that the Americans hope to lead.

“We have more to do,” MacKay said, quoting Robert Frost: “Miles to go before we sleep.” He added, “I don’t think we can ever abandon the effort, to have more countries, to have more effort on the ground, until we tip the balance.” And to make sure nobody had any question of his steadfastness, he concluded, “As a country that believes very strongly in this multilateral process, Canada remains very committed.”

What he did not mention, not once, is that the commitment runs until 2011 and that Stephen Harper insists Canada’s military deployment in Afghanistan will substantially end then.

Is that 2011 commitment still firm? MacKay declined a request for an interview. James Appathurai, the NATO spokesman based in Brussels, said he has been told the Obama administration is “looking forward” to the President’s Feb. 19 trip to Ottawa. “They have a number of issues on their agenda. They will share them, of course, with the Canadians; of course it’s not for me to say what they are. But let’s just say they have the trip to Canada firmly in their minds.”

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Tags: Barack Obama, Guantanamo Bay, Joe Biden, The New World Order

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J@ck M!tchell

What a great article.

It does seem to hinge on Pakistan, first politically and then, if all goes well on that front, militarily. I mean, at the moment Pakistan is on both sides, its right hand (ISI) doesn’t care what its left hand (army) is doing or head (government) is thinking — as the Bombay bombings are fresh proof. Anything we could do to help Pakistan’s government regain control of its own local policy would be great, but what exactly can we do? Ceasing to grab short-term advantages via drone bombings might be one step: if it breaks down as one airstrike today vs. one Pakistani division in the field tomorrow, it’s a crazy trade-off. I wonder if Petraeus has full control of US strategy in this: bombing Pakistan doesn’t sound like his style.

Re: Petraeus, I don’t quite grasp why he thinks Afghanistan is so much harder a problem than Iraq was. Admittedly the Tribal Areas are a heck of a lot bigger, in population and size, than Al-Anbar, but the Surge was a success mainly because the US bought off the insurgents’ tribal allies. Wouldn’t the same thing work in the Tribal Areas? Sure, the Pashtuns are rather more addicted to war than the Iraqi tribes, but everybody likes money; and maybe they could be convinced to fight on our side. My uninformed guess is that they must be as tired of the Taliban as the Iraqi tribes were of the 1920 Revolution Brigade and are still supporting them only because they are deeply, and perhaps rightly, suspicious of foreigners. If they were “empowered,” both short-term and long-term, and tribal authority and tribal social structure vindicated and guaranteed by us, we might win them over. One random idea, in case Richard Holbrooke is reading this: recruit a platoon of Western experts in Pushtun epic poetry, for propaganda and diplomacy — the tribes operate in about the same world as Achilles and Hector and it would be useful, as well as courteous, to speak to them in Homeric terms.

http://macleans.ca kc

Jack, my admittedly amateur feel for this is that the surge wont work with the Pashtuns. There isn’t, i assume, the underlayer of western influences that were evidently there in Anbar. The paradox as i see it is that nothing lasting or meaningful can be achieved without tribal authority and social structure being engaged. But is precisely this structure that is most opposd to the wholesale adoption of western ideals and liberal norms. I assume they cannot be defeated – not at any price we are willing to pay – so how to co-opt hem without betraying our stated policy goals, ie: educating girls etc.
The west has always assumed that there is a moderate middle in Pashtun culture, i’m not so sure. In any event suggestions like yrs, using tradition poetry are much to be preferred to our usual defaults: arming and funding an opposing faction that more often then not proves to be a stop-gap, and an immoral and self-defeating one at that.

J@ck M!tchell

Good point, kc. Yes, we’d have to drop our “educating girls” line. IMHO there are lots of good causes around the world as worthy as making Afghan women literate (not that that isn’t a worthy cause); the only thing that can justify the billions we’ve poured and will still pour into Afghanistan is counter-terrorism. I mean, that’s why were there, right? And, as you rightly point out, we can never win over the tribes if we go in there with the stated goal of imposing liberal values on literally the most conservative place on earth. And if we don’t eventually win over the tribes, even by virtue of military conquest (which seems like a tall order), how can we make the Tribal Areas & thus the whole region safe in the long term? Killing all the Pashtuns, or dispersing them Stalin-style? We obviously wouldn’t want to do that. The only alternative seems to me to meet them half-way on values: we’ll accept your medievalism if you don’t try and impose it on the rest of the Muslim world.

http://macleans.ca kc

You see my pt right away. The west may have to make an awful trade-off. You keep yr lunacy under lock and key and local, and we’ll pay lip service to liberal democracy in Afganistan. Was it every thus? Faustian bargains and the lesser of evils. Politics often seems to me to be about the art of the necessary as much as about the possible.

