Canada-U.S. Relations

Hillary Clinton's public call for Canada to stay in Afghanistan was not a snub towards Harper — it's just a new form of U.S. diplomacy.

Two weeks ago U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Ottawa. She wasn’t on Canadian soil for 24 hours when she stated in an interview that the United States was not happy with Canada’s decision to withdraw its armed forces from Afghanistan in 2011. The remark caused a firestorm in this country.

Here was the most senior member of the Obama team injecting herself publicly into one of the most incendiary and divisive issue in Canadian politics. It was interpreted as direct pressure on Prime Minister Harper to re-consider his position on the Canadian withdrawal date from Afghanistan--a decision endorsed through a vote in Parliament and one that the government had been claiming for months the Americans fully understood and respected.

Why wasn’t this “request” from Mrs. Clinton made in private with the Foreign Minister or the Prime Minister, as diplomatic protocol dictated? The unprecedented meddling into Canadian domestic politics by a leading American politician must mean the relationship between the Harper government and the Obama administration is in deep trouble, or so many concluded.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, Mrs. Clinton’s embrace of megaphone diplomacy is the new normal in the way Washington deals with Canada on issues the U.S. regards as vital to its interests. This is not an anti-Harper thing--it applies whether Democrats or Republicans are in the White House, whether Conservatives or Liberals occupy 24 Sussex Drive.

Five years ago Republican President George W. Bush visited Ottawa, at a time when the Paul Martin minority government was vulnerable on a daily basis to defeat in the House of Commons. One of the most threatening issues to the government’s survival was the lingering question of whether Canada would participate in the U.S. ballistic missile defence system, know as BMD.

Martin, his Defence Minister Bill Graham, and the Liberal caucus had struggled with this question for two years. It was well known that BMD was deeply unpopular among Canadians, was highly controversial in Parliament, was dividing the Liberal party and was adamantly opposed by the NDP (the party the Liberals relied on to get through votes of confidence in the House) and the Bloc Quebecois.

Fortunately, there had been no pressure, or even a direct request, from the Bush administration for Canada to sign onto BMD. So when the President came to Ottawa in the midst of the BMD uproar—where the government was facing daily pummeling in Parliament for its obfuscation on the issue—no one expected Mr. Bush to say anything about BMD in public, other than the usual boilerplate that this is a matter for the government of Canada to decide. Indeed, then U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci had briefed the President to stay clear of this minefield.

But the advice was ignored. During a press conference, Mr. Bush, with Mr. Martin at his side, made it very clear he wanted Canada in BMD. A firestorm ensued. An American President was exerting public pressure on Canada on one of the hottest issues facing the government. Diplomatic protocol had been flushed down the toilet. Surely this indicated that the relationship between the Bush administration and the Martin government was in the tank.

But neither the intervention by Mr. Bush nor the comments by Mrs. Clinton say anything at all about the state of the relationship between the governments of the day in Ottawa and Washington. Mr. Martin got on quite fine with Mr. Bush before and after the BMD comment. The evidence suggests Mr. Harper has a decent relationship with Mr. Obama.

The statements by these two senior American statespersons on Canadian soil says something much more fundamental than whether two politicians and their teams like each other, share worldviews or get along personally.

The real message here is that from Washington’s standpoint, Canada--its government and its people--should be confronted directly and in public by the American political leadership on the rare occasions when that political leadership comes to this country. That is the only way to really get the attention of Canadians on issues of fundamental importance to Washington. American political leaders now evidently feel so at home in this country that they believe they can say whatever they want in public, including things that Canadian politicians won’t say to their own citizens. That seems to be the mindset in Washington over the past half decade.

The interventions by Mr. Bush and Mrs. Clinton that caused such angst in this country should be understood for what they really are—a new form of American diplomacy when it comes to Canada, which can be summed up as follows: Speak loudly when you want Canada to carry a big stick for America.