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opinion

Tom Flanagan

Conservative thinkers generally base foreign policy on the concept of national interest. Seeing the world as full of danger and not under anyone's control, they argue that the responsibility of government is to protect the state's territorial integrity and other vital interests, such as freedom to trade and navigate the seas. They emphasize the importance of military strength, quoting the old Roman proverb Si vis pacem, para bellum - if you want peace, prepare for war.

After becoming prime minister in 2006, Stephen Harper announced that his Conservative government would adhere to the national interest in formulating Canada's foreign policy. He has largely been true to his word, rebuilding the Canadian Forces and staying close to our allies, especially the United States and other countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Now, however, comes an important attempt to expand the concept of national interest. The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies has released a report titled Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities. The experts involved in preparing this report have intimate knowledge of the subject. Senator Roméo Dallaire was commander of the United Nations force in Rwanda when the Hutu massacred the Tutsi in 1993. Bob Fowler, a distinguished Canadian civil servant and diplomat, recently emerged from a harrowing kidnapping ordeal in Niger.

These people deserve out attention when they talk about genocide. Although perhaps tilting more liberal than conservative in their outlook, they are not mushy-headed idealists obsessed with soft power. They know that in a brutal world, it is often necessary to use force. They want to marry the liberal notion of humanitarian intervention with the conservative conception of national interest.

Their point is that the national interest has to be more broadly understood in a world made smaller by revolutionary improvements in transportation and communication. The atrocious Taliban government in Afghanistan sheltered Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States. The failed state in Somalia has disrupted shipping near the Suez Canal, so vital to world commerce. Refugees from failed states flood into neighbouring countries, creating enormous humanitarian problems of famine and disease. Refugees also end up in the world's stable democracies, creating new voting blocs and pressure groups that inevitably involve Western governments in genocidal conflicts elsewhere.

Democracies such as Canada and the United States, therefore, have a tangible national interest in these distant events. Western powers should have acted decisively to stop the murder in Rwanda, as they ultimately did in Kosovo. They should also be trying to help the hopeless refugees of Darfur, the victims of anarchy in the Congo and those threatened with starvation and disease in Zimbabwe. Peaceful measures, such as publicity, condemnation and boycotts, should be tried first, but if all else fails, we must not shy from military intervention. This is the essence of the Responsibility to Protect ( R2P) doctrine adopted by the World Summit in 2005 and now espoused by the UN.

The report is persuasive, but does it take sufficient account of the limitations under which democracies use military force, except in situations of total war? The Roman Empire could invade a troublesome border district, create a desert and call it peace, but Western democracies feel obliged to bring democracy and the rule of law along with peace and order. Where the local political culture has no basis for such Western values, the occupation is likely to become indefinite in order to prevent violence from breaking out again. Winning the initial war is the easy part; creating the conditions for long-term peace is much harder, sometimes maybe impossible.

There's an obvious analogy with George W. Bush's doctrine of "regime change," also based on a revised understanding of national interest - namely, that democratic governments are not safe except in a democratic world. Underlying the doctrine of regime change was the well-established fact that no two democracies have ever gone to war against each other. Ergo, in a democratic world, war would never break out. The reasoning seemed persuasive, but it neglected the limitations of Western power that have manifested themselves so visibly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Our parliamentarians should study and debate this report thoroughly. No one wants to repeat the genocidal experiences of the previous century. Nonetheless, I fear that R2P is to the left what regime change was to the right: an appealing promise that goes beyond our power to fulfill.

Tom Flanagan is professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a former Conservative campaign manager.

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