Oh Canada!

 

Pic courtesy Rosa Miranda Sauret

In the light of Trump's recent postings on social media about Canada, it's worth recalling, gentle reader, one significant historical element of US-Canada relations.

I'm writing, of course, about the tens of thousands of draft dodgers that travelled north to Canada during the war in Vietnam, between 1965 and 1975.

One estimate puts the number between 30,000 and 40,000. 

What is interesting about this history is that it seemed to have no effect on US-Canada relations. When you think about it, that appears odd. After all, the northern escape continued unabated for ten years, and these men whether they were draft resistors or deserters, were clearly in breach of the law in the USA.

Yet Canada accepted them as immigrants and made no attempt to determine their reasons for crossing the border. This turning a blind eye arrangement was accommodated by both Canada and the US, and it's interesting to consider the reasons for this.

One rationale is that the USA had much greater concerns when it came to international relations in general and relations with Canada in particular, so long as the number of war resisters could be contained, and they didn't want to rock the boat by making an issue of their treatment.

Strangely perhaps, draft and military offences were not included in the Canada-US extradition treaty. Basically, even if the US authorities had wanted to take action, they could do nothing providing Canada accepted these young men as immigrants, and indeed Canada did.

In any event, President Gerald R Ford granted an amnesty programme for draft evaders in September 1974, requiring them to work in alternative service occupations for periods between six months and two years.

Later in 1977, Jimmy Carter fulfilled a campaign promise to pardon any draft evader who requested one. I have no idea how many took advantage of this, although a figure of 556 is floating around in the archives.

This 2018 Canadian study (in French and English) by Luke Stewart provides useful background.

My only comment about Trump's offer would be that whilst travelling, I have mistaken a Canadian or two for an American and received a thorough telling-off for doing so.

One young woman said "That's the worst possible insult you could offer any Canadian! The basis of our identity is that we are NOT American."

Should we be Very Afraid or Simply Vigilant?

Darwin Harbour - Managed by the Chinese

During the last week, gentle reader, I came across a number of Youtube discussions about our relationship with China.

Watching these provided a way of filling in the time across lunch and tea breaks during the Boxing Day test in Melbourne. Test cricket is, after all, a quasi-meditative activity, and the breaks in play are too brief to allow the beginning of any new task.

Whilst the computer screen is handy, you might as well put it to good use.

I've always been fascinated by what is perceived as a resemblance between events between World Wars One and Two in relation to the India-Pacific region and the situation now in 2025. Mark Twain had something to say about history which is relevant.

Back in the late thirties, we had an emerging power in Imperial Japan, an isolationist USA, and an Australia that was ill-prepared for conflict.

These days, we observe an emerging great power in China, a President-elect of the USA who loudly uses isolationist rhetoric and an Australia that is once again, ill-prepared for conflict. 

Obviously, the situation is much more complicated than that, and I am supremely ignorant of the art and science of military preparedness, but I certainly don't want to see the mistakes of the past repeated. 

The first three discussions deal in turn with whether China is a military threat, what we should do about it, and two fairly similar viewpoints regarding the current situation. The last is included as a piece of devil's advocacy.

The first piece is an address by Peter Jennings AO presented by the Institute of Public Affairs. He has a distinguished career in the field, specialising in strategic policy, crisis management, international security and foreign policy. He was until 2022 the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. It is fair to note that both Jennings and the IPA adopt generally conservative positions on most issues.

 Jennings has a a lot to say, but in summary, he advocates building up deterrence, and seems quite convinced that the Chinese will move against Taiwan by 2027. He also points out that AUKUS is irrelevant, as it is simply too far down the track, even if everything goes to plan. He also assumes that the USA will continue to want to be involved.

I simply don't share that last sunny assumption. 

Michael Shoebridge is the Director of ASPI's Defence, Strategy and National Security Program. He describes how we might quickly develop that deterrence capacity. He references Ukraine, the Middle East, and the asymmetrical conflict involving the Houthis and the US Navy in the Red Sea. Unlike Jennings, he's not so sure that the Americans will have either the capacity or the will to become involved in our near North.

Where Shoebridge makes sense to me is when he advocates the use of drones, and the rapid establishment of local capacity to manufacture quantities of low-tech cheap weapons that can be replaced to meet attrition. The capacity to provide the necessary hardware to sustain prolonged conflict is vital, as the Japanese discovered between 1940 and 1945. 

A discussion that neatly ties the issues together is this interview conducted by David Speers from ABC Insiders late last year with Mike Pezullo and Sam Roggeveen. Again, they repeat a view that conflict looms, but can be avoided. Pezullo is prepared to put the risk of war as a percentage, which he concludes is 10%. Roggeveen makes the very good point that Beijing is closer to Berlin than Sydney, and questions why we need submarines that effectively shrink that distance. 

The final video is puts an argument that Australia's own military-industrial complex is what drives the media's fixation with China, and governments of both political persuasions are complicit in maintaining that fixation. I'm not sure I agree with Boreham, but some of what he says resonates with my own experience as a conscript involved in a tragic war in SE Asia driven by the politics of fear.

I wouldn't want that episode repeated.

You, gentle reader, can make up your own mind....