Opinion | Canada's copycat foreign policy—a disaster in the making
By Philip Yeung, university teacher
PKY480@gmail.com
Canada's long-awaited Indo-Pacific Strategy is a bitter disappointment. It is a foolish document. Despite its noble-sounding words, it is a warmed-up version of a fruitless and failed approach. Coiled within its rhetoric is a coded anti-China message.
China remains unnamed, but is clearly the elephant in the room. Canada's focus on "national security, respect for international law and human rights, democratic values…" is another swipe at the Chinese dragon. You don't have to read between the lines to know that China is the unmistakable target of this strategy. The rest of it about boosting ties with regional partners is just window dressing.
Despite the fanfare, there is no recalibration of its disastrous China policy. Instead, Canada is doubling down on a past blunder. Its biggest mistake is in overestimating Canada's capability—trying to play David against Goliath, except David doesn't have a sling. Or as a Chinese spokesperson puts it, Canada is "biting off more than it can chew". Without engaging China, Canada can only stage a sideshow with minor players. While India looms large, it has a nasty history of gobbling up its neighbors. Just ask Goa and Sikkim.
Far from redefining its own international position, Canada is telling the world that its foreign policy has been colonized by the US, turning this once proud nation with its splendid neutrality into nothing but an American vassal state.
For decades, Canada and China used to enjoy a cordial and constructive relationship until it was abruptly derailed by the calamitous Huawei CFO episode. Under Justin Trudeau's weak and bumbling leadership, Canada sleep-walked into a deadly trap set by the unhinged Trump, a trap no other US ally would touch with a ten-foot pole. Canada emerged with its national dignity bruised and battered. Trump played Trudeau for a sucker.
This strategy might as well have been drafted by the US State Department. Even when talking about trade, it shamelessly borrows loaded US language such as "rule-based trade", as if China is guilty of violating trade norms, when it is the US that has been disrupting the supply chain with crazy sanctions and punitive tariffs.
Canada obviously hasn't learned its lesson; it compounds its mistake by a stubborn refusal to undo the damage. Insecure Trudeau considers admitting an error a sign of weakness. Any government incapable of learning from past mistakes, is condemned to repeat them. Its Indo-Pacific Strategy looks and sounds disgracefully identical to America's Indo-Pacific alliance. Is Canada's foreign policy now a sub-branch of US external affairs?
Canada is indeed a Pacific nation. But by any stretch of geographical imagination, it is not an Indo-Pacific nation. The US has already cajoled India, Japan and Australia into the so-called Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Why is Canada poking its nose into this cauldron by cloning another Indo-Pacific coalition? At best, this is over-egging the pudding; at worse, licking America's boots.
Canada is pumping over $720 million to bulk up its Indo-Pacific naval presence and increase its Canadian Armed Forces participation in regional military exercises---in other words, more money for more saber-rattling that is calculated to provoke China, not prevent military conflict. It is an expensive exercise in futility and folly, with Canada parroting America's China encirclement policy and going out looking for trouble.
It defies Canada's long-established non-militaristic tradition. It is known to the world as a peace-maker. This wrong-headed strategy is boxing Canada into a corner.
Canada is respected as a mediator between prickly adversaries. Now it is getting entangled in the nasty US-China rivalry. Canada's recent decision to send a frigate to take part in patrolling the South China Sea is a foolish, brain-dead, meaningless move. The only thing it has achieved is raising tensions in the region.
Canada is abandoning its role in tempering American excesses. Justin's father had the backbone to stand up to its southern neighbor by forging an independent foreign policy, for which he was called an "asshole" by Richard Nixon. The son lacks the manhood to say no to his American bully. He too was subjected to insults and name-calling, with Trump dismissing Trudeau junior as "weak and stupid". Instead of summoning up the courage to face down his tormentor, he meekly toed the Trump line, and fell into a costly trap that upended China-Canada relations. Canada has grievously wronged China. It was up to its leader to repair the ruptured relationship.
Trudeau is alarmingly without any China expert in his inner circle, stumbling from blunder to blunder. China is no mystery. Its currency is respect and reciprocity, purring like a kitten when respected, but fighting tooth and nail when disrespected. Given its painful history, China will never again swallow another national humiliation. Canada should not forget this simple fact.
The Strategy boasts emptily about "defending our values", when China has left Canadian values alone. What happened in Xinjiang and Hong Kong or the tensions over Taiwan are all China's internal affairs. Canada doesn't know enough about them to pass judgment.
Canada's core values are under assault from another country, America---the spillover of its gun violence into Canadian streets, the spread of Asian hate crimes from its white supremacists, and Trumpist far-right anti-immigration rhetoric on this immigrant-friendly country. These lie at the core of Canadian values. But I don't see Canada's Foreign Minister leaping to the defense of her country against US moral erosion. These threats to Canadian values are existential and erupting across Canada. They come from its southern neighbor. China is an ocean away and too busy minding its own business.
The Indo-Pacific Strategy is thus barking up the wrong tree. It is an amateurish document bereft of strategic wisdom. Canada is losing its True North, and is orbiting around America's star. Without constructively engaging China, Canada's foreign initiative is doomed to fail and doomed to die on the margins.
Christmas is coming. Canada doesn't have to behave like a little elf eager to kiss the big nasty and scary American Santa.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Philip Yeung:
Opinion | The world's dumbest diplomat
Opinion | How China reinvented itself--- A recipe for super-success in nation-building
Opinion | A victory for Vancouver - A repudiation of its racist past
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