THE SHRINKING FOOTPRINT (via ef brown)

Where Has Canada Gone?: The second largest country in the world is being swallowed up by its own irrelevance. TIME investigates Canada?s disappearance (Steven Frank, May 26, 2003, TIME)

Some 50 years after Canadian troops helped win World War II and Canadian diplomats helped shape the international institutions that remade a shattered globe, Canada seems to have neither the will nor the wallet to make its mark on the world. Canadians can look back with pride at their past achievements on the world stage: the heroism at Dieppe in 1942 and on D-day in 1944, the brokering of the truce that stanched the 1956 Suez crisis, leadership in dozens of U.N. peacekeeping missions in the 1960s and ?70s. But those glory years are gone. Canada?s influence these days is more like a phantom limb: it feels to Canadians as though it?s still there, but to many observers the reality is different. The nation?s ability to extend power and influence has been hacked back to a shadow of its former self. ?We are now a marginal player in the world,? says Hugh Segal, who heads the Montreal-based think tank Institute for Research on Public Policy. ?We have a series of conceits about how important we are and about how much our views count that is completely unrelated to reality.? Christopher Sands, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, agrees. ?Canada?s footprint in foreign affairs is getting smaller,? he says. ?It?s an important, Western, decent country but certainly not a principal player.?

Increasingly, Canada seems to be a child hiding in tangled underbrush. You know it?s there, but you just can?t find it. One Canadian diplomat in Europe feels the country?s place in the world is diminished because Ottawa has subjugated much of its foreign policy to goals involving international trade. Arguably, doing that made some sense in the 1990s, when economic globalization was all the rage. But with the return of big geopolitical questions since Sept. 11, 2001-some of them capable of solution only by the application of military power-Canada has been found wanting. ?Canada really no longer has a force capable of doing all the traditional military tasks,? says the Canadian diplomat. The nation is shrinking even from areas where it has most often been a leader, like aid to poor countries. ?Development ministers in Europe now meet regularly to find ways to deal with growing poverty,? says a senior U.N. official. ?Canada is just no longer connected there.?

Many people don?t believe it. ?Our reputation, our capability to change things, has not diminished at all,? a senior government official tells Time. ?To the contrary, I think we are still seen as a country that people look to for advice and for ideas.? Among those ideas is the basic Canadian goal of ?trying to create a sense of social justice in the world community that involves a pluralistic system where all races and nationalities can come together,? says Foreign Minister Bill Graham. Canada?s loss of stature is relative, says Graham. ?I don?t think we?ve lost our leadership capacity just because other nations are more important than they were 50 years ago.? This, to some extent, is true. Canada?s decline in influence since 1945 is an inevitable part of the way the world has changed. Emerging powers like China and India now speak with a confident voice, while Germany and Japan have the clout that goes with their wealth. But the world?s changing dynamics explain only part of Canada?s retreat. More of it is the result of conscious policy decisions made in Ottawa.

Isn't it most likely that they've chosen to sacrifice all other expenditures and focus on their sacrosanct National Health system, leave the world stage and concentrate on themselves? Posted by Orrin Judd at May 23, 2003 11:14 PM