Looking back over decade since 9/11, what events and developments stand out globally? Among others:

• The ongoing Global War on Terror and associated Western military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

• The hollowing out of the middle class, the financial crisis and the continuing Great Recession.

• The lost opportunities to support non-violent political reform during the Arab Spring.

9/11 changed everything, and the carnage and consequences engendered by that day haunt us still.

The Twin Towers episode was tragic, but not just on account of the mass fatalities. It provided the neoconservative ideologues in the Bush administration with the pretext they needed to seize control of the domestic and international agendas, and entrench the politics of fear. On their watch, human rights were systematically violated and torture legalized, while military and intelligence spending increased vastly. With this came not only Guantonamo Bay and Abu Ghraib; a network of “black” prisons and interrogation centres was established world-wide, and “extraordinary renditions” kept up the flow of detainees.  On the home front, taxes were cut, civil and constitutional rights were rolled back, and the national security and surveillance state constructed. Meanwhile, and as demonstrated indelibly during the failed response to Hurricane Katrina, the federal government’s program and service infrastructure was gutted.

For the USA, 9/11 was the trip wire which marked the beginning of the end of the unipolar moment. Its aftermath has bankrupted America’s economy, destroyed its reputation, squandered its global leadership, and ensured that the country remains the object of anger and resentment throughout the Arab and Islamic world.

Remarkably, some elements of this misguided response – the drone strikes, covert operations and targeted assassinations – have been ramped up under President Obama. Despite some new packaging, the past four years have seen more continuity than change in American policy.

For friends of the USA, that is worrisome.

Still reaching for the gun

Take, for instance, the Arab Spring. We have witnessed a convincing expression of the people’s thirst for reform. Moreover, that conviction has been expressed in an overwhelmingly secular manner, with the more extreme iterations of radical Islamism notable mainly for their absence. That observation, which not coincidentally relates directly back to the implications of 9/11, may represent the Arab Spring’s most enduring legacy. Either way, one would have thought that lending support to the forces of democratic progress, particularly in the face of concerns over violent Islamic extremism, would have been an obvious choice.

Instead, the West stood by as Tunisia and Egypt erupted, and chose to intervene militarily in the Libyan civil war. The result in most cases has been that beyond cosmetic changes in the top level leadership, very little of substance has really changed.  Labels notwithstanding, these uprisings are a far cry from revolution. And meanwhile, confronted by the stirrings in Jordan, revolts in Bahrain and Yemen, and a full scale rebellion in Syria, NATO’s response has been mute or incoherent.

There is a better way. In the age of globalization, development – long term, equitable, sustainable – has become the new basis for world security. At the level of grand strategy, that means that diplomacy must replace defence at the centre of international policy.

Until that lesson is taken to heart, the toll of 9/11 will continue to mount

True north in transition

How has 9/11 changed Canada? Profoundly, but – like so much else – in a manner mainly resembling a miniature replica of the USA..

Although the metamorphosis here began well before the change of government in 2006, the nature and orientation of contemporary Conservative foreign policy differs significantly from that of previous Liberal and Progressive Conservative  governments.

At the highest level of analysis, it could not be clearer that the overall international policy emphasis and mix associated with this country has shifted. Adulation of the military, and a general preference for the use of armed force has been placed front and centre, at the expense of both diplomacy and development assistance. Ten years ago the rallying cry for defence recruitment was “There’s no life like it”. Now, it’s “Fight”. Accordingly, there has been an acceleration in the transformation of the structure of the Canadian Forces, away from peacekeeping in favour of expeditionary war fighting. This redirection has been evident in both the prosecution of an ambitious – if ill-fated – counter-insurgency campaign in Kandahar, and in the enthusiastic participation in the NATO bombing and embargo in support of regime change in Libya.

At a speech in Trapani Italy delivered on September 1^st to members of the (Royal) Canadian Forces, Prime Minister Harper averred that “a handful of soldiers is better than a mouthful of arguments”. The following week in an interview he stated that “Islamicist” terrorism represents the foremost threat facing Canada.

