With upcoming elections in the U.S. and Canada, many are bracing for significant shifts in the policies of the North American allies. But when it comes to foreign policy, don’t expect any major differences at all.
At the moment, the U.S. presidential race is effectively a tie between the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris — who has stated there is “not a thing” she’d have done differently than president Joe Biden — and Republican candidate and former president Donald Trump, who directly contributed to today’s global destabilization by taking increasingly aggressive stances toward China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Palestine.
Meanwhile in Canada, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre leads polls for next year’s elections. If his hawkish positions on Washington’s enemies are any indication, Poilievre will likely continue, and even deepen, the pro-U.S. nature of Trudeau’s foreign policy.
The similarity between Trudeau’s foreign policy and Poilievre’s anticipated global posture reveals the central fact about Canada’s relationship to the world: for Ottawa, Washington sets the agenda and Canadian leaders follow.
In early 2017, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed Chrystia Freeland head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The U.S. government was elated. According to a dispatch to Washington from the embassy in Ottawa, Freeland was promoted “in large part because of her strong U.S. contacts” and working with Washington was her “number one priority.” The dispatch was titled “Canada Adopts ‘America First Foreign Policy.”
In the seven years since her appointment, Canada’s “America First” foreign policy has seen Ottawa intervene against U.S. foes in Latin America, fuel a devastating war in Eastern Europe, support Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and increase the Canadian military presence around China. All these actions, Ottawa claims, are designed to “promote democracy and peace.” In actuality, they are meant to support waning U.S. hegemony, which faces notable global threats.
Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland meets former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018 at the State Department in Washington. Photo via Macdonald-Laurier Institute
Many experts believe these interventions have discredited Canada globally. “Our silence on the widespread abuse of human rights speaks volumes, as has our eagerness to impose our will, undemocratically, on countries like Venezuela and Bolivia,” writes professors Stephen Kimber and John Kirk, who point to the Trudeau government’s hypocritical foreign policy in Latin America, which has involved supporting the 2019 coup in Bolivia, joining a reactionary coalition to overthrow the elected Venezuelan government, while ignoring the violent actions of right-wing allies in Honduras, Peru, Colombia, and Chile.
These policies are an “embarrassment” to Canada on the world stage.
In just the past year, “Canada’s participation in the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians have shredded Canadian credibility by continuing to shield Israel from accountability,” says Michael Bueckert, vice president of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East.
In both hemispheres, Canada’s foreign policy is contributing to political, economic, and social destabilization, as well as massive loss of life. Ottawa has never been a neutral, peacemaking voice on the global stage, but these actions show that the Canadian government has chosen to fuel an array of devastating crises on behalf of U.S. geopolitical goals.
But while Washington identified Chrystia Freeland as an outstanding friend of the U.S., the Trudeau government is not an anomaly. This blanket pro-U.S. policy has been Canadian reality for decades, and it will continue regardless of whether Harris or Trump win on Tuesday, or whether the Conservatives, the Liberals, or the NDP, form government in Canada next year.
Attacking Venezuelan sovereignty
Following the July presidential election in Venezuela, most of the world’s governments recognized the victory of the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). Canada was among a number of countries that rejected the election result — expressing “serious concerns” that stem, at least partly, because the result did not fit with U.S.-Canadian geopolitical aims.
In the aftermath of the election, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that Canada “unequivocally condemns the ongoing and escalating repression in Venezuela by Nicolas Maduro’s regime” and “will work with the international community to hold accountable those responsible for human rights violations and crimes against humanity. Canada has stood, and will continue to stand, by the people of Venezuela and their desire to live in a peaceful and democratic society.”
All this while tens of thousands of Venezuelans have died as a result of U.S.-led economic strangulation — measures that weren’t severe enough for Freeland, who called for the imposition of sanctions with “more bite.”
Far from supporting human rights and democracy in Venezuela over the years, Ottawa has refused to sign a statement opposing military intervention against the Maduro government, imposed devastating sanctions alongside the U.S. and conservative governments in the region, and directly organized opposition figures on the ground in Venezuela while lobbying foreign governments to work against Caracas.
All this while tens of thousands of Venezuelans have died as a result of U.S.-led economic strangulation — measures that weren’t severe enough for Freeland, who called for the imposition of sanctions with “more bite.”
While it is true that millions of Venezuelans did not vote for Maduro in July, no Venezuelans have ever voted for sanctions that rob them of food, medicine, and stability.
In Washington’s eyes, Venezuela’s main crime is not any of the serious and credible human rights abuses of which it is accused. Venezuela’s crime is that it remains sovereign, no longer subordinate to U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.
