Ted Campbell on what former Canadian diplomat David Mulroney calls the “Ostrich” school:

John Ibitson, writing in the Globe and Mail, suggests that Justin Trudeau might want to try what former diplomat, national strategic planner in the Privy Council Office, and commentator David Mulroney refers to (on social media) as …

… “the ‘Ostrich’ school of Canadian foreign policy.” It has, he says, two pillars:

First, “Canada has no interests/allies“; and

Second, “The best way to deal with bad regimes, bad people is to pretend they’re nice.”

Mr Ibbitson himself says that it may be impossible to work “with European and Asian allies, including Japan, to forge a coherent response that provokes neither the Americans nor the Iranians.”

The situation in the Middle East is, as I have explained several times, hideously complex. President Trump may have made it worse … although it’s hard for me to see how any added complications really matter all that much. The socio-cultural and religious hatreds that bedevil the region are likely beyond making “worse.”

In fact, there may be an argument that a nice, all-out, albeit contained, Middle East war might be useful. Perhaps the Iranians and Saudis and Iraqis and Syrians and Yemenis and so on need to sort one another out in the way that tends to produce lasting results: on a bloody battlefield … it worked for Europe, more than once, in 1648, in 1815 and again in 1945.

John Ibbitson says that “Iran’s rage over the U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani risks dragging Canada and the rest of the Western alliance into a new confrontation in the Middle East, courtesy of Donald Trump … [that true, as far as it goes, and he adds] … Most Canadians would want no part of such a conflict, especially since the U.S. President might simply be seeking to distract attention from his impending impeachment trial in the Senate … [and that, the first part about Canadians wanting no part of any conflict, is also true, but President Trump’s motives are irrelvant]. The fact is that he has ignored many Iranian provocations while he attempts, vainly, in my opinion, to disengage America from the wider world. The attack on a US embassy seems to have crossed a “red line.”

[…]

But, John Ibbitson says, “Mr. Trump’s high stakes gamble – that killing one of the most senior figures in the Iranian regime will deter rather than provoke further acts of aggression from Iran – could lead to some kind of asymmetrical war, with the U.S. military attacking Iranian targets, and Iran responding through militias and proxies in Iraq and possibly in North America and Europe … [true enough, and he asks] … What would Mr. Trump expect from Canada in such a conflict?” That’s the key question.

My guesstimate is that President Trump will ask little or nothing, militarily, because his military chiefs of staff will not even have mentioned Canada when they proffer lists of nations that might help or hinder US efforts. Canada is not on any of their lists of countries that matter. Diplomatically, however, I think we do matter to the USA and I would not be surprised if the phone lines have been busy all weekend as US officials tell (rather than ask) Canadian officials to get our government “onside” with the USA. The Americans hold ALL the high cards in the game of power.

I’m sure that Prime Minister Trudeau will follow John Ibbitson’s advice and adopt the “Ostrich” strategy … head buried in the sand, pretending that Canada has neither interests nor allies and pretending that evil people are good.

Perhaps co-incidentally with the “revenge” Iranian missile attacks on Iraqi airbases known to have US troops in the area, a Ukraine International Airlines Boeing 737-800 passenger jet crashed shortly after take-off from Tehran airport. Officially, the Iranian authorities are saying it was due to catastrophic mechanical breakdown, but they have refused to hand over the aircraft’s “black box” flight recorders for analysis. All of the 176 passengers and crew died in the crash, including 63 Canadians. It has been suggested by many that the timing was not a co-incidence and that the plane was likely hit by an Iranian surface-to-air missile due to the heightened state of tension in Iranian airspace during and after the missile launches against Iraq. Colby Cosh has more:

Some of the wreckage of Ukraine International flight 752 near Tehran, Iran.
Photo from MOJ Newsagency via Wikimedia Commons.

I am writing these words at a strange moment Wednesday morning. The president of the United States has just been on television, reassuring the American public that the crisis inspired by the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani has reached a satisfactory equilibrium. Iran made a demonstrative show of force against U.S. installations in the Middle East that killed nobody. Honour has been satisfied. Relief, among American observers, is general.

Meanwhile, Canada is mourning the deaths of dozens of its citizens in a passenger jet crash on Iranian soil. Perhaps it is a terrible coincidence. Stranger things have happened. But if you are old enough to remember the shooting down of Iran Air Flight 655 by the U.S. Navy missile cruiser USS Vincennes in 1988, you are old enough to doubt it.

The Vincennes incident is part of the historical litany that has made news consumers innately distrustful of the first draft of history. The ship was in the Persian Gulf, which at the time was swarming with Iranian gunboats trying to squeeze off the supply of arms to its enemy Iraq. The U.S. Navy had rushed to the area to keep one of the world’s economic arteries open to neutrals. But this had foreseeable consequences — plenty of confusing penny-ante firefights, and some notable accidents, including a puzzling Iraqi attack with air-launched Exocet missiles on an American frigate, USS Stark.