So much for any kind of preference for nonviolent conflict resolution… not to mention according priority to the pressing need to address global issues such as climate change, diminishing biodiversity, nuclear proliferation, and environmental degradation. Unlike terrorism, any one of these threats could take down not just Canada, but large swathes of the world.

The Conservatives have emphasized Canada’s relations with the Americas – for the first four years at the expense of relations with China and India, which were ineptly managed. Free trade agreements have been pursued with a number of Latin American countries, while relations with African states have been marked by embassy closures and the concentration of aid expenditures on a more limited number of countries. A tilt towards the unconditional support for Israel has become the hallmark of Canadian policy on issues of Middle East politics and the regional peace process more broadly.

Under the Conservatives the foreign ministry (DFAIT) does not appear to enjoy the confidence, trust and respect which it once did. Once a leader in public diplomacy, the imposition of the – chillingly Orwellian – Message Event Proposal requirement means that the department’s staff cannot have an unscripted conversation outside the Pearson building and are now effectively gagged. There seems to be little appetite for the Department’s advice, and it is not being called upon to develop new international policy initiatives.

All of this may well have contributed to Canada’s shocking failure to win a seat on the UN Security Council.

Breaking with the past

The extent of the remaking of Canada’s role and place in the world becomes especially clear when the meagre international policy content of the last four years (under four foreign ministers) are compared, for instance, to the three and a half years of activist diplomacy in the late nineties under Lloyd Axworthy. During that period, with a lot of assistance from DFAIT, Canadian leadership helped to achieve a treaty to land mines, an International Criminal Court, and major initiatives on blood diamonds, children in conflict and humanitarian intervention (The Responsibility to Protect).

The contrast between the pursuit of the Human Security Agenda and the current level of inactivity is striking. Yet the post-9/11 departure from previous foreign policies has deeper roots.
Under PM Mulroney, Canada spearheaded the organization of the UN’s Rio Conference on Environment and Development, which produced the Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Statement of International Forestry Principles; the Biodiversity Convention, and; Agenda 21. Canada negotiated the FTA and NAFTA; it concluded treaties on acid rain and the protection of the ozone layer (Montreal Protocol), and; it worked within the Commonwealth to end apartheid in southern Africa.

These were significant diplomatic enterprises; the extent of the discontinuity with the present is unmistakable.

Grand strategy?

Moving forward, we are entering uncharted territory. As power and influence diffuse to other parts of the planet, the key challenge will be to manage the necessary accommodation more successfully in this century than was the case during the last, which was marked by two world wars and a Cold War.

Initial indications, however, are not encouraging.

There are few signs of any kind of grand strategy guiding Canada’s response to the re-emergence, after 400 years, of the Asia-Pacific region as the dynamic centre of the global political economy. Next year, in order to save $10 million, Canada will be alone among G-20 countries in its absence at  the Expo 2012 world’s fair in Yeosu, Korea. The theme of the Expo is “The Living Ocean and Coast” with sub themes of “Preservation and Sustainable Development of the Ocean and Coast,” “New Resources Technology,” and “Creative Marine Activities.”

Canada has the longest shoreline in the world, with frontage on three oceans…

Identity makeover

Over the course of the decade since 9/11, and more drastically over the past five years, Canada’s international image and reputation – our brand – have been fundamentally recast.  The once familiar helpful fixer, honest broker, generous aid donor and boy scout to the world has today become something quite different.

It would be in the interest of all Canadians – and perhaps even beyond – if the reconstruction of the Canadian brand were to be more widely acknowledged, debated and discussed.

South of the border, there have in recent years been a growing number of voices expressing serious concern over the militarization of American life.

I certainly share that sentiment.

Is an F-16 fly over and trooping the colours  really appropriate for the opening of the Super Bowl?

The USA is apparently becoming the Praetorian pole in an increasingly  heterpolar world order. Still, I think that a debate of this nature is culturally healthy, and have always admired the fact that some of the most trenchant, even withering criticism of U.S. policy and actions comes from domestic sources, including not least that country’s many military academies and war colleges.

