diplomacy

Friday November 8, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 8, 2019

Western Order Reels on Berlin Wall Anniversary

June 19, 2018

The stage is set at the Brandenburg Gate, the dignitaries are assembling — but 30 years on, is there much cause to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall?

The iconic moment of 1989 crowned a year of revolution that toppled communist regimes across the Soviet bloc, marking the end of the Cold War and the start of a hopeful new era.

The global divisions caused by the 1991 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq stopped that in its tracks. Optimism quickly turned to cynicism, economic boom to bust, and electorates began to look for new answers.

June 9, 2018

Today, the western liberal order that prevailed in 1989 is crumbling. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is resurgent, communist China is the world’s second-biggest economy, and the U.S. under Donald Trump openly scorns multilateralism, belittles NATO and calls the European Union a foe.

But even as the west looks spent, it’s too early to administer the last rites.

The global climate emergency upends politics as we know it and represents a chance for the west to lead, even if Greta Thunberg complains it’s not enough. Europe is a green energy powerhouse. Environmental concerns top the EU’s agenda. Germany’s Green party is vying for first place in opinion polls.

A Green chancellor of Europe’s dominant country: Few could have imagined that in 1989. (Financial Post)

In 1989, a suggestion was drawn in my comic strip Alas & Alack that Donald Trump would buy the Berlin Wall. Interesting prophesy on how history would eventually play out with a future U.S. President and his penchant for walls and keeping people divided.


 

Thursday October 10, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday October 10, 2019

Turkey Begins Offensive in Syria After U.S. Stands Aside

Turkey has begun its military offensive into northeastern Syria to force back Kurdish militants controlling the border area, days after President Donald Trump said the U.S. wouldn’t stand in the way.

May 3, 2017

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced the start of the operation, code-named Spring of Peace, on Twitter and said it would also target Islamic State. Russia, Iran and a top EU official urged Turkey to act with restraint amid concerns that renewed chaos in Syria would lead to a jihadist resurgence and push the Kurds, America’s allies in the fight against IS, into the arms of President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey has battled Kurdish separatists for years and had repeatedly warned it would not allow the creation of a Kurdish proto-state on its immediate border. Once it seizes the area, Turkey plans to resettle 2 million Syrian refugees, most of them Arabs, in the border zone, further complicating a combustible situation.

October 31, 2018

A small forward group of Turkish forces first entered Syria early Wednesday at two points close to the Syrian towns of Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, according to a Turkish official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Turkish planes and shells pounded the towns as the incursion began. Residents fled though Kurdish forces had vacated positions before the attack, which is expected to involve tens of thousands of soldiers backed by tanks and armored personnel carriers from NATO’s second-largest army.

Turkey’s advance follows a dramatic reversal of U.S. policy. Trump told Erdogan in a phone call on Sunday that dozens of American troops who’d been working closely with Kurdish forces in the fight against Islamic State would pull back, effectively clearing the way for a Turkish incursion.

April 13, 2018

The White House statement appeared to surprise allies at home and abroad. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said they would defend their “own people,” potentially relegating the battle against Islamic State.

The Kurdish YPG militia that forms the backbone of the SDF has been one of America’s closest partners in the fight against Islamic State and is holding thousands of jihadist fighters and their families in camps and detention centers in northeastern Syria.

October 6, 2016

While Trump said Turkey would become responsible for the detainees, who include foreign fighters from Europe, it was not clear if there was a mechanism in place to transfer them to Turkish custody. Trump was criticized at home for a decision that could see Islamic State fighters escape or regroup.

A number of Trump allies, including Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, said the move was “a shot in the arm for the bad guys.” Analysts said a U.S. pullback could ultimately play into the hands of Russia, whose military intervention helped turn the tide of the Syrian civil war in favor of Assad. As the Turkish offensive got underway, the Associated Press reported that the YPG had asked Russia to mediate talks between them and the Assad government. (Source: Bloomberg) 

 

Saturday August 24, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday August 24, 2019

Will Trump blow up the G7 summit?

May 24, 2017

The biggest question clouding this weekend’s G7 summit in France is whether the President of the United States will blow it up.

It is a measure of the gulf between America and its allies and of how President Donald Trump has imposed his disruptive character on the world that everyone in Biarritz is bracing for a presidential eruption.

Given the President’s brazen, erratic behavior and mood in the last few days, the idea that he could repeat his tantrum and early departure at the last G7 summit in Canada last year cannot be ruled out. After all, he just pulled out of a state visit to Denmark because it refused to discuss selling Greenland.

