Canada’s more-than-40-year-old policy of dairy “supply management” is responsible for these drama-worthy activities. But this week, Canada may move closer to taking actions that would start to reform this long-standing policy. According to today’s Globe and Mail, the Canadian government is prepared to admit more European cheese into this country in return for greater access to EU markets for Canada’s beef and pork.

The European Union Trade Commissioner is now in Ottawa to hopefully complete Canada’s most significant free-trade deal since the Canada-U.S. agreement in the late 1980s. Negotiators are now getting into the toughest issues, one of which is cheese.

Canada applies 200-300 per cent tariffs on dairy products (see Table). Aside from cheese smuggling, holding “import quota” is currently the only way to import dairy products into Canada duty-free. The EU wants, at a minimum, to increase the amount of cheese it can export to Canada duty-free.

Why wouldn’t Canadians welcome more, say, French cheese? Many consumers no doubt would, but cheaper European cheese imports undercut farmers’ milk prices, so Ottawa has prohibitively high tariffs to keep imports out. If Canada allows more cheese imports, it will be hard to sustain farmers’ milk prices without having to limit production more and more each year. (For those that want to understand how the system works in more detail, see the Conference Board of Canada’s 2009 study, “Making Milk.”)

This trend could erode Canada’s long-standing system of dairy supply management over time, especially if it sets a precedent for other trade negotiations, such as the Transpacific Partnership trade talks, which Canada recently joined. Participants in those talks, such as Australia and the U.S., have long been pushing for more access to Canada’s dairy market.

Opening doors to EU cheese could pose complications. For one thing, the EU subsidizes its dairy farmers. However, EU subsidies have been cut back, and EU dairy policy is becoming more market-oriented. For another thing, if Canada were to offer the EU a greater share of imports, it would risk irritating partners in its other trade negotiations, such as the TPP. 

So, should Canada’s policy-makers continue to support this policy, or should they welcome greater openness, starting with the EU?

All political parties in Canada have traditionally supported supply management (though Liberal leadership candidate Martha Hall Findley has proposed getting rid of it). Recently, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois reiterated how vital supply management was for Quebec in the context of the Canada-EU talks.

To be clear, the policy has largely succeeded at its initial goal: boosting traditionally low farmer incomes. But a 2012 Conference Board study, “Canada’s Supply-Managed Dairy Policy: How Do We Compare?” shows that Canada is the only country among its peers that has stagnating dairy production – and the only one with dairy supply management policies. Farmers are unprepared for even a partial opening of Canada’s dairy market, and are unable to seize opportunities in fast-growing markets.

Much more than the dairy industry’s well-being is at stake. Buyers of dairy products – processors, restaurants, retailers, and consumers – effectively subsidize dairy producers by paying higher prices. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates the subsidy at $175,000 per dairy farm. The poorest in our society are the hardest hit, as dairy products form a larger share of their budget.

The EU deal is an opportunity for Canada to embark on reform of a policy that doesn’t meet the interests of the broader public or, arguably, even the dairy sector.

Lowering dairy tariffs, or raising our import quota for dairy from all countries, could allow the industry to gradually adapt to increased competition. At the same time, doors would be opened for Canadian businesses to sell in, and from, the EU, and to have freer access to the best EU technologies, goods, and services.

Canada should take this opportunity to say, “More cheese, please.”

In Tahrir Square, the usual crowd of liberals and secularists has returned to familiar territory, replicating scenes from the now-infamous 18 days of riots that overthrew Mubarak’s 30-year dictatorship,  but there are two key differences: Chants of “down with the regime” are directed toward the elected president, Mohamed Morsi, and members of the underground movement of anarchists called the Black Bloc, dressed in black and wearing ominous balaclavas, have joined the protestors.

Missing from the Tahrir Square tinderbox is a group of soccer hooligans and fans of Cairo’s Al-Ahly team. During the 2011 riots, they were often the first to spill into the square, usually for no good political reason: They were there simply to disturb the peace and have their team in red show off their colours. This year, however, they are rejoicing in the sombre sentences handed down by the judges in the cases resulting from last February’s soccer match riot.