Thousands fill the streets in Venezuelan capital Caracas following the election in July, both supporters and opponents of President Nicolas Maduro. Many waved flags or carried signs that read “We are millions against the dictatorship” and “No more dictatorship!” Photo via France24
A diplomatic response to Maduro’s victory would entail recognizing the election’s result and pledging to work with Caracas to rebuild economically and expand human rights following nearly a decade of U.S.-led and Canadian-backed hybrid warfare. Instead, Canada continues working with the U.S. to crush the Bolivarian Revolution, Washington’s leading target in the hemisphere since Hugo Chávez’s first election victory in 1999. This policy can only bring more destabilization to the region.
According to Maria Paez Victor, a Venezuelan activist living in Canada, “The democratic tragedy of Canada is that Canadians know next to nothing what their Ministry of Foreign Affairs does in their name… Most don’t have any idea of the increasingly soiled reputation of Canada in the world today.”
Fuelling the war in Ukraine
Almost three years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the war rages on, with hundreds of thousands of casualties and millions still displaced. Opportunities for peace have been scattered to the winds as pro-war politicians in the West continue dumping arms into the warzone, Canada included. In fact, Ottawa’s war policy has been particularly aggressive. On September 13, for example, Trudeau stated that Canada would support Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russian territory, an action that would threaten to draw Canada and NATO into direct war with Moscow.
In response to manpower shortages, the Ukrainian government lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 in May 2024, opening a new segment of their youth to death in the Eastern meat grinder.
Canada should be fostering peace in Europe, but every policy decision and public statement seems geared toward prolonging war, even as the battlefield situation looks increasingly dismal for Ukraine.
The Russia-Ukraine war has long been a conflict fought by the poor, but since early 2024 Ukraine has become a pressure cooker of class conflict.
In response to the disastrous 2023 counteroffensive, the Ukrainian government turned even more sharply towards neoliberalism: the state drastically reduced social spending, imposed greater taxes on small and medium-sized businesses, and implemented draconian measures to force Ukrainians to the battlefront, including press gangs to forcibly mobilize citizens. Life expectancy, birth rates, and trust in government have plummeted while poverty has risen and social divisions have inflamed.
“Forced mobilisation [in Ukraine], the reduction of the rights and freedoms of the population, further economic disruption and social hardship contrast sharply with what is widely perceived as the corruption-fuelled lifestyle of an entrenched and unaccountable elite,” write professors Stefan Wolff and Tetyana Malyarenko.
Three years into Russia’s invasion in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have died and many others displaced, with no end in sight. Photo via 9News
Since then, things have only gotten worse. The average age of Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline is 43 to 45, an indication of just how many young Ukrainians have lost their lives or fled since the Russian invasion of February 2022.
In response to manpower shortages, the Ukrainian government lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 in May 2024, opening a new segment of their youth to death in the Eastern meat grinder. The new mobilization law also creates a digital database of Ukrainian men of military age, which will “enable the army to better identify the country’s human resources,” according to France’s Le Monde.
Put differently, it will help the army identify men who will be press ganged into an exhausted war effort.
In such a grim situation, a sober, realistic perspective is needed in the Western leadership. Such a perspective does not exist, and Canada has shown unwillingness or inability to fill the void.
Instead, Ottawa has continued its warmongering, which only means more dead Ukrainians, more dead Russians, European economies in shambles, and no clear endgame for the West.
Arming genocide, world opinion be damned
Despite global outrage over Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians and invasion of Lebanon, Canada continues arming the Israeli war machine. It doesn’t seem to matter that Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), just like Ottawa’s enemy number one, Vladimir Putin.
Still, Canada continues to support Tel Aviv’s vicious bombardment against Palestinians and the current expansion into Lebanon, which has seen Israel kill thousands of Lebanese and displace 1.2 million people.
Ottawa endorsed Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, which saw Israel bomb a densely populated area and kill at least 33 civilians in order to reach Nasrallah. At the same time, Ottawa condemns Iranian missile strikes in Israel that kill few to no civilians.
Rather than bringing him before a court of justice, Canada and other Western countries celebrated Nasrallah’s extrajudicial assassination “suggesting that Western governments have grown increasingly comfortable with the use of targeted killings, to the point that a brazen, acknowledged assassination failed to trigger meaningful condemnation.”
Israel’s backers did not even attempt to fabricate a legal justification for the assassination. Instead, “legitimising efforts by Israel and the U.S. have been so successful in normalising assassination that, even when they acknowledge assassinations, they rarely engage in legal justifications anymore. Instead they simply talk of ‘justice.’”
Rather than bringing him before a court of justice, Canada and other Western countries celebrated Nasrallah’s extrajudicial assassination.
While Canada praises IDF political assassinations, the Israeli military has also killed Canadian citizens with impunity.
Israeli troops have attacked UN forces without losing Canadian support. They have targeted journalists, medical staff, children — and still Canada backs Israel’s war effort through diplomatic support, direct arms transfers, and the repression of domestic dissent, including police attacks on Palestinian solidarity protests.
Defence Minister Bill Blair has even vowed to support a direct Israeli strike on Iran.
