Институт США и Канады Российской Академии наук (ИСКРАН) РОССИЙСКОЕ ОБЩЕСТВО ИЗУЧЕНИЯ КАНАДЫ

Выступление Посла Канады в РФ г-на Кристофера Уэстдала

 Canada and International Security

 Notes for a talk by Ambassador Christopher Westdal.
May 19, 2004, Institute of USA and Canada

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I am delighted to be here today. It is a privilege and a pleasure. I am humbled by the honour and the thought of all those who have preceded me in addressing you and your predecessors in this historic venue.

I am grateful to Director Sergei Rogov for his invitation and I thank you, Dr. Kremeniuk, Dr. Sokolov and Dr. Cherkasov, for your work organizing these events. In our work - and in the work of Ambassador Mamedov and your Embassy in Ottawa - you are esteemed partners. I am grateful as well to Erin Dorgan from the Political Section of our Embassy, who is here with us.

I feel right at home among all you young men and women. You’ll learn, as I have, that one’s self-image stays for decades at about your age. Indeed, on campuses like this one I’m always surprised - and just a little hurt - to be called “sir” or “mister” - as though I weren’t 18 any more.

I want to speak candidly, informally, maybe a little provocatively, and to leave time for questions and answers (from me or, if they’re hard, from Erin) and for discussion. I’d like to listen as much as I speak.

This is not quite off-the-record, but there’s no complete written text I’ll hand out (if there were, there wouldn’t be much point in my being here; I could send you all an e-mail); I’d like our discussion to be free.

To start, let’s think big for a moment about the threats to international security you’ll have to cope with through your adult, working lives.

The degradation of the environment is surely first among them. We live in a tragic age, an age of rising extinctions. Eighty percent of the elephants I saw in East Africa when I went there 34 years ago are gone now. We weep about the plight of Pandas or Siberian tigers ... yet we promote and applaud economic growth, ever more consumption. The spiritual, philosophical revolution we need to deal with environmental degradation hasn’t even begun.

Or think about our lack of effective global political machinery to cope with problems which know no borders - pollution, disease, the loss of biodiversity. We lack even the base we need of shared values, a common sense of human dignity. What are we to do when we see butchery on TV, when we see babies die with flies in their eyes, as today, as I speak. Ignore it? Forget it? Well, if we do, then we can forget as well about that common base we need to build global community and political institutions in time to contend with urgent, grave global problems.

Or think about the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the stuff they’re made of. September 11th, for all its horrors, was nothing at all like the use of a dirty bomb, let alone a modern nuclear weapon, would be. And it troubles me, by the way, that our iconic image, Hiroshima, of what a nuclear detonation does to a city, is inaccurate by whole orders of magnitude. The bombs which obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki averaged about 12-15 kilotons i.e. they were equivalent to the explosion of about 12-15,000 tons of TNT. Typical modern tactical nuclear weapons, the small ones, might range from 30-300 kilotons, 2 ½ to 20 times more powerful. And thermonuclear weapons are right off the scale, megatons, millions of tons, thousands of times more destructive, thousands of Hiroshimas in one bomb. And we’ve still got thousands of them. And nuclear weapons are still proliferating.

I could go on: you’ve got your plates full; my generation doesn’t look at all like clearing them of risk and menace. So there’s a whole lot to think about when we consider “international security.”

I want to talk, though, about Canada and international security. It is a central issue for Canada, because we have always been a country fated to having a global foreign and security policy. We are geographically too large; strategically situated; too diverse demographically; with political and economic interests too well served by multilateralism to sustain and pursue anything other than a global security outlook. We are driven not only by values, but also by circumstances and hard interests, to take intense account of global security issues.

In this context, Canadians have long understood that our safety depends not only on what we do to protect Canada at home, fundamental though that may be, but also on what we do to make the continent and the world safer.

We have always recognized that the defence of North America is also the defence of Canada. We share responsibility with the United States for the defence of North America.

But we know that a strong defence is not enough. Our commitment to collective security and the fight against tyranny led us to a quite disproportionate role in World War II, which we entered from the start in 1939, two years before our huge neighbour joined in. More than a million Canadians served in the Second World War, over 10% of our population, including some who brought supplies to Russia through the Arctic convoy system. We know our sacrifice was nothing like yours. We know that five sixths of Hitler’s force was spent on the Eastern front. But those million Canadians did themselves and their compatriots deeply proud and won maturity and respect for our country.

After WWII, we helped establish regional defence organizations such as NATO, in which we’ve been active to this day. Canada ranks very high among NATO nations when it comes to troops deployed abroad in multi-national operations. We currently have major deployments in Afghanistan, the Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Haiti.

We have also played, and we sustain, a leading role in UN peacekeeping. It was in fact then Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs (who later became our Prime Minister) Lester B. Pearson who first proposed the deployment of an international peace force under the UN flag when conflict erupted between Egypt and Israel in 1956. Since that time, Canada has participated in an overwhelming majority of peacekeeping missions mandated by the United Nations Security Council.

At the same time, Canada has also worked with other countries, including Russia, to prevent conflict by constructing an international system that brings common benefits by imposing rules and obligations on all. We also contributed our full share to building the architecture of non-proliferation, arms control and disarmament that has been a vital pillar of national and international security. More recently, we played a critical role in establishing an International Criminal Court mandated to prosecute persons accused of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, where national judicial systems don’t work.