After Port Said’s Al-Masry team beat Cairo’s Al-Ahly team in a 3-1 soccer match on Feb. 1, 2012, Port Said fans stormed the field. Chaos on the field was compounded by lax security, locked stadium gates, local frustrations, and local government incompetence that many Cairenes, at the time, blamed on the Egyptian military, which was in charge of the country. Al-Ahly fans felt that the military was getting back at them for supporting the revolution and for making trouble in Tahrir Square. Seventy-two people were killed in the stadium riot that left Al-Ahly fans calling for vengeance and justice.

The verdicts of the past weekend could not have been delivered at a worse time. The trials found many Port Said fans and residents guilty of murder, and gave them the death penalty. Families and residents of Port Said and nearby towns along the Suez Canal responded by rioting; over the decisions themselves and the sloppy judicial procedures that preceded them. They also questioned the timing of the entire chain of events, as in their minds, why wouldn’t the Morsi government orchestrate the timing of the decision so as to keep Cairo’s Al-Ahly fans off the streets on the revolution’s anniversary weekend? Now, Morsi has retaliated for the riots by calling for a month-long state of emergency and curfew for Port Said and other coastal towns.

This increasingly out-of-control situation is not just a series of unfortunate coincidences. Soccer and politics in Egypt are both running amuck because the current leadership has proven unable to gather the political momentum necessary to move forward smoothly, and stop lurching from crisis to crisis.

Despite having won the Africa Cup of Nations in 2006, 2008, and 2010, Egypt did not even qualify for the 2012 regional soccer competition. Sadly, there’s little chance that Egypt will regain the confidence of its people through politics or sport anytime soon

Institutions manage to stick around for a variety of reasons. Primarily, they represent old bargains that retain some value and that would be risky to re-visit. NATO is a piece of work. That is, it represents decades of negotiations, compromises, and cooperation that have much value. Starting anew would toss away all the sunk costs and might not lead to something better. While NATO is hardly perfect, the level of interoperability provides significant value over ad hoc coalitions. Indeed, the ad hoc coalitions that do form tend to be built on NATO relationships and processes, including the coalition of the willing that went into Iraq in 2003, the air campaign over Libya before it became a NATO operation, and now the effort to help France in Mali.

NATO is not an accident but the product of the combined interests of its members. While those interests have evolved, the members still have an interest in the security that NATO provides, as the deployment of American, Dutch, and German defense systems to Turkey currently demonstrates. The security guarantees are not just of interest to the East European countries, as averred by Ullman, as Denmark and Norway remain concerned about Russia. France historically worked against NATO and sought other institutions as substitutes, but recently re-dedicated itself to the Alliance, including altering where it operated in Afghanistan at great cost.

NATO has over the past twenty years repeatedly proved to be superior militarily to the alternatives. Neither the European Union nor the United Nations were able to deal adequately with violence as Yugoslavia fell apart. NATO’s intervention in Bosnia has led to an enduring if imperfect peace. While one can argue about Kosovo, NATO held together long enough to force Milosevic to give in precisely because members decided that the alliance itself was at stake. While Afghanistan is not a huge success story and one could write books about the challenges of caveats in that effort (see Auerswald and Saideman, NATO and Afghanistan, in late 2013), countries were willing to sacrifice a tremendous amount, in terms of lives lost and budgets spent, on a place that really did not matter to them. Why? Because they were investing in the future of NATO and in their alliances with the United States. While sunk costs are not a smart way to think about investments, they matter in politics. So countries now have a greater incentive to support NATO in the future because they bled for the NATO cause in the past.

If the concern is about the United States and Obama’s interest in the Alliance, one should focus on behavior rather than the omissions of experts at a think tank. When the Libyan effort started, France was passionate enough about the operation that it was more than willing to forgo NATO, but Obama insisted that the mission be a NATO one. This was, in part, about burden-sharing—the US did not want to do most of the heavy lifting—but it was also about the learned lessons of Iraq. Multilateral military efforts have more legitimacy when they are performed by respected international institutions, and NATO clearly is that.

