Canada and Other Matters of Opinion (26 page)

It was into this chamber of heightened cultural and political sensitivity—a sensitivity amplified on both sides of
the exchange by the great horrors of September 11—that Mr. Cellucci wandered when he accepted the post of U.S. ambassador to Canada. After that day, from the Americans’ point of view, there were some messages that had to be delivered raw. There was neither time nor inclination for the more serpentine volubility of a traditional diplomatic approach.

Which is probably why Mr. Cellucci’s memoir is titled
Unquiet Diplomacy
. His mission to us was the very plain one of making sure that we understood how serious, post-9/11, the Americans were. That, regardless of our long tradition of neighbourliness and the historic casualness of our cross-border relationship, there was nothing that would be allowed to impede or interfere with the Americans’ redrawing of their national priorities.

We shared a continent, and the United States had enemies. It was at war. So, from the U.S. point of view, if there were deficiencies in our security that they felt would have an impact on
their
security, if our military’s anorexic state indirectly jeopardized their sense of safety, if our border controls did not measure up to their standards of strictness—then he, the new ambassador, was going to tell us. Straight out.

His memoir is a chronicle of the key episodes during which he unfolded this message, and the events and issues that intersected with it. We Canadians first began to hear the new tone when Mr. Cellucci began “advising” us on the strength of our military. An interesting sidelight on this
contentious issue is that Cellucci was specifically enjoined by Secretary of State Colin Powell to perform this task. It was the first and only specific injunction he received from Powell. Quite naturally, a fair portion of the Canadian public and our politicians were not pleased—either with the advice itself or that the ambassador was “lecturing” us on our affairs.

He made it clear very early that in the changed world, “Security trumps trade.” This pithy formulation had an edge of threat. Canada’s economic fortune hangs—even in these mixed days of softwood lumber disputes—on the easy flow of goods between our two countries. What Cellucci was underscoring with his formula was that even his relentlessly capitalist country would not nurse trade at the expense of security. That unless Canada tidied up its house, monitored its borders and ports with renewed zeal, showed that we had a determination equal to the Americans’ to forestall future attacks, the economic nexus between our two countries would be broken.

The issue of continental defence, specifically its anti-ballistic missile component, was the most troublesome and annoying, according to Cellucci, to the Americans and President George W. Bush. On the system itself, the Americans did not understand why we wished to exempt ourselves. It was not going to cost us anything. We were already partners in NORAD—indeed, on the day of the terror attacks, Canadian Air Force General Rick Findley “was in command at Cheyenne Mountain … and scrambled the jets in response to the President’s orders.”

Further, they did not appreciate the description of missile defence, which so appealed to the critics of the system, as “the weaponization of space.” Finally, they were disappointed not only that Canada did not “sign on,” but that the Canadian government had been confusing in its signals on this issue, temporizing over its resolution and then adding another disappointment with “the clumsy manner in which it was announced.” Pierre Pettigrew communicated the decision to Condoleezza Rice, while Prime Minister Paul Martin, who was actually with Bush (both men were attending a NATO meeting), didn’t tell
him
. As Cellucci notes, they “were standing side by side. But not a word was said.”

It’s a subtheme of these memoirs that the Americans found our government’s method of communicating policy choices more annoying than the choices themselves. Cellucci gives solid evidence that he grew to learn of the complexities of Canadian parliamentary politics, especially in its current “minority” phase. He is aware of the inescapable perils that visit Canadian leaders if they are seen to be “too close” to the Americans on some issues, or—sprinkle the holy water—actually get chummy with their presidents. Brian Mulroney singing “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” with Ronald Reagan at the so-called Shamrock Summit evoked a national cringe that probably registered on the Richter scale.

But Cellucci hints, more than once, that even with those complexities, a stronger leadership and some daring on the part of the two prime ministers he has dealt with, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, might have led them to
make wiser choices than they did, and might also have worked to raise and reinforce Canada’s standing in Washington and the world.