Mulletaur

Don’t think that anybody will be able to bargain with the Taliban – they will never keep to their side of it, only regroup to fight another day. They are fighting to take over, not just to take control of their own lands. They want the big prize. They are pretty close at the moment in Afghanistan and are making progress in Pakistan. Zardari is right about one thing – the Taliban must be wiped out. I don’t think he’s the man for the job, however.
http://macleans.ca kc

Sorry, but i haven’t seen any persuasive evidence that the Taliban are anything other than a bunch of regional thugs, nasty granted, bent on global domination, hardly.
Shenping

Hey, we’re managing it in Alberta. (My university had a special office to help female coop students deal with sexism in the Calgary big oil community . . .) Why not in Afghanistan?

Organisations like the Taliban (or the IRA, or the CPC . . ;) which want to violently transform society will never get the hearts of more than a certain percentage of the population. The trick is to find a way to alienate their supporters from the general population. Trying to counter a group bent on radical transformation with your own radical transformation sounds a little silly. The IRA was beaten with the advent of cell phones, which made it safe for citizens to report them to authority, and the promise of economic prosperity. I think trying to find out what the locals want and selling yourself as a better alternative might work better. If the Taliban looks like the better alternative to us, that must mean we don’t look very good.
keith c.

“Killing all the Pashtuns, or dispersing them Stalin-style? We obviously wouldn’t want to do that.”

We wouldn’t. I wonder when the day is coming when the western powers and Russia will resort to that though. 2040? The Pashtuns are as close to a no-solution people as there are in the world. At some point our descendants that don’t share our squeamishness, humanity and living memory of WWII veterans/ the Holocaust may decide Putin’s Chechnya approach had its merits.

In the absence of that, awful tradeoffs seem inevitable. Unless Shenping brings in the University of Calgary anti-sexism police.

madeyoulook

Excellent article, Paul. From the sound of it, placing Canada as a benign (but not completely insignificant) afterthought in the discussion seems about right.

Much of your piece was on Iran, and I wonder what, if anything of consequence, Canada has to do or say here? All I can come up with is we snuck a few American diplomats out during the hostage crisis and we were ineffectual wimps letting them kill one of our citizens for taking pictures. Does Canada even have a policy towards Iran?

As to the USA wanting more from all allies, and Canada’s current intention to bug out in ’11. I suspect the tone will soon change to “unless Parliament directs otherwise” sneaking into the national conversation. Then watch for Parliament to direct otherwise, if our forces can at all take the stand-down being whisked away like that. I suspect the nationwide swooning up here for President Hope A. Change will soon morph the attitude from “Stop killing innocents for Bush’s other stupid war” to “Let’s hope he notices us. Anything! We’ll do anything! 100,000 more soldiers? To hell with national-service Katimavik, it’s time for a draft!” Well, ok, maybe not that far.

I am more than a little dismayed that some commenters (above) are prepared to negotiate away the emancipation of an oppressed class of humans. There is a difference, friends, between “conservative” and “oppressive.” Can we at least agree not to tolerate medieval thinking, and maybe move things along to, say, late 19th century? Then we can keep gently nudging from there, ok?

J@ck M!tchell

Interesting forecast on our deployment, MYL. I bet you’re right.

Re: negotiating away human rights, I’m not keen on it, but what’s the alternative? What peace settlement will involve the Pushtuns agreeing to give up on oppressive patriarchy? How would it be enforceable, even if it were won? Seems to me the best way to modernise the Tribal Areas is to achieve peace and let cell phones, satellite TV, and hip hop do their thing.

SAB

It wasn’t that along ago that women in Kabul were free to be educated, free to chose whether or not to where a Hijab, were doctors, were professionals. The world can change very fast – in both directions. Afghanistan was evolving before the Taliban….it will again, and we should continue to push for it.

