In his novel, The Beautiful and Damned, F. Scott Fitzgerald has one of his characters deliver both an ultimatum and sad acknowledgment at the same time: "I don't want just words. If that's all you have for me, you'd better go."
He might just as well have been describing Canada's foreign policy, post-Afghanistan. With our committed soldiers arriving home to an inconclusive conclusion, many are asking, "What now?" The reality is that no one knows.
The Afghanistan conflict, coming as it did on the heels of 9/11, occupied the lion's share of our attention for over a decade. It also soaks up most of our memory. And that's too bad, because we have forgotten what the world looked like with Canada in it prior to these past few years.
The decade prior to 9/11 saw Canada distinguish itself across numerous issues. Brian Mulroney and Joe Clark's partnership on global issues never did get the full credit it deserved. Not only did they take leadership both on the stage and behind the scenes in the efforts to free Nelson Mandela, they invested significantly in both the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and this country's diplomatic presence. For many in the diplomatic arena it remains one of Canada's high water periods.
The Chretien/Martin years represented times of great promise. Chretien's commitment to the African continent at the Kananaskis summit in 2002 brought about a renaissance in world attention to that beleaguered continent -- highlighted by this country's leadership in the forgiveness of debt for some of the world's poorest nations. Martin's agile leadership brought the G20 to global prominence and introduced other emerging nations about ready to make their weight felt on international issues.
For many of us involved in international issues, the launching of the Millennial Development Goals (MDGs) into the world economic architecture represented the greatest accomplishment of an era. At last an international consensus had been reached that saw the major economies coordinating their actions and resources in order to eradicate poverty among the world's most destitute. Paul Martin's commitment to Africa, coupled with the expertise at forming consensus by Canada's diplomatic experts, turned the Gleneagles Summit in 2005 into the best coordinated opportunity yet to bring financial harmonization and recovery to the developing world.
I was elected to Parliament in 2006, and from the moment of my entrance it was clear the agenda of the Harper government was to eventually deconstruct that broader consensus of the previous decade. It was a slow but methodical process that culminated in a number of African nations being cut from Canada's development efforts, former long-term NGO partners defunded, the ongoing decline of peacekeeping, and, ultimately, a noticeable shift to military muscle at the expense of diplomatic effectiveness.
Now that our troops have returned, we can attempt to put our global concerns to bed for a time, but, humanity being what it is, world problems don't neatly coincide with our desire to retreat. To offer just one example, in March 2011, the United Nations in Geneva said there were only a handful of refugees in Syria. A year later there were almost 24,000. A year after that (2013), the number mushroomed to 1,132,037, and today that figure has swollen again to over 2.5 million.
We can say that this is Syria's problem, or that it will have to be resolved by the geographical players in that part of the world, but this will be a problem that simply will not exit from the scene. Poverty in the most devastated African regions remains significant, with no solution in sight. We can close our eyes to these realities, but, as always, they will find a way to confront us through a preponderance of refugees, linked acts of terrorism, financial vulnerability, or cultural divisions within our own country.
There was a time when Canada realized that while military security was an important investment, it was the long-term planning involved in relief and development that would ultimately bring greater measures of peace to our world. Somewhere along the way we lost that. We also lost a seat on the UN Security Council, the world's respect through our lack of action on climate change, and our altruism the moment we decided to invest development resources only in those nations that enhanced our own local economy and brought political benefit to the government.
Yes, our Prime Minister has received certain kudos for his strong language on the Crimean crisis. But this country's reputation as a "soft power" was established by hard work in the corridors of diplomacy. The National Post had it right when it talked about us entering a decade of "diplomatic darkness." The rest of the world, to repeat F. Scott Fitzgerald's phrase, no longer wants our words, and if we can't give more than that, then we might as well just go home. Oh wait, we've done that already.
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