We in Canada wish to have leverage on world affairs, to work the reins as a respected middle power. We diminish our possibilities in these areas when we define our diplomacy with Washington primarily or only in relation to its Canadian domestic political consequences. If by our words and actions we instruct the Americans that, finally, we are not really serious about these matters, then they will, perhaps with some disappointment, conclude that we are not serious. That will have far greater consequences for us than for them.

The ambassador more than hints that the two major issues—missile defence and the invasion of Iraq—where the Canadian government and its chief spokesmen gave confused signals, led the Americans to believe we would be onside. Then, both times we backed out and followed up with less than helpful remarks, either on the policy or on Bush himself.

On Iraq, following the failed attempt to get a “second resolution” from the UN, Chrétien announced that Canada would not be joining the United States. The Americans were disappointed, but they were offered the mollification that, “although Canada would not participate as an active party in the war coalition, once the war began, our government would say positive things about the United States, and negative things about Iraq.”

That assurance barely survived the time it took to phrase it. Chrétien, on the very day after the invasion, chose to implicitly rebuke the United States by saying that such actions as the invasion had to be authorized by the UN. And on the heels of Chrétien’s barb, National Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal chose to offer the public a personal assessment of George Bush as “a failed statesman.”

Cellucci was very angry in both instances, and while he did not see the prime minister recanting, he thought the words of the minister merited a trip to the woodshed. It was not to be. “Mr. Dhaliwal’s insult to the President went unchallenged and uncriticized.”

Meantime, just to appease the gods of irony, Alberta Premier Ralph Klein had sent a letter thanking the United States for “its leadership in the war on terrorism and terror.” For this, Premier Klein received “a stern rebuke from the Canadian government.” Mr. Cellucci comments: “Ralph Klein was not the only premier to publicly express his support for my government in Iraq, although he was the only one to receive a dressing-down from the federal government.”

In both cases, what I take from Cellucci’s account is that, while the Americans were disappointed and even surprised at Canada’s decisions, and in the case of missile defence actually perplexed, what soured them and made them angry were the petty verbal pile-ons before and after the decisions had been made. Françoise Ducros, Chrétien’s communications adviser, had opined that Bush was “a
moron”; Carolyn Parrish had a small franchise of witless anti-American insults and Bush-bashing; then Mr. Chrétien voided the understanding that he was to “say nice things” and Dhaliwal, a full cabinet minister, gratuitously degraded the American president.

I suspect that in diplomacy, tone is as important as substance, and respect between leaders and nations more important than either. I take from what Mr. Cellucci has written that both he and his masters in the White House could live with Canada’s taking its own line, but were thrown off balance and genuinely astonished that representatives and spokesmen of their neighbour and ally were so liberal and earthy in jabbing the president and deriding his policies.

Neither Cellucci nor the Americans are stupid. They know that occasional spasms of anti-Americanism, or “standing up to the White House,” offer an easy harvest of electoral popularity. Why did we stay out of the war with Iraq? Was it because we thought it wrong? Or was it because the Chrétien government could not, politically, contemplate going along with the Americans? I’d say the second was a more puissant recommendation than the first. Decorate the choice with a few anti-Bush comments, and you’ve hit the sweet spot of Canadian politics.

But did the manner hurt us on other fronts? Mr. Cellucci, for all his professed candour, doesn’t oblige with a real answer. It is almost impossible to believe that, if the Americans thought we were gaming them on Iraq—depreciating
the “legitimacy” of the invasion, avoiding missile defence, not on the merits of these cases, but on their “optics” for Canadians—they would not respond on other fronts. Softwood lumber, for example. We pay for our posturing, and anyone reading
Unquiet Diplomacy
will understand why.

Did his message get through—that this is a changed world, and that the U.S. has elevated its own security to the status of an absolute and incomparable imperative?