Let’s pivot to the pivot. Ullman’s post raises the European concern that an American focus on Asia means that the US cares less about NATO and is willing to let it wither and die. I am pretty sure that the opposite is true: that the US can put more effort into its Pacific arena precisely because NATO exists and is helping to foster stability and cooperation in and near Europe. It is precisely NATO’s success as a centerpiece of Europe’s security community that facilitates the American turn to Asia. This is not something that the Americans are doing lightly.

Europe is not the only part of the world that matters for American security, and may no longer be the most important. That is NATO’s success story. I am pretty sure Obama and the rest of the American establishment would prefer a NATO-like entity in Asia these days, rather than having to continually work different bilateral relationships to deal with the problems of the day. Because there is not such alliance-based security in Asia, the US can rely on NATO to hold the fort, as they say, in Europe, while it confronts the Asia-Pacific challenges. Not just today but well into tomorrow, the US will continue to rely on and invest in NATO.

This post originally appeared on the Atlantic Council’s New Atlanticist blog.

I mention this because discussions of Canada’s role in the Mali mission have taken a confusing twist in Ottawa.  Having sent one transport plane to support French troops in Mali, Prime Minister Stephen Harper now says he is seeking “broad national consensus” on what Canada’s next steps should be. In particular, he is reaching out to the New Democratic Party, hoping it will support the effort. This is both instructive and confusing.

It is instructive in that, as the NDP seeks to maintain its position as the Official Opposition, rather than the third or fourth party it was not that long ago, it has incentives to support NATO efforts.  I noticed in my work on the NATO effort in Afghanistan that very new or very old (formerly Communist) left-wing parties feel a certain amount of pressure to support NATO operations so that they do not appear too fringe or pacifist.  It is far easier for more-established parties to oppose a country’s efforts in NATO.

It is confusing because Harper, with his majority government, does not need any votes from the NDP.  Canadian law does not require parliamentary votes for foreign deployments, regardless of the parliamentary votes over the Afghanistan mission.  So, why is Harper seeking the NDP’s support for Canadian efforts in Mali? I recently spent some time on Twitter with Phil Lagassé and Ted Campbell pondering what might be up. The possible explanations are many.

For one thing, Harper could be trying to get some political cover for this mission.  Lagassé has argued in various places that having Parliament consider military missions is a way of “laundering” responsibility.  Just as criminals seek to remove the criminal taint from their gains through various money-laundering schemes, prime ministers can get Parliament to approve deployments to confuse accountability.  Harper repeatedly said that the mission in Kandahar would end in 2011 because it was the will of Parliament (and thus, in other words, not his fault).  While this makes sense for other missions, I am not sure why it would be worth the effort in this situation, since the Mali mission really is uncontroversial and unlikely to escalate much beyond a second transport plane or become risky.

As another possibility, Harper might actually be trying to legitimate the NDP as the national opposition party.  Why? Because doing so would marginalize the Liberals that much more. Some have said that Harper is fixated on undermining the Liberals.  He might just feel that the NDP would be an easier party to run against down the road.

On the other hand, Harper could be trying to divide the NDP, as it is chock full of people who are opposed to most, if not all, military activities.  The Libyan mission revealed some of these cracks as then-NDP-leader Jack Layton supported the mission, but the party changed its stance as the air campaign went on.

Harper may just not feel comfortable with his majority.  He governed Canada for so long as a minority leader that he may simply not know how to do it otherwise. 

Or it might be about principle: When leading the opposition, Harper said he believed that Parliament should have a say on deployments. He maintained this stance when he came into power, even after his party gained a majority part way through the Libyan mission.  On the other hand, Harper launched the training mission in Afghanistan without a vote, saying that because it was not combat, it did not need one.  But the same would apply to Mali – which poses far fewer risks, as it stands now, than the training effort in Kabul, even as the latter remains behind the wire.