Even in the mainstream media, a decade’s worth of assumptions used to justify deploying the military to pursue the epically misguided global war on terror are finally being questioned.

One could only wish that a similar degree of the scrutiny accorded defence issues in the USA  might one day be evident in the discourse on international policyin Canada.

Apart from a few faint echoes in the academy and a handful of specialized publications, that discussion here  is practically non-existent. I find that most unfortunate.

Canadians need to start talking about the kind of military that they require in the face of all identifiable threats and challenges. They must then somehow try and square the outcome of that conversation against a thoughtful consideration of whether or not the defence capability that they need matches the one that they have got.

I have my doubts.

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Post-Afghanistan, the Canadian forces are fully kitted up. Main battle tanks and artillery. Light armoured vehicles and troop transports. Heavy air lift. New fighter aircraft are next.  By international standards, they may be small, but they are sharp. After a period of rest, they will again be ready for combat.

But here’s the rub. Garrisoning our borders will not stop infectious disease. We won’t find alternatives to the carbon economy by sending out an expeditionary force to capture them. Generals and admirals won’t be able to save us from a warming planet or changing climate.

That said, and to be sure, in the firmament of international policy there is a place for hard power instruments, and I am certainly not an unequivocal pacifist. Having a capable military gets you a place at the table at NATO headquarters in Brussels, and the ear of some influential people in Washington.  And  not just hawks and neo-conservatives.

But is that enough?

Militaries exist, in the first instance, for capturing or killing enemies, and for compelling your adversary to submit to your will. This is what armed forces  were designed to achieve and why they are lethally equipped.

It seems unlikely, for example, that any kind of diplomatic intercession could have stopped Hitler and the Nazis. The problem is that, early in the 21^st century there is no threat out there that looks remotely like the Third Reich, or even Imperial Japan. In the nuclear age, moreover, large scale conventional war has become inconceivable.

In fact, the enduring lesson of the Cold War is that militaries work best when they are not used. Take the blade out of its sheath for purposes of doing harm, and it tends to make a terrible mess, as can be witnessed today in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Libya seems set to become the next case in point.

The problem with leading with the sword is that you run the very real risk of allowing policy to become an instrument of war, rather than vice versa.

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Today, militaries are being deployed as first responders in complex emergencies, such as natural disasters in fragile or failed states. In such cases, the questions must be put: how, when, and with what should a nation intervene? Given the elemental purpose of the armed forces, in humanitarian intercessions are they really the most appropriate international policy instrument, or do they just get the tasking because they have the nominal capacity while the other instruments have been allowed to wither for lack of resources? When resources are scarce, does this represent a misallocation?

Crucially, could not purpose-built civilian organizations do a better, more cost-effective  job?

A decade ago, recruitment advertisements for the Canadian Forces had the memorable refrain. “There’s no life like it”. Soldiers were being shown keeping the peace.

Today, the slogan is “Fight” and soldiers are shown going to war.

If security is the flip side of development, does this re-alignment make sense?

None of this came up in the recent federal election campaign, which is unfortunate.

It is time to begin an overdue national conversation on where to go with defence policy, international security and the Canadian military.

The reported killing earlier today of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is unlikely to prove a game changer for American foreign policy. Secretary Clinton has already suggested as much – the war on terror will continue unabated. Careers, promotions, budgets and bonuses depend on it.

I believe such a commitment to be both hasty and unfortunate, especially given the unmitigated disaster which the current course has visited upon the USA and the world since 9/11. That said, the death of “The Sheik”, the spiritual head of a loose federation of jihadi extremist groups affiliated worldwide under the ideological banner of the Al Qaeda franchise, does raise a series of other critical questions and issues.

A few key considerations include:

Justice and the rule of law: Assassination is not the equivalent of being “brought to justice”; this action seems predicated instead upon subscription to something like the Old Testament ethic of “an eye for an eye”. Does this not illustrate mainly the law of the jungle, and underscore the observation that notwithstanding the core values enshrined in the UN Charter and other international laws and conventions, in contemporary international relations there exists a highly asymmetrical relationship between the “rule makers” and “rule takers”? Could, or should Osama have been apprehended and tried in open court for his crimes?

