Friday, March 26, 2004
Hard Rhetoric Soft Power
Something “seismic” may be happening, and I’m wondering how many people in Ottawa are noticing. A recent report posted on the MSNBC website made me think of the Great Game, middle powers, and how Canada fits into all this. On 24 March 2004 Financial Times writers Leslie Crawford and Christopher Adams [article available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4590619] covered a meeting between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Spain’s new Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The authors noted that Powell was kept waiting by the new Spanish leader while talks went ahead with French President Jacques Chirac. The Madrid visit afforded the US official the opportunity to “witness first hand the seismic shift that is taking place in Spanish foreign policy.” The Iberian nation is, after all, preparing “to withdraw troops from Iraq without seeming to be soft on terrorism.”
The world may be decades away from the day the Trans-Atlantic Alliance is swept into the history books. Nevertheless, Powell’s Madrid experience suggests the institution may not be as robust as only recently thought, and that nascent competitiveness, played out in the diplomatic and political arenas, may strangle cooperation and grow to characterize US-European relations in the not too distant future. If this indeed is the case, how long before analysts and observers come out of the woodwork with references to a new Great Game?
The Great Game is a term applied to a nineteenth century rivalry between Great Britain and Russia, played out all across Central Asia, from Afghanistan, through Iran, for the wealth that India yielded, for control of the Silk Road, and for spheres of influence. This was the great age of imperialism. Undoubtedly Moscow will resurface in analyses of any new Game, especially if discussion focuses on pipelines and Caucasian oil. Yet Russia is now waning, and a newer incarnation is just as likely to feature a rivalry with the European Union.
Here I am not so much interested in the historical or geopolitical details of any version of the Game. Rather, intriguing is what historian Robert Darnton means under the rubric of “mentality.” That is, borrowing crudely from Darnton, it may be observed that those who breathed life into the conceptual framework of the Great Game were of a particular culture, mindset, and held to certain values. Their preoccupation remained the “center,” usually to the exclusion of any other variable. Almost all events were perceived as the result of a clash of great power interests. Local populations, the targets or victims of imperial policies, were hardly mentioned, and rarely seen as agents that could in any meaningful sense impact political outcomes. When observers of the Great Game ventured out of Central Asia to deal with what may be dubbed the middle powers of their day, to the United States, Persia, Turkey, Japan and China, betrayed was the sensibility that these states were little more than the objects of great power machinations.
So what has any of this to do with Canada in 2004, where the outside world remains firmly off the radar? Stephen Harper is now Conservative leader, and the public seems to want to know about his talents as a manager of the public trust, not his take on international affairs, historical or current. Recent Liberal government exercises, notably the issuing of the latest budget, inspire accountants, not foreign policy observers. Where the pre-election budget does deal with priorities outside our borders, it offers tax breaks to soldiers serving our country in conflict zones. In recent weeks mention has been made of homeland security initiatives. I suppose it’s only a matter of perhaps months before some old issues, the defense of the Arctic and protecting northern borders, are aired out before little is done.
When foreign policy rhetoric does heat up, however, it will aim to inflame passion for middle power ideology, for the influence of soft power on the world stage. Our “mentality” forces us into discussions that will no doubt focus on what Canada can accomplish as a middle power. What we can offer the world is our expertise in repairing what are now dubbed “failed states.” We will bring institution building, democratization, and regulatory regimes to where they’re needed. Canadians will become ardent about what our talents can do to empower those subsisting at the margins of the global system. These are laudable goals. However, my interest here is merely “mentality” and to make the point that whereas proponents of a Great Game world view were blind to all but power, Canada may fail, in pursuing its Minor Game, to come to terms with what power can do.
If our worldview is in fact reduced to a dichotomy of middle power and failed state, how can we ever come to terms with the impact of great power in a new Great Game?