So, color me confused.  We have a pile of explanations, none of which is entirely persuasive.  It is, of course, probably a mix of reasons, including some we did not ponder on Twitter.  One thing is for sure: Harper’s effort to get support from the NDP on this mission has certainly confused things.

But the other, longer-term factor that is keeping eyes turned northward is Canada’s upcoming chairmanship of the Arctic Council, due to begin later this year. This intergovernmental body, created in 1996, includes a core set of Arctic states (Canada, the U.S., Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark), as well as six indigenous organizations, as permanent participants – an unusual configuration that owes much to Canada’s foundational leadership.The Canadian government would be wise to seize the opportunity of chairmanship to think creatively about the council’s role and the future of Arctic governance more generally, particularly given the interest of so many countries (including China’s) in the region’s resources.

The Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, based in Toronto, has developed a detailed and ambitious blueprint for what Canada might do as chair of the Arctic Council over the next two years. (Full disclosure: I was, until September, a trustee of the foundation.) Up until now, the council has focused primarily on environmental protection and sustainable development. Moving forward, however, there is opportunity for greater focus on issues related to security and emergency management, as well as better health and education for Arctic inhabitants.

There are three main sets of issues that could inform Canadian leadership over the coming two years. The first is organizational. The council faces that perennial problem of whether and how to expand its membership. While there are currently only eight member states, there are also official “observer states,” including, for example, France and the United Kingdom. To date, the process of obtaining observer status has been relatively ad hoc. But with a number of countries, including China, Japan, and India, expressing greater interest in the Arctic due to the potential for natural resource exploration and extraction, a clearer path to observer status is needed.

The council also needs to tackle the deeper question of whether it wishes to expand the number of permanent members. This move could have positive financial benefits, as with membership comes financial contribution. However, indigenous peoples are (naturally) concerned about opening the tent too wide, particularly to entities like the European Union, which protest seal hunting and the like. There is also suspicion about the motives of some would-be members, particularly when it comes to resource extraction. Indigenous peoples therefore insist that any new observers solemnly declare respect for two core principles of the Arctic Council: sovereignty of the Arctic, and the rights of Arctic indigenous peoples.

Canada would do well to stay clear of stale debates about who should be included and who should be excluded. Instead, as Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja has argued, the Arctic Council needs to become a model of 21^st-century diplomacy and governance, where regional and global interests and responsibilities are combined in interesting ways. Our government can, and should, illustrate how this might be done. It could push for a more secure and sustainable funding mechanism for the Arctic Council, particularly to allow for continued indigenous participation (which is costly to maintain).

The second set of issues relates to resources. Given the effects of climate change, and a less “ice-bound” Arctic, new problems and pressures have arisen. One initiative Canada could push is the creation of an international Arctic fisheries agreement, which would protect the fragile polar ecosystem from unregulated commercial fishing in the high seas of the Arctic. At the very least, our government should insist on authoritative baseline studies of fish stocks. In addition, Canada can lead the council in what are bound to be thorny discussions about regulation of natural resource exploration and exploitation.

But the Arctic also includes valuable human resources – a fact too often forgotten. Here, a forward-looking Canadian government would make better health and education for Arctic peoples a key priority of its leadership of the council from 2013-15. This would also require putting any initiatives on a multi-year funding cycle, so that programs could build momentum.

The final set of issues, which perhaps has the greatest potential for innovation, encompasses infrastructure and security. As Canadians have learned through the fatal aircraft accidents of 2011 in Resolute and Yellowknife, search and rescue capability is vital to being a responsible Arctic power. The Arctic Council has enhanced emergency management through its Agreement on Cooperation on Aeronautical and Maritime Search and Rescue (the first binding agreement secured by the council), but Canada needs to invest in its own infrastructure to live up to the tenets of the agreement. Currently, it is the only Arctic coastal state without a substantial Arctic port, and its search and rescue facilities are thousands of miles from the Arctic Coast.

