GLORIOUS AND FREE[LOADING]:

New process urged to safeguard public (Mike Trickey, 10/10/02, The Ottawa Citizen)

Canada has no framework for defining its national security interests and no process for even starting to formulate security policies, says a new study by the Institute for Research on Public Policy.

"It is clear from examining the Canadian experience and both the U.S. and U.K processes that Canada lacks any process even remotely comparable in analytical rigour, multi-department involvement, coherence and consistency," says the study.

"The absence of a clear process is possibly a major factor in the irregularity of foreign and defence policy reviews."

Canada is hardly alone in this. The existence of the world dominant Anglo-American alliance has obviated the need for most nations to have coherent national security policies--in effect their policy is "if we get in trouble America and Britain will bail us out." That's fine so long as they, and we, recognize it to be the case. It becomes a problem when these fundamentally unserious nations begin trying to tell us how to conduct our national security policy and when Democrats argue that we should defer to the wishes of these client states at the UN. Countries like Canada are welcome to hitch a ride with us, but not to try driving from the back seat. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2002 9:45 AM