Mark Carney: war hawk or lap dog?

Still grabbed from a CNN interview by Dean Detloff (@deandettloff.bsky.social‬)

By the time Jean Chrétien was deciding whether or not to go to war alongside the United States in 2003, he had been elected, on and off, for 42 years. Chrétien may be the biggest political animal who ever animaled in the history of Canada, and after 42 years of being in politics and the business of politics, he knew how to do politics better than most politicians could ever dream.

The decision to not go to war with Iraq was made right off the heels of something that was called F15, the day that the world said no to war (Feb. 15, 2003). Hundreds of thousands of Canadians joined with tens of millions around the world to demand that their countries not join the United States in their war on Iraq. Chrétien weighed his options and the political animal was no-doubt convinced in some part by the mobilization that the anti-war movement managed to mount.

Of course, two years earlier, when he had agreed that Canada should invade Afghanistan, the context was different. The anti-war movement had been battered by September 11, 2001 and its fallout — war cheerleading, Islamophobia and a full scale attack on anyone who dared to question why invading Afghanistan would do anything to avenge the dead of 9/11. Chrétien weighed his options in the same way he would two years later and came to the opposite conclusion.

We are barely two months into a Mark Carney prime ministership. Unlike Chrétien’s 42 years of politics, Carney hasn’t even been a politician for 42 weeks. The former, two-time central banker has no political chops whatsoever — I don’t mean the political chops that one might hone while working in a political environment as a bureaucrat, but the kind of political chops that would give him the instincts of a Chrétien. And oh boy, has that been on display in how Carney has been handling Canada’s reaction to the US/Israel-coordinated war on Iran.

It’s amateur hour at the Prime Minister’s Office for foreign affairs and it’ll be fun to watch how long Carney gets away with it. Fun in a morbid way, of course. Carney seemingly believes that if he says yes to every war thing that Canada can get in on, from ReArm Europe to the Golden Dome, if we triple our military spending, or if we use AI to kill more people, we will be doing good in the world and at home.

And just to prove that we’re the obedient allies that we need to be, the only thing that Carney has said about the Iran situation on social media has been to call Iran a terrorist country. Nothing about the hundreds of thousands of Iranians who live in Canada. Nothing about our closed embassy there, forcing people to leave Iran through Turkey to get back to Canada. Nothing about what Canada is doing to help the thousands of Canadians who were in Iran at the time that Israel began this recent air offensive. Nothing about the impact that living with US sanctions has on the country.

When he was asked a straightfoward question about whether or not the attacks on Iran are a violation of International Law (they are), Carney called Iran a bunch of terrorists again:

On Iran, Carney’s lack of substance really shines through. The best he’s been able to muster is to call for negotiations to de-escalate the situation. As if Israel hadn’t already used the cover of negotiations between the US and Iran to start this bombing campaign in the first place. Who would these negotiations happen between? Netenyahu, who needs this war to distract from his government collapsing, or Trump? While all wars end with negotations, those negotiations will not be between the US and Iran, certainly not, given how unstable Trump is.

The truth is that Carney is in lock-step with Trump. Because that’s what a lapdog’s job is and Carney understands, at least, that.

The vast majority of Americans are opposed to war with Iran, and Trump does understand the need to keep his base happy. Trump declared peace last night, rebuked both Iran and Israel, told journalists that neither side “knows what the fuck they’re doing” and then bolted off to a NATO meeting …

… where he will meet with Carney and the chorus of nations cheerleading for military spending to reach 5% of each country’s GDP. Which is an insane amount of money, it must be said. In his two short months of power, Carney has been the biggest supporter of military spending of any prime minister that we have seen, perhaps since the second world war. Is this strategic politicking or proof that Carney is in over his head?

What is truly on display in all of this is that Canada isn’t angling to play any positive role in the world right now. It’s (our) sole priority, as expressed by Carney, is to shore up Plan B if the Plan A of the integrated economy with the United States stops working.

While Carney may not be a political animal, he certainly understands that US hegemony is cracking. However, rather than pouring money into Canada and Canadians (our culture, industries, economy and social services), he sees our salvation in a new relationship —this time, with the European Union, as he said on Twitter yesterday, “We will bring Canada and Europe far closer together in every facet of our relationship — including trade, digital, and defence — to create more stability, security, and prosperity.”

Bringing more stability to the world would be easier acheived if Canada were to try and play some kind of broker role among large powers that we have relationships with. But Canada threw that out the window with our full throated support for Ukraine trying to fight it’s way out of an invasion, rather than leveraging our relationship with Ukraine to try and find a path to getting Russia to stop.

Of course, too many liberals think that it’s folly to “get Russia to stop,” except that’s literally what international diplomacy is. Not “getting Russia to stop” or negotiating with Israel to get them to stop being absolute shitheads, but leveraging other countries to create the conditions for diplomacy to solve problems rather than bombs. To do that, a country needs credibility. Instead, Canada is in the market for a new master to continue our role of lapdog for as long as we can, Canada’s society and economy be damned. Because every dollar set on fire to re-arm Europe or the US or Canada itself, is money that is stolen from vaccine research, a new medical discovery, a new addictions treatment pilot, a new social program.

The way that the US goes is the way that Europe goes too. And no amount of our sucking up to Trump or the EU is going to change these forces. Sucking up isn’t a strategy to exit from a situation, it’s a strategy to stay very much rooted in the same problem.

Canadians mostly don’t want any of this. Canadians want the housing crisis fixed, the affordability crisis fixed, and for our health care system to be there when we need it. Those who voted for Carney voted against deepening our integration with the United States. Carney did not run on a war agenda. A political animal would know that he will run out of runway pretty quick if the population is out of step with his priorities. Does Carney understand this yet?

Chrétien knew that you had to listen to Canadians. He had an easy group to listen to: an organized and powerful antiwar movement. Carney isn’t so lucky: social movements are hobbled and Canadians are mostly unorganized. But that doesn’t mean that they can be easily ignored …