Trump frequently flings vitriol across the Atlantic, criticizing foreign leaders who have spent the past two-and-a-half years trying, usually unsuccessfully, to work out how to handle him. His behavior is a promise kept to voters who believe that America’s friends have long taken advantage of its power and security guarantees.

Last month, for instance, he blasted French President Emmanuel Macron’s “foolishness” over a digital services tax that hit US companies and vowed to impose tariffs on French wine.

November 14, 2017

Anticipating trouble from Trump, Macron has abandoned the summit’s regular communique in an effort to take the focus off the disagreements set to rumble in the French surfing resort.

The G7, a group of rich democracies that comprise Britain, France, Germany, the US, Italy, Japan and Canada, is exactly the kind of globalized gathering that Trump and his supporters abhor and is in itself almost a rebuke to his America First philosophy.

The President prefers bilateral meetings where he can leverage superior US power, and he believes national sovereignty, not multilateral cooperation, is the foundation of international relations.

Furthermore, Trump’s sharp changes to US foreign policy have opened wide gaps with Europe on climate change, Iran, trade and Britain’s exit from the European Union that preoccupy other leaders.

“What we’re seeing, I think, is the institutionalization of America alone — I think this week we will see President Macron in France attempting to lead the six in a cogent way,” said Heather Conley of the Center for Strategic and International Studies during a conference call previewing the summit.

“The other countries are trying to figure out who takes up the new mantle, and can they hold on either until the US returns to that leadership role, if it will, or are they going to have to survive in these six dynamics without the US.”

June 9, 2018

The spectacle of Trump feuding with foreign leaders — captured at the G7 in Quebec last year inan iconic photograph horrifies his critics and the US foreign policy establishment.

Which is exactly why Trump may see a political benefit in being the disgruntled odd man out at a meeting that some foreign policy analysts have started calling the G7 minus one. (CNN) 

 

Friday August 23, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday August 23, 2019

During Ottawa visit, Pompeo attacks China for detaining 2 Canadians

May 8, 2019

Canada will have the support of the United States until the two Canadians detained in China “are returned to their families,” U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo promised Thursday while on a visit to Ottawa.

Pompeo, a high-profile member of the Trump administration, met with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his counterpart Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland ahead of the G7 summit in France this weekend.

December 12, 2018

Canada has been soliciting help from foreign allies in the ongoing dispute with China to secure the release of businessman Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, a former diplomat on leave. The two were detained in China late last year after Canadian officials arrested Chinese telecom executive Meng Wanzhou at the Vancouver airport to face possible extradition to the United States.

“Our team is focused on helping those two Canadians be released. China needs to honour the commitments it’s made to the world, and it is our expectation they’ll do so, and we’re working on it diligently,” said Pompeo during a brief photo opportunity Thursday morning.

Pompeo also made a point of insisting that the cases of Kovrig and Spavor shouldn’t be compared to Meng’s extradition case.

“[China] wants to talk about these two as if they are equivalent, as if they are morally similar, which they fundamentally are not,” he said during a media availability on Thursday afternoon.

“These are fundamentally different matters than the Canadian decision to use their due process and the rule of law to behave in a way that’s deeply consistent with the way decent nations work.”

The U.S., through a one-on-one conversation between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping and “other diplomatic activity,” has told Beijing directly the arrest of the two Canadians was inappropriate, said Pompeo.

“We’ll continue to do that until such time as they’re home and returned to their families,” he said. (CBC)  

 

Wednesday July 31, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday July 31, 2019

U.S. demand is threatening Canada’s drug supply, groups warn feds

Concern over U.S. legislation that allows Americans to import cheaper medicines from Canada has prompted more than a dozen organizations to urge the federal government to safeguard the Canadian drug supply.

June 13, 2019

In a letter this week, the 15 groups representing patients, health professionals, hospitals, and pharmacists warn Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor of the potential for increasing drug shortages.

“The Canadian medicine supply is not sufficient to support both Canadian and U.S. consumers,” the letter states. “The supply simply does not, and will not, exist within Canada to meet such demands.”

Faced with voter anger over the steep and rising costs of drugs in the U.S., several states — including Florida with the blessing of President Donald Trump — have passed laws allowing residents to import drugs from Canada.

In the letter to Petitpas Taylor, the groups say the legislation could exacerbate drug shortages that become an increasingly serious concern in the Canadian health care system in recent years.

“Hospital and community pharmacies in Canada are resourced to serve the Canadian public,” they say. “They are not equipped to support to the needs of a country 10 times its size without creating important access or quality issues.”

Petitpas Taylor did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The issue has recently garnered attention on both sides of the border. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, has announced plans to accompany diabetics this weekend to Canada to buy life-saving insulin, which costs roughly one tenth the price here than in the United States. (CBC)