The Written Word
for May 30, 1999

It's interesting to look at the war in Kosovo through British eyes. As Dean Acheson said of Britain after World War II, she has lost an empire and is searching for a role.

Her search for a role has taken her towards Europe in economic terms and to the United States in matters of defence. Now the purist would no doubt argue that Nato is a European Defence pact but it isn't really.

For one thing, one of the major players in Europe – though certainly no longer on the world stage - is France and she is not in Nato and thus is not in the war in Yugoslavia. No … Britain has never been able or indeed willing to abandon the alliance forged by Roosevelt and Churchill in 1949.

Uncle Sam blows the whistle and John Bull dances. Britain is, however, also a major player in the European Community but to the extent that it has played its full role must again be seen as a reluctance to fully abandon the American connection – which in a minor way includes Canada.

One of the consequences of this junior partnership is that Britain does not recoil from the use of troops. Part of that goes back to 1982 when Margaret Thatcher sent the boys to fight the Argies in the Falkland Islands and indeed this still plays out politically as Tony Blair knows that if he doesn't show the same jingoism Thatcher did, he could lose much of his popularity in a big hurry.

What does this all mean to Canada?

It means that while we have been lied to by Prime Minister Chretien and Defence Minister Art Eggleton as to the use of troops, the British have never been under any illusion on that score. Any Canadians who take the time to read the Times or the Telegraph would have known all along what the British public knew – ground forces were always in the plan assuming that Milosevic didn't throw up his hands after a night or two of bombing.

Moreover the Brits have some national experience both in being bombed and doing the bombing and understand that this alone does not bring about capitulations. What Canadians can also learn is that even though Britain too has "responsible" government and party discipline there is a far greater degree of backbencher freedom permitted.

This is partly because the Tory 1922 Committee has always insisted on the right to speak up and the Labour Party has a tradition where the backbenchers get to select who goes into the shadow cabinet or the real cabinet as the case may be. In any event, though the decisions are made with the same iron fist in Westminster as in Ottawa, at least there is some degree of parliamentary accountability.

Canadians have been lied to from the beginning but in fairness, we ask to be lied to. We permit a system where there is no accountability of government to Parliament and can scarcely complain later if no one has held the Prime Minister' feet to the fire. Moreover, when the opposition – in this case the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties - don't do their job, that is to say oppose, the government gets a free run.

Though the NDP are now opposing, not so in the beginning. The Canadian government uncritically swallowed the gup put about by President Clinton and Canadians were told over and over that there would be no Canadian ground troops in Kosovo.

Well, there will be. And by going along we have squandered our capital as peacekeepers and have been willing conspirators in the battle to restore President Clinton's image.

We really ought to be ashamed of ourselves – not just for the role we are playing but because we are playing it based upon half-truths at best, outright government lies at worst.