In terms of security, Canada should try to avoid inflammatory language about “conflict in the Arctic” (a favourite topic of pundits a few years ago), and think more strategically about how Arctic countries can co-operate in confidence-building exercises. These might include joint naval or search and rescue exercises. Rather than thinking of security in the Arctic in zero-sum terms, Canada could think of it in a way that is more in line with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s conception of co-operative security.

Unfortunately, much of the Canadian government’s investment in the Arctic thus far has focused on sovereignty claims and military expenditure. While these have some merit, on their own they could send the wrong signal about the kind of Arctic power we intend to be. A wider and more multi-faceted agenda for leadership of the Arctic Council – backed up by rigorous scientific research – would better reflect the interests and values of Canadians, and contribute to future management of the Arctic’s resources. It might also be of greater interest to the United States, which will take on chairmanship immediately following us, in 2015. Indeed, governance of the Arctic could become a policy area shared by the U.S. and Canada, enhancing ties between our two countries.

Canada has two years to make its mark on Arctic governance. The clock starts in June 2013.

China’s impact on Canada’s trade (share of U.S. merchandise imports, per cent)

                                 Sources: Conference Board of Canada, U.S. Department of Commerce.

This loss in market share is not just confined to one industry, but is instead felt in almost all Canadian sectors.

So, what should Canada do in the face of this China effect? The U.S. market is, and will continue to be, Canada’s bread and butter. It will remain Canada’s largest trading partner for the foreseeable future. In fact, some Canadian industries have maintained their market share in the U.S. even in the face of Chinese competition. The most resilient industries, according to this report, are generally service industries, such as financial services. We need to continue to build on these strengths in the U.S. market.

At the same time, however, we need to look for growth opportunities elsewhere. Fortunately, at the same time that opportunities are being squeezed in the U.S. market, the scale and growth rate of opportunities on offer in fast-growing markets elsewhere is massive. The China effect, for instance, cuts both ways: China represents a major market for our goods and services. Exports to China only account for about three per cent of our trade today, but, as I discussed in a previous Roundtable post, that is likely to more than double by 2025.

There are major opportunities in other large, fast-growing economies that match up with Canada’s strengths. Canada’s expertise in the auto sector, for instance, is a natural fit for India’s booming auto market. In fact, as I note here, hot opportunities for growth in India match up with key Canadian strengths. There are also many other fast-growing economies in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa that represent significant opportunities for Canadian companies.

According to our analysis, Canadian companies are already accelerating their sales into these fast-growing markets. Still, these markets represent only a fraction of our trade. Canada’s economy is still heavily reliant on the slow-growing U.S. market, where we face stiff competition from the Chinese.

The China effect is here and playing a big role in changing Canada’s traditional trade relationships. And this is only the beginning.

Oil prices remain high as demand continues to strengthen globally, mostly from the major developing economies. In the United States, however, major new additions to oil production and a drop in demand thanks to new energy-efficiency measures have seen U.S. oil imports drop to the point where, by the end of 2014, it is predicted that the country will import just six million barrels of crude oil per day, or roughly a third of what it uses. To put this in perspective, in 2006, the U.S. imported more than 12 million barrels a day, and imports accounted for 60 per cent of total U.S. oil consumption.

In light of this shift in the United States’ oil balance, a debate has begun about the possibility of national oil independence, with some experts estimating that the U.S. might be in a position to export oil as early as 2020. It is easy to dismiss such optimism as verging on hubris, and there are a number of reasons to be skeptical about these calculations. As the economy continues to recover and enters into a period of sustained growth, it is probable that demand will rise again. But if we factor in the oil production of the United States’ NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico, there is a realistic chance that the region will enter a new era where it is a net exporter of both oil and gas.

For the two smaller North American partners, this is nothing new, as both already export large quantities of oil to the United States. But eliminating the need for imports from the Middle East, Africa, and Venezuela will make possible a monumental shift in U.S. foreign policy. The opportunity to disengage from these often troublesome areas will be joined by a new importance for the U.S. in the global energy system, as it moves from being a huge importer to a source of refined products. In fact, Citigroup has already issued a report in which it speculates that North America is the world’s new Middle East.

