Years ago I came across a line attributed to Rudyard Kipling that if you go into the jungle, you must know what size beast you are. I've never been able to source it properly, but if I ever do, I'll definitely send a copy to Justin Trudeau, whose effortless swinging from vine to foreign vine just ran into a giant surly panda.
Actually his travels through the international jungle have run into a series of dangerous animals. It's not his fault they're out there. He didn't elect Donald Trump with his perplexing nativist hostility to NAFTA. Nor is he responsible for Vladimir Putin, Bashir al-Assad or any number of other nasty foreign leaders. But it is foolish and vain for him to regard this jungle as a garden whose inhabitants are tame creatures much smaller than himself.
It is probably a conceit of leaders worldwide that their nation matters more abroad than it does. I'm sure voters from Latvia to Mozambique like being told their homeland is a significant international player. Hence Barack Obama's cliché that virtually every ally he visited "punches above its weight"; whether even slightly sincere, it was a crowd-pleaser everywhere. And Canadian leaders from Pearson to Harper boasted that we were an "energy superpower" or a "moral superpower" or the world needed more Canada and was eagerly awaiting the next sanctimonious shipment.
There's another, related unattractive Trudeau trait that contributes to his international perplexities. While he seems genuinely nice and well-meaning, it is striking how his attitudes on any issue you can think of align nicely with prevailing domestic winds. He apologizes tearfully for things now very much out of fashion, but you won't ever hear him regretting the number of abortions in Canada or infringements on the conscience rights of Christians. He never champions unpopular causes.
It was also true of his father, whose 1967 claim that "The only constant factor to be found in my thinking over the years has been opposition to accepted opinions" ranks among the least self-aware remarks ever made by a politician, which takes some doing.
It would be wrong to call Trudeau Jr. a bully and after his boxing match with Sen. Brazeau he cannot be mistaken for a coward. But he is used to operating from a position of strength, where he can charm and when that fails push and get his way fairly easily. And when he is obliged to back down, for instance on electoral reform, he does so with a singular lack of grace.
His instinct for aligning himself with the winning side helps explain his flattery of Donald Trump once the latter was elected, and his unseemly eagerness to get along with the apparently rising power of China. And while it might seem paradoxically to combine obsequiousness with conceit, an unconscious habit of successful association with the powerful can easily lead a person to overestimate their own power and, sometimes, overreach badly in consequence.
Thus in NAFTA negotiations, Trudeau sought to impose conditions on the White House when a realistic appraisal of his situation would have led him to seek find allies in Congress and various statehouses to restrain Trump's appalling instincts. Then he torpedoed a Trans-Pacific Partnership summit leaving allies wondering not so much what just happened as who he thinks he is, casting aside an important geopolitical counterweight to China's growing ambition and assertiveness as if Canada needed no such thing unlike timid herbivores like Australia or Japan. After which he went to China apparently believing launching free trade talks on our terms was a done deal, and couldn't seem to process the reality that he wound up humiliated by leaders even more convinced the world should kowtow to them.
That Chinese president Xi Jinping and his cronies openly intend to restore China's position of global cultural, economic and military leadership it never even occupied, proving that hubris and a badly skewed sense of proportion about the international jungle afflicts big beasts too. But they are more immediately dangerous if you are smaller.
Canada is not unimportant. We are 38th in global population, but in the top fifth of 233 on the UN list, more than half of whom have fewer people than greater Toronto. We rank somewhere between 10th (nominal) and 17th (purchasing power) in total GDP and 35th per capita, while many who rank higher in the latter are oil sheikdoms or banking havens. If we cared to, we could even field armed forces whose quality more than made up for their size.
In short, we matter. But we cannot dictate to the world. Nobody can. And if anyone could, it wouldn't be us but the United States or, its leaders believe, China.
If Trudeau realized he was a medium-sized beast, he would adopt a more reasonable and cooperative attitude. Instead he swaggers about ignoring danger and annoying friends. And the law of the jungle is not forgiving of such conduct.
Photo Credit: Jeff Burney Loonie Politics
