Things were so simple back in 2015. The newly elected Justin Trudeau and his band of idealists vowed to put a new face on Canada’s foreign policy. It would be rooted in progressive values – equity, fairness and all the rest. They were novices at this business. But they would make up for their lack of experience with energy and charm.
Today, Canada is trapped in an epic struggle between the world’s two superpowers, with no clear way out. To please either one would enrage the other. Progressive values won’t help us now.
Back then, a lot of people thought China was a good guy. Liberal democracy was on the march, they believed, and even China might liberalize over time. Instead, China was going the other way. Today, China is expanding the surveillance state to keep an eye on 1.4-billion citizens, and has reportedly interned a million Uyghers. But Mr. Trudeau preferred to believe that deep down inside, China was just like us.
And he vastly overestimated our leverage. His efforts to to negotiate a “progressive” free-trade deal included trying to persuade the Chinese to adopt benign labour standards and other virtuous Western practices. He was like a little dog who thinks it’s a big dog. He went home with his tail between his legs.
“None of this plays in China,” observed Ian Bremmer, a leading foreign policy expert, in an interview with Global News. “They can’t stand this stuff, and Canada’s small.” In his view, Mr. Trudeau’s foreign policy has been crafted for an age that’s past. The era of panda-bear diplomacy is over. Xi Jinping, the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, prefers to impress the world with his strength.
Now comes the Huawei crisis, which has created massive headaches for the Trudeau government. What we’re watching is the saga of a Boy Scout trapped between two bullies. No matter how well he behaves, he’s probably going to get bruised.
This crisis has two parts. The first part is the decision Canada must make about whether to allow Huawei’s fifth-generation (5G) telecom technology in Canada. Bell and Telus are already using Huawei equipment in their cellular networks. The question is whether Huawei’s technology could compromise national security. Many Canadian security experts think the threat is real. The Americans also think it’s real, and they are exerting heavy pressure on us to turn Huawei down. They will not look kindly on any major ally that does business with Huawei.
Huawei’s aspirations are synonymous with China’s. They want to dominate as much of the global telecom world as possible. The Americans want to stop them. That’s why they are so fixated on Meng Wangzhou, a Huawei senior executive they’ve had in their sights for years. They figure they can get at Huawei through Ms. Meng, whom they want to arrest for bank fraud and other crimes.
The Chinese don’t care about the niceties of extradition, or about the fact that Canada is simply fulfilling its legal obligations by detaining her at the request of the Americans. They see this as a kidnapping, pure and simple. So in response, they have kidnapped two of ours – and imposed a death sentence, quite abruptly, on a third. Luckily for Ms. Meng, she’s out on bail, living in one of her spacious houses in Vancouver. Our citizens are detained in what amount to torture cells in China.
Things were bad enough already. But Mr. Trudeau has made them worse by firing our former ambassador to China, John McCallum. Mr. McCallum’s sin was speculating out loud that Canada might be perfectly happy to see the extradition order go away, forget about the rule of law and welcome a prisoner swap.
This may well have been the truth. The problem was that he wasn’t supposed to blurt it out so nakedly. At any rate, the Chinese were furious because they liked Mr. McCallum, and he liked them, and now he’s gone. And in Ottawa, it looks, as it so often does, like amateur hour.
Canada’s diplomatic troubles aren’t just with China. We’re on the outs with Saudi Arabia, too. This matters to SNC-Lavalin, which revealed huge financial problems with its business there. The reason: Boy Scoutism. A tweet last August by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland’s office expressed Canada’s support for jailed Saudi dissidents. Then, last month, Ms. Freeland staged a heartwarming, but shameless photo-op with the fleeing Saudi teenager, Rahaf Mohammed. All Canadians can agree with these sentiments, but the Saudis are steaming mad, and they’re showing their displeasure in any way they can.
All in all, this week’s events do not inspire confidence that Mr. Trudeau and his team know what they’re doing. Let’s hope they learn fast. Let’s hope they realize that what we need in geopolitics is a lot more realism and a lot less virtue on parade.