Look Before You Leap
“Look before you leap” is sound advice for leaders, especially before declaring that a war was “worth it.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney would have been wise to heed that principle before telling CNN that the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran was justified by its outcome. That is a contestable judgment to defend when no final agreement had yet been reached and the long-term consequences remained unknown.
What do we know?
The war has left thousands dead or wounded, beginning with the still-unexplained strike on a girls’ school that killed 120 civilians. Iran has suffered an estimated $270 billion in damage, with factories, ports, bridges, power plants, hospitals, schools and homes destroyed. Reconstruction will take years.
The costs have also been enormous for the United States. Pentagon figures place spending at roughly $29 billion since late February, while independent estimates project that replenishing weapons stocks, repairing damage and caring for injured service members could ultimately push the bill toward $1 trillion.
These losses are particularly sobering because negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program were already underway before military action began. Rather than producing regime change, the conflict appears to have strengthened hardline elements in Tehran while increasing Iran’s leverage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Contrary to what Carney said were positives its now recognized even by Republican politicians that the deal been a major set back for the USA weakening its standing in the Middle East and causing problems in the global economy .
To call this a “game changer” risks normalizing war as a preferred instrument of diplomacy. Declaring such devastation “worth it” before diplomacy had run its course sends the wrong message about Canada’s commitment to international law and peaceful conflict resolution.
Canada once earned respect for preventing conflict, protecting civilians and supporting negotiated settlements. That tradition now risks giving way to a transactional approach in which success is measured simply by whether a deal emerges after the bombs stop falling.
Carney was not alone. G7 leaders largely endorsed President Trump’s narrative. Yet Canada could have taken a different path. Our Prime Minister might simply have welcomed the ceasefire while insisting that negotiations, not military force must produce a durable settlement and that violations of international law cannot be ignored.
That would have been genuine leadership.
A year into this government, Canadians still have no comprehensive foreign policy or defence strategy before Parliament explaining how our security and sovereignty will be protected. Instead, we hear improvised comments in international interviews.
Norway offers a different example. Its government has publicly set out a strategy for promoting peace and conflict resolution in a dangerous world.
Canada would do well to study that example before making war the measure of successful diplomacy.
Words chosen carefully, or an ill-considered blurt; I see the most poignant aspect of your analysis being the risk it ran of becoming what it has become. We cannot ‘un-hear it’.
As I told my children when they were little, once you throw that stone you no long have control over how it will land.
Once again, I am in complete agreement with Mr. Axworthy. As to my PM, I am Disappointed. I knew PM Carney’s Wall Street history and support for neoliberalism. I seem to have been fooled by or misread his book. Evidence is sure mounting that he has not escaped the US-led neoliberal mindset. I voted for him, with money too, so far I am, let’s say, “concerned”, with what I see.