A rchive Date
[ 29-01-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Canada ]
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[http://www.macleans.ca/xta-asp/storyview.asp?viewtype=browse&tpl=browse_frame&vpath=/2002/02/04/Canada/63219.shtml
Canada
'We must wake up'
Michael Ignatieff reflects on Canada's place in the post-Sept. 11 world
February 4, 2002
The uproar over U.S.-held captives from the Afghanistan war continued last week, with the European Union adding its voice to demands they be granted prisoner-of-war status. So far, Washington has refused, holding the men as "unlawful combatants" -- thereby depriving them of the protection of the Geneva Convention. Last week, the U.S. did temporarily suspend the transfer of more prisoners to its naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba -- a photo of one group showed the men kneeling in shackles, ears and eyes covered, shortly after arrival. But American officials continued to say the prisoners are being treated humanely (among other things, captives are provided with copies of the Koran and have a diet that includes beef stew, bagels and Fruit Loops).
For Canada, whose troops in Afghanistan will be operating under U.S. command, the prisoners' debate is particularly acute, raising questions of Canadian sovereignty and human rights.
In Toronto last week, Maclean's Editor Anthony Wilson-Smith spoke to Michael Ignatieff, 54, about the shape of the world -- and Canada's place in it. The Toronto-born Ignatieff, whose academic achievements include a Ph.D. from Harvard, is considered one of the world's foremost thinkers about such issues as global human rights and nationalism. He spent many years in England before becoming director of the Carr Center of Human Rights Policy at Harvard in 2000. Excerpts: Maclean's: Some people define Sept. 11 and its aftermath as the start of a clash of civilizations. Do you agree?
Ignatieff: We're not facing a clash of civilizations. Was it Pogo who said, "We've met the enemy, and they are us?" We've got trusted, respected members of our community of Islamic origin. The clash of civilizations ignores the fact that people belong to both civilizations. We've been drawn into a civil war within the Arab world, which is something completely different. Osama bin Laden's main target is getting the Americans out of Saudi Arabia. It's a conflict waged in the heart of the Saudi regime.
Maclean's: You've pointed out in the past that we shouldn't presume people who come here from other countries automatically put aside past prejudices.
Ignatieff: Canadians tell themselves two myths. One is that we're a little, peaceful country, safe from the turbulence of the world. That's never been true. We're as vulnerable as anyone else, and our great-grandfathers and grandfathers understood this, in some ways better than we do. People went off to fight in the First World War and the Second World War, and understood that our security is indivisible. We're on the front line of a war without borders, without frontiers and without ends, so we've got to wake up.
Myth number 2 is that we're a haven in a heartless world, and immigrants come to our shores and leave their hatreds behind. In fact, immigrants have always brought their hatreds with them. My family is no different. I'm from Russian immigrants -- my parents hated the Soviet tyranny, and I think they were right to. A multicultural society also has dual loyalties, this sense that we care as much about other places far away as we do about our own. There is tyranny and oppression, hatred and violence all over the world, and we can't expect Canadians who've arrived from these places to shed their passions and convictions on these matters. But what we can ask them is, don't fund terror, period. And if you do, you're going to get in trouble with Canadian law.
Maclean's: When you look at multiculturalism, where does the growing Islamic presence in Canada fit in?
Ignatieff: America is waking up to the reality that it now may have more citizens who profess Islam as their faith than Judaism. That will, in the long term, change foreign policy in the United States, and it will change the identity of the U.S. The same will happen in Canada.
Maclean's: How do you judge the Canadian response post-Sept. 11?
Ignatieff: We're living in a world that looks a lot like the late Roman Empire. The barbarians have just got through the gates, and they've sacked Rome. And the effect is to make everybody suddenly aware that we live in the empire. Canada is a tributary state of the greatest empire the world has ever seen. And that is having very substantial effects on our identity. Suddenly our border is in question. The Americans can simply slow down the crossing points, and the Canadian economy breaks down. Suddenly, our capacity to define who gets into our country is integrated into an imperial system of controls directed at international terror. Our sovereignty is on the table in ways that I don't think it ever has been in our lifetime. No wonder Canadians are worried -- at a time when we all feel that 9/11 was directed not at something called the Americans but, in a sense, at every one of us. We all feel suddenly extremely vulnerable.
The Canadian identity is being squeezed both ways. The feeling we've got, if we're an imperial tributary, is that we'd better get close to the empire, with the equal sense that as we do so, we lose crucial parts of our sovereignty. We suddenly realize that the coinage of sovereignty is military power. Canada made the mistake of assuming that we could have sovereignty without substantial military expenditure. That illusion is over. We must wake up and make some public policy choices.
Maclean's: Would you turn over any prisoners from Afghanistan to the Americans under present conditions?
Ignatieff: What I would say is missing from that debate is two facts. One is that if these prisoners weren't in Guantanamo, and if they had been in the custody of the Northern Alliance, they would probably be dead. Secondly, these are dangerous individuals. I don't regard their treatment as some example of the basic brutality and immorality of the American empire.
What is wrong is their unclear juridical status. It's very important that they be accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention, and I believe they will be. I also believe that the Americans' military tribunals have discovered from domestic reaction that it's better to proceed with criminal procedure in civilian courts.
Maclean's: How do you feel about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan serving under American command?
Ignatieff: I'm not sure what we're doing there -- there's a kind of me-tooism to the Canadian reaction. We've been a leader in peacekeeping, and now we're a follower in the post-peacekeeping world. This isn't the kind of world where Lester Pearson made his reputation -- we haven't developed the military doctrine or capability to adapt to that world, and Canadians haven't woken up to that. Every Afghan says the same thing: we need security, and we can't provide it ourselves. If Canadian troops can provide just basic security at markets and towns and the long roads between cities, great. If they become just another barbarian division that serves alongside the imperial legions, I don't know what we're doing. We have to have independent capacity to deploy troops where we think they're necessary, and that means providing security for the Afghans.
Maclean's: Now that you're back in North America, how does Canada look?
Ignatieff: My wife and I drove from Thunder Bay to Vancouver last summer, and it's still the most beautiful country on earth. But small-town, family-farm Canada is in trouble. And in urban Canada, we haven't woken up to the fact that what makes us distinctive is that we're the "public good" country -- we have great airports, great public transport, great urban services, great welfare state, great health care. And we're under-funding our identity. There's better public goods investment in the United States. I have a sense of a country that has been living off the capital of the post-war era, the King-St. Laurent-Pearson-Trudeau years, which built this independent Canada. And that capital's running down.
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May not be reprinted or republished without permission
 World Fact Book (CIA]
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