Canada’s committed backing of Israel’s bombardment has also not gone unnoticed globally.
In February, the government of Nicaragua announced that it was taking Canada to the ICJ for contributing to the genocide of Palestinians by supplying arms to Israel. The next month, the Liberal government announced plans to “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel.” However, pre-authorized Canadian arms continued to flow to Israel, despite Blair lying about this fact when confronted by activists on August 7.
The Canadian government, a supposed champion of human rights and the “rules-based international order,” is lying to its citizens and repressing domestic protest in order to continue arming an increasingly far-right government that has continued to expand its illegal settlements.
Since October 7, 2023, Canadians have been demonstrating in cities and towns across the country, calling for the federal government to demand a ceasefire and to stop arming and funding the Israel. However, that would mean breaking from the official policy of the U.S.
Whose interests does this Canadian policy serve? Not Canadians, not the people of the Middle East whose lives are being destabilized or destroyed by Israel’s devastating rampage, and certainly not the rest of the world.
But it does serve the interests of the U.S. and Israel.
Brett McGurk, Biden’s top Middle East official, has outlined Washington’s harrowing plan for the region should Israel complete its ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
As The Nation contributor Aída Chávez explains, “McGurk’s idea is to have Saudi Arabia and the other wealthy Gulf countries build on the rubble of Gaza, and then have Biden travel to the region for ‘a victory tour,’ where he claims credit for the Israel-Saudi deal as the solution to decades of implacable crisis in the Middle East.”
What will follow the destruction of the Palestinian resistance? U.S. targeting of Iran and the wider Axis of Resistance, followed by an even more aggressive pivot to China. Chávez writes: “With Hamas out of the picture and a demilitarized Palestinian state under the influence of the Gulf regimes, the thinking goes, the U.S. will have Arab cover in the region to be able to counter Iran… and then put all of its energy toward a confrontation with China.”
The U.S.-Canadian war on China
Canada’s “America First” foreign policy has seen Ottawa take an increasingly hostile stance toward China, including by sailing warships off the Chinese coast and adopting an “Indo-Pacific Strategy” that is in-effect a carbon copy of Washington’s. Most recently, Canadian authorities again followed the U.S. lead by imposing a 100-percent tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, prompting The Hill Times to write, “Canada sends message that we are part of ‘America First.’”
At the same time, Ottawa is funding and accelerating mining and mineral exploitation in Canada and across the Global South through the Critical Minerals Strategy (CMS) in the hopes of reducing imports from China.
The U.S. Navy and the Royal Canadian Navy worked together this summer to conduct operations in the South China Sea. Photo via U.S. Navy Press Office
What is the end goal of Ottawa’s hostile actions toward China, including the deployment of Canadian military personnel to the South China Sea? It is hard not to view these acts in the context of the Biden Doctrine — Washington’s plan to pivot toward outright confrontation with China once the Axis of Resistance has been suppressed.
“Has China become a major power and is it throwing its weight around in the region at times? Yes. Is publicly accusing it of being disruptive and bulking up for a military confrontation the way to deal with it? Only if you’re aiming for war,” writes professors John Price and Noam Chomsky.
A perennial lackey of empire
Canada’s political history has been marked by a continued lackey status toward the world’s dominant Western empires. From the nation’s colonization until the end of the Second World War, Canada has served the interests of the British Empire, sending Canadian troops to South Africa to support the Crown, then to Europe in the First World War, all while targeting domestic enemies of the empire for repression, such as Irish nationalists, South Asian anti-imperialists, French Canadian nationalists, and Indigenous resistance movements.
After 1945, the British economy was ruined. Canada joined its fortunes to the emergent global superpower, the U.S. During the Cold War, Ottawa sent troops to support Washington’s aims in Korea and supported the American war on Southeast Asia through weapons sales. At the same time, Canadian authorities collaborated with U.S. authorities to repress anyone perceived as communist.
Canada’s political history has been marked by a continued lackey status toward the world’s dominant Western empires.
Then later, during the War on Terror, Canada’s lackey status continued with deepened security collaboration and Canadian participation in destructive U.S.-led wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
Today, this Canadian tradition continues. As U.S. hegemony wanes, Ottawa is supporting the American empire in a multifront war that aims to challenge regional and global rivals in Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
The U.S. may have described Trudeau’s government as “America First,” but Canada has always been a lackey of empire.
Now, as the U.S. imperial project is fading and there is no comparable Western empire to take its place, what will Canada do? One potential answer, it seems, is the following: deny that the U.S. empire is declining, and back Washington’s geopolitical aims, no matter how bloody or destabilizing the result ends up being.
Source link : http://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=6727a5dc162245aabbcb323d080aa0dc&url=https%3A%2F%2Fricochet.media%2Finternational%2Fcanada-has-always-been-a-lackey-of-the-american-empire%2F&c=16439179915235659054&mkt=en-us
Author :
Publish date : 2024-11-03 02:54:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