Sovereignty: Pakistan’s  sovereignty and independence, already fragile if not failed, have been publically violated – shredded – by this attack. Local authorities were apparently not informed in advance of the operation – a decision which speaks volumes about confidence and trust. With the existing unpopularity of the drone attacks, will there be an anti-US backlash? Could such a thing ever be imagined to happen in the USA, or, for that matter, almost anywhere else?

Complicity: Osama was living very near the capital in a secure area and right under the noses of Pakistan’s rulers. What did senior figures in the USA’s front line ally in the war on terror know about Osama and his location in the midst of a colonial-era military cantonment? What does this mean for the future of US aid to Pakistan?

War in Afghanistan: Conflating internationalist Al Qaeda with the nationalist Taliban long after Al Qaeda had been driven from their Afghan sanctuaries has proven a costly tactical and strategic miscalculation, not unlike the blowback associated with the creation of the Mujahedeen. Might this incident provide the stimulus for long overdue, all party negotiations and the beginning of a NATO drawdown?

Political change: The uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia were largely secular and non-violent, with little obvious influence demonstrated either by Al Qaeda or more moderate Islamist groups. Even the stalemated civil war in Libya and the unrest in Yemen and Bahrain have not been overtly religious in character. Will this event burnish Al Qaeda’s flagging image and reputation and thus support recruitment efforts? Or, by eliminating the charismatic and ideological leadership, will Osama’s death force the movement further into the fringes?

Threat conjuring:  When the Soviet Union imploded, business was bad for the special interests who benefit from the militarization of international policy. At several points in the 1990s it actually looked as if a peace dividend might be paid.  Post 9/11, terrorism was elevated to the status of primary threat, the Islamists made to stand in for the Communists and the Long War was substituted for the Cold War. Just as Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam, and various others were all thrown into the same bin and labelled as the “Red Menace”, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, and many other groups have been branded as “terrorists” and all lumped together. If Al Qaeda has been dealt a body blow, to whom, or to where will the threat conjurers turn next?

Osama and Obama: The fate of these two figures has become ironically intertwined. Will Osama’s stature and appeal benefit from his martyrdom and stimulate revenge attacks, or instead continue to fade into obscurity, as had been happening before his execution? If the former, this act may presage another signal misjudgement. For his part, and alternatively, could Obama use this development to find the will to return to the course of dialogue and engagement charted in his Cairo speech?

In Guerrilla Diplomacy, I argue that religious extremism and political violence are borne of the anger and resentment bred by severe underdevelopment and chronic insecurity. Even at that, compared to the host of issues which really imperil the planet – most rooted in science and driven by technology – I maintain that terrorism does not make the A-list. My suggestion for dealing with Al Qaeda was to use patient police and intelligence work to pursue the criminals, while mobilizing new media expertise and public relations acumen to spoil the militant Islamist brand.

In that regard, it remains far from clear whether or not the killing of Osama Bin Laden will create an opening for diplomacy and the remedial re-allocation of scarce resources, or make matters worse rather than better.

Next? Coming soon to a screen near you… conspiracy theories.

I would attribute the running down of diplomacy in recent years to a trio of developments related to the carry-over from the Cold War of certain habits of mind, or intellectual baggage, which have been hoisted into the globalization age from the preceding era. In a nutshell, in the face of the complex threats and challenges engendered by globalization, and the concomitant need for deep knowledge, nuanced understanding and a subtle approach, many continued to view the world in a way best described as Manichean, alarmist and militaristic.

Without getting into the full details of the argument, or assessing the important implications for recruiting, training and diplomatic practice, this must be unpacked a bit. During the Cold War, the West organized its international policy around the objective of ‘containment’, by deterring, blocking, and wherever possible, rolling back what was seen as a world-wide Communist threat. Think Harry Truman, George Keenan NSC 68 and Mutually Assured Destruction. From 1947 to 1991, the adversary was portrayed as a monolithic Red Menace – Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, North Vietnamese, Cubans, Nicaraguans… No matter. Those Commies were all the same.

