Friday, December 2, 2005

Soft Power and Softer Heads – in a world that contains fascism it makes no sense

Soft power is about as relevant and intelligent as global warming.

by StFerdIII

Left liberals and socialists love to make excuses and rationalize the irrational. We have Canada and the EU with their vaunted social programs, government ownership and organization of their economies, enjoying limited free trade, high taxes and lower incomes than Americans, flooding the media with tearful rhetoric about social justice, harmony, our ‘African commitment’, and respect for international law and human rights. Nice. So in the multi-lateral, soft power view of the world, we are naively to assume that bad people, evil regimes, and fascist theocracies really do care about soft power, premised on Western concepts of morality, justice, and due process. It is really an incredible revelation - we neo-cons have had it wrong since the dawn of time, evil regimes and groups really do respect caring and nice people! Wow.

Forgive us realists while we snicker that perhaps non-Western people, tribes and philosophies have no true interest in ‘soft power’. Maybe blood and steel is more their thing. Maybe the soft heads peddling soft power are just being soft since that is the path of least resistance. After all who can hate someone who constantly cries about loving the world? As with global warming, Marxian economic analysis and the ‘noble savage’ myth, the ‘soft power’ theme is just another conjured fantasy to allow weak nations to free-ride off the USA. The idea is nonsense.

Let’s look at that great soft power free-rider, the disunited Confederation of Canada. It is not for nothing that Canadian ‘republicans’ deride Canada as ‘Canuckistan’. Socialism writ large has not been pretty for the once proud Dominion. Shorn of a military that will be officially shut down in 10 years, a border regime that spends 1/30th of US levels on security, an immigration policy that welcomes without much screening or care 100,000 Muslims each year, and a foreign policy premised on bashing the Jews and the US while extolling the Useless Nations Orgy, Canada has all but abdicated sovereignty. So where does the pro-Arab, anti-Israeli, ‘we love the world and multiculturalism’ get Canada? First, if you are a Canadian in trouble overseas it does not buy you very much and second, in the eyes of saber rattling Islamic theocracies and terror groups, one party Chinese and Russian fascist states, goonish militocracies running broken down Latin American and African countries, then Western soft power buys you exactly zero respect and less than zero goodwill.

Let’s look at the Canadian record of soft power – really a euphemism for ‘lets take our military spend, free ride of the UK and the US, and buy votes through installing more socialist programs domestically and use our government regulated media to make sure that all our citizens buy the idea that we are the best and greatest!’:

-A country of 30 million people spending per capita less on defense than anyone else except Luxembourg [1.4 % of GDP].

-An effective fighting force, in the field, of only 18.000 men. This would mean comparatively that the US would have only 200.000 men capable of fighting vs. the 1 million that they actually have.

-A token force of 900 military men, engaged in Afghanistan which is 5 % of US levels, and no troops in Iraq.

-A complete inability to provision, ship, supply or reinforce men in foreign theatre operations. The Canadian forces shipped to Afghanistan had to wait until Ukrainian transport planes were available to be rented.

Canadian citizens have been captured, beaten or killed in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. In a demonstration of ‘soft power’ hissy fits the Canadian government of course wrote furious letters in triplicate and used provocative language such as ‘we are very concerned…and serious consequences could arise… and the Useless Nations Orgy will be informed…..’ Big deal. The Canadian government is powerless and useless to protect its own citizens and its own self interests abroad. William Samson was tortured and then released in Saudi Arabia thanks to US and British efforts. A Canadian – Iraqi businesswoman was captured in Iraq and was only freed thanks to US-British and Iraqi special forces. A Canadian – Iranian journalist was taken, beaten, raped and then killed in Iran. The Canadian remonstration? Lots of words, banging of shoes upon tables and hands on hips annoyance. But do you really think corrupt, venal and anti-Western regimes give a beaver’s butt what the Canadians think?

Canada is supposed to be a grown up adult country. It isn’t. It is a collection of little special interest groups, beaten and bribed by the central government to play nice and buy into the Multi-Cult, socialist, ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke’ concept of international relations. It is resolute to be puerile. When a nation has 30 million people, economic and political interests flung across the globe, a historic and important partnership with the Anglo-Saxon powers, abdicating sovereignty and free riding off the US is not a signal of strength but of immorality. Canada has become a lighter and less densified version of the French inspired socialism governing Europe – so tantalizing for academics, Harvard educated snots, and the media-political international jet set club.

When the prime function of a central government – defense – is ignored than the Lockean contact between the ruled and the ruling is broken. Canada needs its own regime to be changed and it needs some adults to come in and run the country. Sadly this will never happen while the current political structure is kept in place and the current obsession with sensitive socialism is state policy.