Traditional conceptions of security were seriously challenged in the 1990s. There was dramatic change in the international system. The USSR collapsed; the Berlin Wall came down. The United States become the world’s only superpower. States failed. Rogues ruled. Television brought gross abuse and suffering into our living rooms. UN peacekeeping was increasingly questioned after tragedies in the Balkans and Rwanda.

In response, Canada developed a “Human Security” agenda. It addresses the changing nature of conflict -- from inter-state to intra-state. It focuses on the security of people, complementing the traditional emphasis on the security of the state. By broadening the focus in this way, Human Security encompasses a spectrum of approaches to prevent and resolve violent conflicts, to protect civilians where conflicts break out, and to increase the capacity of states to ensure security for their populations. At the same time, it continues our proud tradition of peacekeeping, peaceful resolution of conflicts and disarmament.

As part of the Human Security agenda, Canada has worked in multilateral organizations and bilaterally to transcend the realm of traditional security and to enhance the standards of international conduct applied to states and to non-state actors. I mentioned earlier Canada’s leading role in establishing the International Criminal Court. Our leadership in drafting and ratifying the Ottawa Convention banning anti-personnel mines is another example.

After the humanitarian emergencies in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, Canada launched the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, an attempt to bring order to the debate about humanitarian intervention. The Commission explored the “responsibility to protect.” It posed the question: If a nation violates all accepted standards of responsible behavior, does the international community not have a responsibility to protect - in some cases, to protect a country’s people from their own government?

The Commission concluded that humanitarian intervention, under compelling circumstances such as a Rwanda or a Kosovo, is warranted - in other words, that state sovereignty does not confer absolute immunity.

Just as the report was being published, though, the intervention agenda changed dramatically with the televised, live-time horror of September 11. Two years and a half years later, we are still grappling with its wide-ranging repercussions.

Terrorism is nothing new, but 9/11 drove the fact home that we face new security challenges, with adversaries that are unpredictable, difficult to identify and utterly ruthless. The array of threats is unprecedented: rogue states, failing and failed states, international criminal syndicates, weapons proliferation, and terrorists prepared to act with no concern for the cost in human lives, including their own. In this new environment, Canada, like other nations, has had to rethink its understanding of security. And we are thinking still, with more questions than answers.

Now, North America, including Canada, is a terrorist target. Once protected by oceans, Canada’s front lines now stretch from the streets of Kabul, to the skies of the United States, from rail-lines in Madrid, to cities in Canada and Russia. Our adversary could be operating in the mountains of Afghanistan, on the streets of Europe, or within our own borders. There is no home front. The conflict is not ‘over there’ anymore. Our approach to security must now comprehend and accommodate these realities.

The context of the intervention agenda changed fundamentally on 9/11. There was no challenge to the right of the United States to respond to the attack. Indeed, the world rallied; the United States was offered political and military support for its fight in Afghanistan in 2001 and beyond. More than 6,000 Canadian soldiers fought alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

We are still engaged in Afghanistan. There are 1,900 Canadian troops there leading the International Security Assistance Force under NATO's mandate to eliminate terrorists and support the Afghanistan Administration.

Our effort in Afghanistan has several dimensions. It includes, for example, an aid program that seeks to restore and sustain Afghan society. This year, Afghanistan is Canada's single largest country aid recipient. We are committed to ensuring that Afghanistan will no longer threaten our societies - with terror, or with drugs.

Iraq is another story. For a long time, Canada shared concerns with the United States and others about the barbarity of Saddam’s regime and the potential threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

We supported the decision to take the matter to the United Nations. We helped secure a strong resolution, 1441, but we held that UN engagement was essential, since disarming Iraq by force would require the greatest possible international legitimacy. When that was not possible, we decided that it was in Canada's interest, and in the interest of the multilateral system essential to peace and security, that we not join the coalition in the war in Iraq.

But that was then; this is now. While the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, it is not better off with the US struggling in Iraq and the possibility looming of failure there. It is in our common interest that a united Iraq achieve peace and democratic progress.

We are actively committed to that end. We have pledged some $300 million toward reconstruction. We have sent police trainers into Jordan to train Iraqi police officers there, and we will provide further aid in governance, federalism, police and corrections reform inside Iraq, when local conditions permit.

Our multi-dimensional approach in Afghanistan and Iraq reflects Canada’s conviction that in our new, globalized world, we cannot achieve security unless we contend with such defiant challenges as the still-growing gap between rich and poor and the ethnic, religious, and cultural tensions within failing or failed states.

In the new global context, lasting security requires multi-dimensional, sustained effort to build viable democratic societies at peace internally and integrated internationally. The key in the Balkans, and for crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, is the integrated application of military, political, economic and other instruments to promote peace and security. That’s the best way we see to build ‘peace, order, and good government,’ to quote Canada’s constitutional goals, internationally and within societies.

So while we continue to require and are now spending more to sustain an advanced, well-equipped military force capable of working closely with the US and other key allies in future crises, we also need to develop our capacity and that of the international community to deal with root causes and to develop the means of reconstruction and reintegration of war-torn societies.

I want to end here, leaving time for questions and discussion. We obviously have to contend with the very real threats to our security posed by terrorists and political thugs who find their motives not in poverty but in ‘hate’. But it is equally important that we fulfill the long-term security imperative to build a better, fairer, safer world for all.

I grew up through Cold War decades when Canada and Russia were on opposite sides of a security divide which threatened the very survival of our kind, with weapons capable of our extinction. I live now, with you, in an age of our partnership. That makes all the difference in the world. It is also one of the reasons why, as I said at the start, it is such a privilege and pleasure to be here with you today.

Thank you.

niw 01.07.2004