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William Watson: Trump or no Trump, the U.S. is our ally

The trouble with power vacuums is that whoever fills them is not necessarily an improvement. Let's hope for the best in Iran but not count on it

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So I guess we’d better get the Diefenbunker up and running again in case this summer’s CUSMA negotiations don’t go the way Donald Trump likes.

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It was interesting that John Bolton’s piece in the Telegraph just hours after the U.S.-Israeli decapitation of the Iranian regime noted that although “large segments of the West’s liberal-left establishment will be appalled … the centre-left Canadian and Australian governments promptly announced their support for the strikes.”

Many Canadians have been trying to figure out just where on the political spectrum the Carney government stands. Bolton, Trump 1.0’s national security adviser for a time, is a Republican so observes from its right side, but “centre-left” feels right, in spite of the Liberals’ serial shoplifting of Conservative policies.

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To my ear, our government’s support for the strike seemed muted. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada “supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from threatening international peace and security.” That’s support for the strategy. But is it support for this particular tactic?

Carney also said Canada would not be involved militarily, which I suspect will not be a great disappointment to the U.S. or Israel. Sometimes weakness is an advantage. Our diplomacy is made easier by our not having useful assets in the area. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, formerly Trump’s best bud, wouldn’t let the U.S. use British bases for the attack and for his troubles has earned a “we were very disappointed in Keir” from the president.

On Sunday, Starmer relented and, because of Iran’s attacks on Gulf nations, is now allowing the U.S. limited access to British assets for defensive purposes. So if I start a fight by bopping you in the nose, that’s illegal, but if you then respond by hitting me, any further bopping I do is self-defence. Sir Keir is a human rights lawyer by training. International law seems conveniently malleable.

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Is it right to kill — or in the euphemism, “take out” — another country’s leaders? Start with the clearest case and work back. Would we have used smart bombs, if we’d had them, to assassinate Hitler and his henchmen? Of course we would have (though if we’d had smart bombs, he probably wouldn’t have started the war). But how far back would that have gone? Would we have killed him in the mid-1930s on the basis of his bellicose speeches? After Kristallnacht in 1938? Or the start of the war in 1939? Or after credible news of the death camps first came through, whenever you think that was?

I know little about Iran but, especially after the murderous repression of demonstrations in January, have no trouble believing the now-defunct leadership were not nice guys (except the fellows the Americans thought they could work with but unfortunately killed in the first strikes). And they clearly harboured bad intentions toward Israel — which they often let out of harbour via their proxies. But were they the likes of Hitler, Himmler and Goering? I defer to those with greater knowledge.

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Trump is widely criticized for not having a plan for governing Iran after Saturday’s deconstruction. Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur had a plan — or at least developed one quickly — for governing Japan after its surrender in 1945. But he had to. He had conquered and was occupying the place. And the plan he came up with evidently worked, given Japan’s subsequent evolution.

But plans in general are over-rated — as should not need re-emphasizing in this 250th anniversary of the Wealth of Nations. As Trump acknowledges, governing Iran is really up to Iranians. The power vacuum he and Israel have created does at least afford the possibility, though only the possibility, that not-so-bad guys will fill it. Judging by Venezuela, the Americans are not looking for Jeffersonian or even Jacksonian democrats, just people who will not be so hostile to American and Israeli interests and won’t act on a grudge against those two countries for the current war.

The trouble with power vacuums, of course, is that who fills them is not necessarily an improvement. The benefits and costs of transformative actions being impossible to calculate with any confidence, most people avoid them. We can hope a democratic and peaceful Iran eventually emerges and maybe it will. But the U.S. and Israel, whatever we think of their current leaders’ attempt at regional transformation, are our democratic allies. There will be ample time later for criticism and reconsideration or — who knows? — maybe even congratulation.

Nota Bene: The wisdom of A. Smith

March 9 marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. This week, some of its greatest insights:

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

— Wealth of Nations, Book I, Chapter 10

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