The development of Canada and Mexico’s oil and gas industries therefore continues to be of central importance to the United States. The much-debated Keystone XL pipeline project will be one of the most controversial issues on the Washington scene this spring, and the potential for a long-awaited opening of the Mexican oil and gas sector this year is being closely watched by both government and the private sector in the U.S. If the right public policies are put in place in all three NAFTA countries in the coming months, and if a co-operative spirit prevails, the U.S. could be that much closer to energy independence.

I have never found this argument helpful in explaining the politics of the region, not least because it typically descended into cultural arguments about how the Arab people want strongmen, respect the abuser, or simply view “might as right.” It is an academic theory that has always been too reminiscent of cultural psychologist Raphael Patai’s 1973 book, The Arab Mind, which provided lessons on how to dominate the Arab people, and implied that such lessons were legitimated by the behaviour of Arabs themselves. When Seymour Hersh wrote his exposé in The New Yorker about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, he noted that Patai’s book was the inspiration behind the Bush neo-conservatives’ modus operandi for containing the Arab people. The book, like Abu Ghraib, is a reminder of how the Arab people have been dehumanized as they’ve been poked and prodded by outside analysts.

So, what does this theory that the Arab people want strongmen have to do with the Arab Spring?

In my opinion, the Arab Spring has debunked this theory once and for all, as Arabs have shown the world they are looking for the complete opposite of strongmen. The uprisings were devoid of charismatic leaders, and none have captured the imagination of the various revolutions thus far. Indeed, the international community has at times made loud calls for the revolutionary groups to find leaders so external powers would have interlocutors.

Frankly, the Arab people are not searching for new larger-than-life leaders. They are not looking for someone to take to the podium and rhyme off speeches that try to restore confidence with rhetoric and empty promises. Arabs do not want to pay deference to strongmen, real or perceived – they are fed up with omnipotent leaders. So, when Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi gave his speech to the nation, and when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad stood in front of the Damascus Opera House to give his statesmen a lesson in geopolitics, they were out of sync entirely with the dynamic of the revolutions. 

Today, the people of the Arab world want technocrats, functionaries, and doers to lead them. Long-winded speeches and convoluted ideological arguments are not satisfying to a class of educated, well-traveled, and increasingly cosmopolitan people. Greater and greater numbers of Arabs are calling on leaders to effectively formulate and implement policies – they want reforms in every sense of the word. Fiery nationalist speeches that may have been enough to spark hope in days past now only fan feelings of frustration.

In many ways, this is the reason for the Arab uprisings: It is a process resulting from the increased education, urbanization, and empowerment of the Arab people. It is hard to tell a generation of young, educated people that because someone else commands the megaphone and has a stick to back it, they ought to acquiesce. The actions of this generation disprove any thesis that Arab societies are predisposed to dictatorship and stagnation. The Arab Spring should put an end to “Arab exceptionalism”, and to the idea that we are merely waiting for alternative Arab strongmen to replace the ones that have been forced out.

As I covered last week at CIC, the first impulse (and second and third) of the Department of National Defence is to deny.  So, while it seems surprising that Canadians should learn of its assistance to Mali via a tweet by Mali’s president, it should not be.  The Harper government has been known for extreme “message management” for quite some time – so much so that when Treasury Board President Tony Clement asserted that this government is the most transparent in Canadian history, it could only produce incredulity.  Combining Harper’s previous statements that Canada would not be sending forces to fight the Mali rebels with the silence about the C-17 creates some suspicion about likely next steps.  Is this part of an escalation process?