J@ck M!tchell

I’m not talking about “Afghanistan,” I’m talking about the mountains where the Pushtun tribes live.

Shenping

I’m with J@ck here. Going in and promising to enlighten someone, ie “be like us or else”, smacks of, well, colonialism. We’re right, you’re wrong, end of story. Misquoting Churchill, it’s worse than wrong — it’s stupid. Let’s look at the track record of this approach. Hmmm . . . Africa, post-slavery American race relations, Native American religious schools . . . I could go on, but why?

This kind of change has to be fought for by the people who will benefit from it, at a grassroots level. It needs to develop its own heroes & legends, its own Rosa Parks, its own Martin Luther King Jr., etc.

Critical Reasoning

Stephen Harper should have appointed John Manley to the Senate (as a Liberal Senator, naturally) , and then he should have made Manley Minister of Foreign Affairs. It would have been a nice bipartisan gesture, and it would ensure that Canada is represented by a more credible figure on the world stage.

I realize one would need to be living in the world of fairy tales and unicorns to believe that this scenario is even remotely plausible, but it’s still a nice dream.
luggnutz

What kind of koolaid drinker wrote this? There’s no new world order! What are you guys talking about? Everything is just fine, Canadian military men are treated just like all others as per Mr Kissenger “Militarymen are dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy!”. Go back to sleep…..PLEASE!
uncleeddie

google New World Order. You see a conspiracy theory. Click news and you get hundreds of articles. Orwell didn’t have a clue just how brainwashed idiot Canadians can be.
Mulletaur

Good article.

I become more and more convinced that, sooner or later, there is going to be war with Iran. The later this takes place, the more likely it is to be a nuclear war. There isn’t much scope for a strike at a specific target like Osirak. No matter what happens, it will be hard to contain. Partnership with the Russians would be great, but the price will be high – for us, for Russians and most of all for all those states on Russia’s borders which used to be part of the Soviet empire. What a nightmare.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are a sideshow in comparison, albeit a very important one. Petraeus may think it’s going to be hard work, but he has shown his abilities and has valuable experience. You may disagree with Bush’s Iraq policy amongst many others, but one thing you can say about him is that he never gave up on Iraq – he kept on trying until something worked. I just wonder if Obama has the same determination. Somehow I don’t think so.

Critical Reasoning

I disagree, Mulletaur. I think that a nuclear war with Iran is extremely unlikely, given that their ability to effectively deploy their two 1950′s technology nuclear warheads is rather questionable.

Mulletaur

Mmm, don’t know about that. They could have the technical ability to put only Pop Tarts as the payload on the missile they used to launch the satellite, everybody would still have to take them seriously. I guess that’s what they wanted to achieve from the launch. Pure terrorism.

J@ck M!tchell

Apart from whether there will be or need be a war, do you think we could pull it off? How much can air supremacy really achieve? And in terms of ground forces, the West is a) already stretched, b) reluctant to take casualties; and Iran itself is three times larger than Iraq, about 10 times more defensible, and never had its conventional forces knocked out as Saddam’s were in the Gulf War. I mean, sure, we could blow up all the tanks, but could we really secure a dozen nuclear development sites? Meanwhile, what happens to Iraq and Afghanistan? I mean, I hate to be just a pure pessimist but it seems to me the days of the West being able to clobber a third-rate power are drawing to a close.

Mulletaur

I don’t think anybody could pull it off, that’s the thing – not the Israelis and certainly not the Western powers. And the terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and others that Iran has been funding and supporting would feel completely unconstrained once an attack has taken place. I think the invasion of Iraq by the United States has directly contributed to this situation where Iran feels so threatened it has no choice but to acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. I am not talking about the leadership in Iran so much as public opinion.

Obama will pull the U.S. out of Iraq in time and some sort of working equilibrium will set in there, at least for a while. Barring any other foreign policy problems which distract attention from Af-Pak, Obama will focus U.S. efforts there initially. But something else more important is likely to come along – Biden was right about this, somebody is going to challenge the United States and Obama up front in his mandate. And I don’t think Obama is going to get much help from the Europeans or even Canada with Af-Pak, but let’s see what happens after Obama comes up here for his tea break with Harper.

