Assertive Neighbors are Great, Except when they get Assertive
By Honeymoon over? Looking forward to a US-Danish coalition to control expansionist Canadian tendencies in Arctic waters?
U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins clearly struck a nerve with prime minister-designate Stephen Harper when he criticized the Conservative plan to bolster Canada’s presence in the Arctic.
“I want to address one other question before I go,” Harper said Thursday in response to an unasked question as a lengthy session with reporters wound down.
“I’ve been very clear in the campaign that we have significant plans for national defence and for defence of our sovereignty, including Arctic sovereignty. It is the Canadian people we get our mandate from, not the U.S. ambassador.”
The issue of jurisdiction over the frozen archipelago and iceberg-cluttered waterways is clearly heating up in Ottawa and Washington.
An expert in Arctic defence and sovereignty predicted that the issue will become a sore point in relations between the Bush administration and the newly elected Harper government – which had campaigned in part on a warmer rapport with Washington.
“The sovereignty of the Northwest Passage is a red button issue for Canadian political leaders and for the Canadian public,” said Rob Huebert of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
Heh. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of guys.
UPDATE: Dave at Galloping Beaver was all over this, and suspects the same thing I do: It’s all kabuki.
One thing is certain. David Wilkins didn’t start making statements on his own. He doesn’t know the difference between a polar ice-pack and a peanut farm. He was speaking the words of the administration and in that, the timing is important.
Wilkins initially jumped in with comments during the election campaign which fed into the Conservative platform taking issue with Paul Martin’s criticism of US trade policy and the fact that USS Charlotte had transited Canadian waters to reach the North Pole. Wilkins snapped that Canadian politicians should stop bashing the US as a means to get elected, yet totally ignored the Conservative platform which has now supposedly raised an issue.
Harper, after being elected, spends at least 15 minutes (or more) in a phone call with Bush. Harper would have made at least two things very clear: His rise to office was, at best, very tenuous; and, he needed to be able to appear to be strong when dealing with the US since Canadians would not tolerate a prime minister who pandered to the Bush administration. The ability to retain and hold power depends on how Harper appears to be dealing with the US.