My guess is probably not.  There has been a consistent post-Kandahar pattern to Harper’s foreign policies, as Canadian Forces are sent to participate in multilateral efforts in ways that minimize risk and keep the soldiers off of the battlefield.  First, the training mission in Afghanistan was designed carefully to make sure that the new training efforts were very different from the previous ones.  Instead of embedding, and going into battle, with the Afghan National Army (ANA), the Canadians have not only been training ANA forces behind the wire – in bases – but have also been mostly training the trainers.  That is, instead of training those engaged in the fighting, Canada has been training those that will train the fighters.  This keeps Canadian Forces at a significant distance from the battlefield and from combat, with thus far no serious “green on blue” attacks by those they are training.  This mission design does not eliminate the risks, but does reduce them greatly.

The second major Canadian deployment post-Kandahar was the Libyan air mission.  While the Canadian Forces participated in the more aggressive efforts, dropping bombs on shifting targets, Canada did not deploy any forces to the ground, unlike the French, the British, and a few other countries.  There were no reports of Canadian Special Operations Forces active in Libya.  The Canadian participation in the NATO mission over Libya was risky in the sense that planes could crash and bombs could miss their targets.  However, given the destruction of Libyan air defences, this mission was far less dangerous to Canadians than the Kandahar mission. 

In this context of a series of low-risk, non-ground campaign efforts, the C-17 deployment to Mali fits right in.  It is an effort, like the training mission in Afghanistan and the air mission in Libya, to help allies pursue their goals, but to do so without making a major commitment or putting troops on the ground in harm’s way.  While Harper extended the Kandahar mission in 2008, he did not initiate it, and he lost whatever enthusiasm he had for it, perhaps because it cost him votes back home.  It seems to me that Harper found ground campaigns problematic for a variety of reasons, including the reality that having hundreds of troops in combat costs him control over the messaging, as it means many opportunities for media interviews that cannot be stifled.  Limiting Canadian participation to pilots (Libya, Mali) is a strategy that not only minimizes the risks faced by the participants, but also maintains message control in Ottawa. That said, the Canadian media is far more respectful of the secrecy involved in such efforts than the American media is, so Canada could deploy its Special Operations Forces to Mali (or elsewhere) down the road. 

Canada should help its allies when they face challenges, 1 as Canada relies on its allies for its own security.  In the larger scheme of alliance relations, we should not forget that the original deployment of American troops to Kandahar, to meet the Manley Panel’s demands for some reinforcements, was facilitated by the French movement to Kapisa – an effort for which France paid dearly.  Canada’s participation in the Libyan mission, and this new Mali effort, can be viewed as Canada returning the favour, and as part of an effort to maintain its standing as a reliable partner in the alliance.

My points about Harper’s defence policies are not meant as criticisms of the C-17 deployment.  Instead, my goal here is to clarify the confusion and prompt the government to be more transparent, rather than resort to its usual pattern of being opaque.

1 Yes, the French intervention is not a NATO effort, but many NATO members are supporting France in this effort.

But the past few days, which saw militant groups take control of the strategic town of Konno, took both regional and international actors by surprise. In April, during the uncertainty that followed the country’s military coup, these armed factions ­– some linked to al-Qaeda – conquered territory in northern Mali. The move into Konno, however, appeared to threaten the capital city of Bamako only 375 miles further south. There were genuine fears that the weak Malian army would simply crumble in the face of further provocations from rebel forces.

On Tuesday, during a visit to Canada, the head of the African Union suggested that NATO countries should participate in an intervention to stabilize Mali. On Thursday, as Islamist fighters advanced even closer to government positions, the interim President of Mali implored the French to come to the assistance of his country. Then the Security Council, in an emergency session later the same day, expressed its “grave concern” about the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Mali (where over 400,000 people have been forced the flee the north), and the “urgent” need to address the increased terrorist threat posed by rebel advances. The council also reiterated the request made in its December 2012 resolution: for outside actors to assist the Malian Armed Forces to retake the territory in the north captured by rebels.

These “invitations” to intervene appeared to give President Hollande the legal cover he needed to act. While international lawyers will no doubt argue over whether this is true, accusations of unilateralism will likely ring hollow given that regional players were asking for French involvement, and the UN was claiming that the situation in Mali constituted  “a direct threat to international peace and security” (as the current President of the Security Council confirmed today).