First, if it did not, it is not because Mr. Cellucci failed in delivering the message. He found ample occasions and eager ears, and he had the necessary manner. But did it get through to Canadians with all the force and priority Mr. Cellucci intended? I don’t think so. Mainly because there remains a gulf between the two countries—the gulf established by the cruel acts of September 11. They were attacked and we were not. We may have stores of empathy for the Americans, and the more imaginative of our citizens and leaders may have formed some idea of the shock the Americans felt. But there is an unbridgeable psychological distance between us and them: their country was hit, the empire was attacked; we were sympathetic witnesses. September 11 is another strand in the evolving myth of that country—it has contoured the imaginations of all its citizens.

Which leaves a gap between us. The Americans have a greater intensity on matters of defence and, when necessary, aggression. They are not waiting for another blow to
fall. Right or wrong, they are going to intervene in the world, and they will look both for allies to support them and, in our case, neighbours who, in matters of border security, defence and intelligence-gathering, will be as intense as they are. But we do not see things in an equally dire light. A majority of Canadians probably feel that the Americans are overreacting. And, occasionally, some Canadians will scold and even mock the Americans for the post-9/11 intensity.

Which means not only will we at times not be on side, we will also at times be seen by them as posing, as haughty and preachy. And they will see that as hypocrisy—since, as Mr. Cellucci made clear in one of his early speeches on the topic of Canada and the United States post-9/11—they would take our fears at face value.

They would automatically come to our aid.

In the sense that
Unquiet Diplomacy
opens a window on U.S.-Canada relations, it is a naturally interesting book. Mr. Cellucci is on most things, I think, a straight shooter. You don’t have to decode his remarks. But having been a diplomat, he has learned the diplomat’s art of always holding something back, or allowing certain things to speak for themselves, or of supplying enough by way of tone or example to let readers form larger judgments than he himself is willing to supply.

He likes Canada and he likes a lot of Canadians, and he loves the country itself. He survived Cape Breton and the Calgary Stampede. We could wish he were a better stylist, but not every ambassador is John Kenneth Galbraith, and
perhaps that’s a blessing.
Bon mots
are best in after-dinner speeches anyway. This is a tidy memoir, mercilessly unembroidered and stuffed with home truths for both countries.

Stumbling around the Internet, I came upon the delightful revelation that coffee, according to legend, was discovered by an Abyssinian goatherd who chanced upon his goats dancing happily around after their having eaten berries from a coffee bush.

Encouraging as it is to learn that
espresso macchiato
has its Eden myth, and that Abyssinian goatherds, sages that they are, know a happy dancing goat from a sad one, the story cued me to the changing fortunes of our caffeine-fortified times.

Is the sun setting on the Starbucks empire? Well, as the ancient maxim has it, there is always hope.

There’s a memo Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz sent last February to the now-ousted CEO of the bean empire. Actually, it’s less a memo than a
cri de coeur
. Nothing as pathetic as this had been penned since poor, incarcerated Oscar Wilde, brooding on his ruin, wrote that immortal lament
The Ballad of Reading Gaol
. It was Oscar’s conclusion, rendered in highly melodramatic tetrameter, that “all men kill the thing they love.” The big guy at Starbucks doesn’t
quite have Wilde’s gift for epigram and
le mot juste
, but the story he tells is the same: Starbucks is doing in Starbucks.

Mr. Schultz is worried that, having gone “from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond” in ten years, the company had made “a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have led to the watering down of the Starbucks experience.” I don’t think that, when he speaks of “watering down,” he literally means watering down. He is really speaking of what he likes to think of as the aura of Starbucks—the “Starbucks experience,” as he charmingly puts it. The coffee, I suspect, is as strong as it has always been.

He’s worried that some people may now be going to the yuppie salons just to get a cup of coffee. He reflects on Starbucks’ decision to bring in “automatic espresso machines” and notes that the choice was a good one in terms of “speed of service and efficiency.” But the machines displaced the La Marzocca models (which bore a passing resemblance to some of the alien spaceships shown on
Star Trek
, if you can imagine tackily drawn spaceships with three or four pump handles).