For all of the confusion about where the Ottawa-Washington meltdown will lead, one thing seems certain. The big winners of this diplomatic collapse will be China and other repressive dictatorships eager to become our new “strategic” partners and further undermine the world’s stabilizing democracy bloc.
Opinion piece by Charles Burton, former diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing, senior fellow at Sinopsis.cz, a China-focused think tank based in Prague, Czech Republic. He is and author of ‘The Beaver and the Dragon: How China Out-Manoeuvred Canada’s Diplomacy, Security and Sovereignty’.
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Beijing in particular wants to inherit Canada’s economic dependence. Establishing such a broader North American beachhead will only further President Xi Jinping’s resolute goal of displacing the U.S. as a global hegemon, and cementing a China-dominated world order whose very foundation is the rejection of democratic freedoms and human rights.
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If Canada ever reaches a point where attacks on our economy put families’ livelihoods at stake, then standing firm on our moral principles will give way to tolerating – or at least ignoring – human rights abuses in exchange for restoring Canadian prosperity through trade and investment with the likes of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and China. As someone who has been sanctioned by both Beijing and Moscow for standing up for Canadian democratic and civil values in global affairs, this prospect is deeply troubling.
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When Mr. Xi makes a landmark trip to North America next month, it is expected he will add a Canadian stop, the first time in 16 years a Chinese head of state has visited this country. And this at a time when there have been calls for Ottawa to scrap restrictions on importing Chinese-made EVs, to locate Chinese auto factories here, and to even encourage Canadians to buy “Great Wall wine” instead of Californian.
In contrast to the belligerent threats that Canadians have been conditioned to expect from Washington, the Chinese President will project dignity and a tone of respect and goodwill toward Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Canadian business associates, who will be offering a warm welcome to the Chinese delegation.
But like Howitt’s “Spider and the Fly,” in which a cunning spider uses seduction and manipulation to lure a fly into its web, Canada should be wary of those who wield flattery and charm to disguise other intentions. Rushing to embrace China’s expansionist and calculating totalitarian regime will never work out well for Canada’s overall interest.
In the current hostile landscape, Canada could find itself deeply regretting coming out of an American frying pan into a Chinese fire.
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Dictators rely heavily on alliances, as they often lack the domestic support necessary to govern independently.
The Banana Republics of Latin America, the Middle Eastern monarchies / oligarchies, and the East Asian military juntas have all required extensive outside aid from wealthy colonial powers to hang on.
When a dictatorship loses foreign sponsorship - such as the Batista Regime in Cuba or the Mubarak 30-year long “Presidency” in Egypt or the Assad government in Syria - they can collapse rapidly if they don’t secure new sponsorship.
There’s a problem with that idea: who, then, was sponsoring the USSR?
Assad relied on Russia for military goods. North Korea depends on China for what little trade they have. When it comes to domestic support, though, “managing” that is a dictatorship’s whole job; nobody can do it for them.
During WW2, it was the Americans, as a hedge against their colonial rivals in Germany.
The US also initially backed the Castro Revolution in Cuba, in order to rein in Batista’s Peronist style dictatorship.
And the US backed the Vietnamese and Chinese Communists against the Japanese.
Foreign alliances are critical for all of these movements to take off, just as they are critical for domestic dictatorships to stay in power.
Slight correction on the Assad government because it was a family that held power for well over 30 years by playing both super power sides (sort of a middle man role) rather than having single sponsorship.
The civil war definitely was a result of grievances and want for regime change but was also heavily supported by the US (Hillary Clinton’s emails even have detailed plans of what would unfold if civil war broke out, and things happened exactly that way). The US wanted regime change because of Syria’s alignment with Iran and Hezbollah (and therefore a threat to US and Israel).
Because of US involvement and support given to the revolutionary forces, Bashar then requested support from Russia and we know where that ended.