Obama Sucks

Wow these wacko liberals are some scary bad dudes.

http://macleans.ca kc

I think SDA is looking for you. Apparently their moron quotient is getting a bit low.

http://noneasyet dun roberts

*Apparently their moron quotient is getting a bit low.*
as you would know quite well, Kc sunshine. read any German philosophers yet?

http://macleans.ca kc

Dumb Roberts ever the oh so original wit.

Shenping

Attack of the clones . . . or maybe “Bring on the Empty Horses” would be a better reference.

cool guy

i know one thing! one thing must be done for sure, is not allow israel hit the nuclear targets in iran! these would start the third world war! no quastion about it! america has a big say in these, israel says it would not tolorate nuclear iran, and would hit the sites with or without ok from the world comunity! well they better think twice, we all will pay the price! and for those of you who thinks that iran cant retaliate, i wanna say wake up and smell the coffe! plus iran has russia and china on its side, whom have invested heavily into the country! world war peoplke!
NickD

Infowars.com/Prisonplanet.tv/ObamaDeception.net. Google Loose Change, and Endgame. WAKE UP PEOPLE. You sound like intellectiuals, now act like it. Do you’re research. DOWN WITH THE NWO!
JimD

“…..chatted for long minutes with Henry Kissinger” tells you all you need to know. And you wonder why the Iranian diplomat might be a less than convinced at the sincerity of Biden’s speech. A lot of journalists and news organizations seem to be using the term “New World Order” as if its a 21st century version of Glasnost for the world. Anyone seen “War, Inc.” yet? We’re only a couple of years away.
Shenping

I don’t think it’s possible to use the term “New World Order” for current events without a certain irony, given that it’s been “New” for about 90 years or so (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_world_order, http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/new_world_order_hgwells.htm). It was supposed to refer to a system of international cooperation under the League of Nations, which, well, led to WWII & Hitler’s “New Order” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Order_(political_system). Now it’s the name for a paleoconservative conspiracy theory where progressives & liberals want to take over the world and remake it in their image.

Shenping

Hmm . . . links messed up. I don’t think Hitler was responsible for 80′s Europop. I don’t think the editor will parse that link properly, but here’s the first one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_world_order.

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Gaunilon

Boy you folks must feel dumb now that Obama’s own committee has found Gitmo to violate neither international law nor the Geneva Conventions. I’ll be interested to see if he really does shut it down and move the prisoners to Bagram for more of the same, or if he just forgets about that promise.
Mike T.

Well if the last seven odd years were wasted, I’d say its pretty clear that on the more harm than good scale, we’ve decidedly tipped towards the former.

Time to come home. If they’re still able to fly airplanes into buildings, we’ll figure out the appropriate response when it happens.
Syed

It is interesting that too many people are bent upon educating women in Afghanistan and liberalizing pashtuns for a wrong reason. If there was no 9/11 and no Bin Laden ,I don’t think any of those champions of liberal thought who are bent upon crushing medieval thinking would even be talking about If half the population of Afghanistan had vanished by famine they would not even spend a fraction of the money they have spent so far . the unfortunate but true message is that violence does something after all. Too much talk about Iran in the article . I guess that a law that does not allow any one to believe that holocaust did not happen is just as medieval as taliban, In US ,Canada and Europe they run after any one with a hammer who dare criticize Israel on their war crimes. Is it any different from Taliban running after any one who disagrees with them? the sad fact is that America is super power because it scared the world into submission just because they dare use a deadly weapon that even the evil Russians did not dare. You can make fun of of Iranian representative but can not deny the truth . Now they teach human rights to the entire world. There is a reason why nations around the world are tempted to have nukes . Because we have failed to respect those who do no have power ,we have allowed those to perish who did not have power, and the attempts to stop Iran from acquiring weapons are as futile as the efforts of Egyptian emperor to kill Moses. It is funny how Americans threaten Iran to obliterate them the Iranians respond , Ok we are ready to fight come on ! Then Americans come back saying we will give you second third and fourth chance that Iranians are not even asking for
People are trying too hard to fix taliban and that i think is problem, leave them alone and they will figure out themselves that they are primitive and insignificant. all the major armies of the world Trying to crush them gives them real power.
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