A rchive Date
[ 11-01-2020 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[https://nationalpost.com/news/matt-gurney-canadians-are-rightfully-demanding-for-the-truth-but-are-we-ready-to-hear-it
Canadians are, rightfully, demanding the truth. But are we ready to hear it?
And we also know, as much as this may gall us, that there isn't a whole hell of a lot we can do about any of this
Matt Gurney
January 9, 2020
The prime minister is absolutely right. Canadians need more information, a point he made, over and over, at an Ottawa press conference on Thursday, flanked by senior military and national defence officials. We need a full, thorough investigation of the apparent shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752. We need access to the scene and to data recovered from the plane’s recorder boxes. We need answers to more questions than we have probably even thought of yet.
But let’s not lose sight of what we already know. Because we know more than enough.
We know that Iran is a state-sponsor of terror. We know that Iran is hostile to Canadian interests and those of our allies. We know, because Iran has publicly said as much, that it fired ballistic missiles at a base in Iraq that was home to a Canadian military contingent, present in Iraq to assist local forces combat the remnants of the Islamic State. And we now know, or accept with a high degree of certainty, that an unarmed passenger plane with at least 63 Canadians onboard was blown out of the sky by an Iranian missile, probably accidentally.
And we also know, as much as this may gall us, that there isn’t a whole hell of a lot we can do about any of this.
Watching the prime minister speak, hearing him reply to question after question with some variation of “We need to gather more facts,” only served to remind us that, once the facts have been gathered and the questions answered, we’re actually going to have to do something. A position will have to be determined. A policy announced and enacted. And the more you think about it, the clearer it becomes that that’s going to be really, really hard for Canada.
Assume a worst-case scenario: Iran intentionally brought down the plane. (It probably didn’t mean to, but just assume.) That would be an act of war, occurring near simultaneously to the other act of war - the bombing of the base where Canadian troops were stationed. But there will be no war. Canada wouldn’t want a war, and even if we did, we couldn’t mobilize enough firepower and deploy it to wage one anyway. Even if we began arming today, with “Remember 752!” our new national motto, it would take us, what, 15 years to get the planes and ships procured?
So a war is off the table (as it should be, since this was almost certainly a horrific, mortifying, inexcusable accident). That leaves diplomacy. Canada could recall the ambassador and shutter the embass … no, no, wait. We can’t do that either. Canada and Iran broke off diplomatic relations years ago, due to unacceptable Iranian intelligence activity in Canada. There are no ambassadors to recall, no embassies to dramatically close.
There’s still multi-lateral diplomacy, of course. But that also leads us nowhere. Our main ally, the United States, is already Iran’s primary enemy - that’s why they’re loosing missiles at each other. There’s no additional pressure beyond what’s already in place that the U.S. will bring to bear against Iran because they blew up a few dozen Canadians - not when they’re trying to de-escalate out of an actual shooting war. Our European NATO allies are trying to salvage what little remains of the Iranian nuclear deal while also doing their best to handle President Trump, who’s now demanding (wisely) that NATO step up in the Middle East, and won’t rush into anything on our account. There’s always the UN, of course, but what would come of that?
This is, as noted above, galling. Canadians will want justice, accountability, maybe even vengeance. What we’ll actually get, if Iran decides to co-operate, is permission to send a few air crash investigators to the scene. If we’re lucky.
This will probably become a partisan issue. It shouldn’t. Canada is a rich country, but it is not a powerful country, and whatever steps we failed to take over the years to be more powerful were failures shared by both major parties. We’ve papered over our lack of power and influence with soothing euphemisms like “middle power” and “soft power” and phrases like “punching above our weight.”
Those things matter sometimes. We’ve been able to do some good in the world through charitable initiatives and multi-lateral forums on ideas all nations, or at least most of them, basically agreed on. But soft power doesn’t deter rogue regimes all-too comfortable with hard power. Punching above our weight doesn’t help us when the other guy’s weight is measured in missiles. Canadians will demand action. The opposition parties will almost certainly accuse the government of not doing enough.
We can demand access to the scene. Perhaps we’ll get it. We can take care of the families of our dead, and work to keep their memory alive. We can add our influence, such as it is, to existing efforts to contain and deter Tehran’s theocrats, and we can probably think of some additional sanctions to impose.
But it won’t make anyone feel better, and it won’t really influence the outcome of global events. The prime minister knows this already. If you were wondering why he had so little to say on Thursday, it’s probably because the truth isn’t something many of us will want to hear.
National Post
magurney@postmedia.com
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