More importantly, however, French policy-makers now see themselves as confronting the spectre of further progress by Islamist forces not just in Mali, but also in Africa more generally, and even possibly in Europe. Indeed, TIME magazine is reporting that intelligence sources in Paris claim they have identified aspiring Jihadists leaving France for northern Mali to train and fight. al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has also designated France a prime target for its attacks.

In short, to the French, Mali threatens to become a new Afghanistan: a failed state, and a haven for terrorists. Added to this cocktail is the reality that approximately 6,000 French citizens live in Mali, and that there are currently seven French hostages being held in the country. These facts make it even easier to claim that vital French interests are at stake in a country that is becoming increasingly unstable.

French foreign minister Fabius has therefore articulated three main objectives for the French intervention: 1) To assist the Malian army in stopping the progress of Islamist rebels southward; 2) to protect the “integrity of the Malian state”; and 3) to help rescue French hostages. The time commitment is open-ended; French forces will remain, he said, for as ‘long as is required’. It’s also not completely clear, as I write, what complement of forces is in theatre. French airstrikes have been reported, as have the presence of French Special Forces. But both Fabius and Hollande have been vague on the details of numbers and locations of military personnel (partly out of a desire to protect them).

It was all supposed to work out very differently, with regional actors in the lead. But the crisis in Mali has revealed once again how problematic it is for Western actors to rely on “regional solutions” to regional problems. For several months, ECOWAS had been pushing for an African intervention to address the situation in Mali, which posed regional security threats, given the continued proliferation of weapons and the presence of armed groups with links to terrorist movements. At the UN, Western diplomacy had followed suit, emphasizing the need for a multilateral intervention led by African states, but supported with hardware and training from the outside. As a result, the December 2012 Security Council resolution makes African “ownership” explicit in its authorization of the use of force.

But a variety of factors have made the realization of an African mission difficult to achieve. The first is a capacity problem. As the UN Security Council acknowledged, it would take time to train and equip such a force, particularly for desert conditions, and to engage in the detailed planning necessary to make the mission successful. Thus, the council forecast that the estimated 3,300 troops promised by ECOWAS states would not arrive in theatre for several months –more precisely, September 2013).

Second, regional solutions inevitably bring into play regional rivalries. In this case, Algeria – the most powerful military force in the immediate region – has been wary of having troops from ECOWAS ­(an organization to which it does not belong) at its border. This fear is particularly pronounced with respect to Nigeria, a country perceived as one of Africa’s “hegemons”. (Interestingly, today’s announcement by Hollande was accompanied by reports that some Nigerian forces are also in Mali.)

Finally, the Malian army itself has been lukewarm about being on the receiving end of support from its African neighbours, given the involvement of ECOWAS troops in human rights abuses in previous missions in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Human Rights Watch reports claim that while West African forces helped restore security in these crises, which took place over a decade ago, they were also complicit in serious violations of international humanitarian law, including looting, harassment, and arbitrary detention of civilians, as well as – in the case of Sierra Leone – summary executions of suspected rebels. 

These factors illustrate that while regional organizations are often touted as the legitimate and preferred actors in crises such as Mali, they cannot always fulfill their mandate. Capacity and politics can get in the way.

And so the buck passes back to reluctant Western actors. Up until the events of this week, the U.S. was urging restraint, rather than the military action called for by the French. America insisted that new elections and the creation of a legitimate government in Bamako should come before any deployment of troops  – especially Western troops. Events appear to have forced Hollande’s hand, but in launching today’s intervention, he is asking his armed forces, just returned from Afghanistan, to take a big gamble. After only one day, French assistance has helped the Malian Army re-take Konno from the Islamist forces. But the country’s terrain, the fractured nature of Malian politics, and the unintended consequences that always flow from the use of force, all make this intervention a risky proposition. Moreover, a French presence in Mali could internationalize the conflict among global jihadists, which could be exactly the outcome they seek.