For a decade after the walls came down, there were few credible threats available to be conjured, but this changed instantly post 9/11 when a very similar, open-ended impulse – and function – again found expression. The Global War on Terror filled the ideological void once occupied by the Cold War. Al Qaeda, Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah – no matter. All Islamic extremists were alike. Substitute terrorism for communism, recycle a familiar ideological construct, et voila - away they went. Again. No secretive conspiracy here, just consensus among members of certain influential groups who identified an opportunity to advance their agenda.

The principal elements of this Cold War carry-over include:

• the adoption of a binary world view, which reduces almost infinite complexity to a matter of “us versus them; you are with us, or with the terrorists”;

• the use of fear to galvanize domestic support by characterizing the threat as urgent and universal “they are not only out there, everywhere, but they are among us and could strike anywhere, anytime. Red alert. “, and;

• a preference for armed force in responding to perceived threats, and the favouring of defence over diplomacy or development in what might be reasonably described as the militarization of international policy.

Taken together, these elements constitute a persistent, and troublingly resilient line, one endlessly hyped in the media and deeply lodged in the public mind.

What is wrong with this picture? In my view, getting over this debilitating mindset, even more so than taking full account of science and technology as a driver of international policy and transforming diplomacy, will be the sine qua non for the success of any diplomatic renaissance. Diplomats can become entrepreneurial brokers and network nodes, building relationships and supporting civil society actors in efforts to advance democratic development, good governance and the management of political and social plurality. But this won’t be possible unless the model, the context and the motives are changed. It is not yet clear that all of these pre-conditions are in place.

In particular, and in response to the burden of left luggage:

The world is not black and white but a many layered and multi-stranded swirl of greys.

Fear motivates the construction of gated communities within a national security state; hope is a far superior starting point for policy formulation.

Compulsion has its place in international relations, but attraction is more widely applicable, generally more effective and much less costly.

The fact of this psychological transfer of Cold War perceptions into the globalization age has meant not only that the peace dividend remains unpaid, but that for the past two decades the scope for applying non-violent approaches, such as diplomacy, to the resolution of international differences has been very limited. Iraq and Afghanistan are the obvious examples, but there are many more ranging from Darfur and the Democratic Congo to Israel/Palestine and India/Pakistan/Kashmir.

The planet has paid a high price for this hiatus. Notwithstanding that diplomacy, often in combination with development, offers the key to sustainable security, both have in recent years been in large part displaced by defence. By any measure – resource allocation, domestic political influence, even academic interest – diplomacy, the foreign ministry and the priority of equitable, sustainable and human-centred development have been on the back burner. Not so the legions, although an over-reliance on the state’s instruments of violence has imposed a whole host of other costs.

The economic and market meltdowns have spurred a realization of the need for innovative thinking in coping with the uncertainties of globalization. They have also given rise to a sense that some of the tools so hurriedly stashed when the train left the Cold War station may be worth dusting off, public diplomacy (PD) perhaps foremost among them. Not only are the large scale international scientific, educational, and cultural exchanges of days gone by now sorely missed, but AIDs cannot be detained; the climate cannot be garrisoned; the environment cannot be extraordinarily rendered; hunger cannot be bombed out of existence.

For these reasons and more, the ball is finally coming back, at long last, to practitioners of the world’s second oldest profession. By linking development and security through the medium of international policy, diplomacy, and especially public diplomacy, is poised again to occupy a place front and centre in international relations. Diplomats are advantageously placed to provide the essential strategic advice required by governments to integrate values, policies and interests right across the international policy spectrum. Neither members of the military, nor aid workers, NGO reps nor journalists can provide the sorts of supple intelligence required. They lack the tools of engagement, the cross-cultural skill set, and the capacity to generate the detailed, place-specific knowledge which might permit them to substitute in this critical role.