Stan Markotich
Submit comments to stanmarkotich@yahoo.com
¶ 4:03 PM
Something “seismic” may be happening, and I’m wondering how many people in Ottawa are noticing. A recent report posted on the MSNBC website made me think of the Great Game, middle powers, and how Canada fits into all this. On 24 March 2004 Financial Times writers Leslie Crawford and Christopher Adams [article available at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4590619] covered a meeting between US Secretary of State Colin Powell and Spain’s new Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The authors noted that Powell was kept waiting by the new Spanish leader while talks went ahead with French President Jacques Chirac. The Madrid visit afforded the US official the opportunity to “witness first hand the seismic shift that is taking place in Spanish foreign policy.” The Iberian nation is, after all, preparing “to withdraw troops from Iraq without seeming to be soft on terrorism.”
The world may be decades away from the day the Trans-Atlantic Alliance is swept into the history books. Nevertheless, Powell’s Madrid experience suggests the institution may not be as robust as only recently thought, and that nascent competitiveness, played out in the diplomatic and political arenas, may strangle cooperation and grow to characterize US-European relations in the not too distant future. If this indeed is the case, how long before analysts and observers come out of the woodwork with references to a new Great Game?
The Great Game is a term applied to a nineteenth century rivalry between Great Britain and Russia, played out all across Central Asia, from Afghanistan, through Iran, for the wealth that India yielded, for control of the Silk Road, and for spheres of influence. This was the great age of imperialism. Undoubtedly Moscow will resurface in analyses of any new Game, especially if discussion focuses on pipelines and Caucasian oil. Yet Russia is now waning, and a newer incarnation is just as likely to feature a rivalry with the European Union.
Here I am not so much interested in the historical or geopolitical details of any version of the Game. Rather, intriguing is what historian Robert Darnton means under the rubric of “mentality.” That is, borrowing crudely from Darnton, it may be observed that those who breathed life into the conceptual framework of the Great Game were of a particular culture, mindset, and held to certain values. Their preoccupation remained the “center,” usually to the exclusion of any other variable. Almost all events were perceived as the result of a clash of great power interests. Local populations, the targets or victims of imperial policies, were hardly mentioned, and rarely seen as agents that could in any meaningful sense impact political outcomes. When observers of the Great Game ventured out of Central Asia to deal with what may be dubbed the middle powers of their day, to the United States, Persia, Turkey, Japan and China, betrayed was the sensibility that these states were little more than the objects of great power machinations.
So what has any of this to do with Canada in 2004, where the outside world remains firmly off the radar? Stephen Harper is now Conservative leader, and the public seems to want to know about his talents as a manager of the public trust, not his take on international affairs, historical or current. Recent Liberal government exercises, notably the issuing of the latest budget, inspire accountants, not foreign policy observers. Where the pre-election budget does deal with priorities outside our borders, it offers tax breaks to soldiers serving our country in conflict zones. In recent weeks mention has been made of homeland security initiatives. I suppose it’s only a matter of perhaps months before some old issues, the defense of the Arctic and protecting northern borders, are aired out before little is done.
When foreign policy rhetoric does heat up, however, it will aim to inflame passion for middle power ideology, for the influence of soft power on the world stage. Our “mentality” forces us into discussions that will no doubt focus on what Canada can accomplish as a middle power. What we can offer the world is our expertise in repairing what are now dubbed “failed states.” We will bring institution building, democratization, and regulatory regimes to where they’re needed. Canadians will become ardent about what our talents can do to empower those subsisting at the margins of the global system. These are laudable goals. However, my interest here is merely “mentality” and to make the point that whereas proponents of a Great Game world view were blind to all but power, Canada may fail, in pursuing its Minor Game, to come to terms with what power can do.
If our worldview is in fact reduced to a dichotomy of middle power and failed state, how can we ever come to terms with the impact of great power in a new Great Game?
Stan Markotich
Submit comments to stanmarkotich@yahoo.com
¶ 4:03 PM
