Our Business

If you think that what is brewing between Iran and the United States is none our business, Hugh Segal urges you to think again:

But the tensions between Iran and the U.S. are most assuredly our problem. As a founding partner of the NATO treaty, which provides for mutual defence between the 28 member nations, an Iranian attack upon American forces, embassies, homeland or personnel would trigger an Article 5 Treaty obligation for Canada to engage, just as was the case after the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, even though no state actor claimed responsibility.

Canada’s foreign minister was quite correct in urging restraint upon all parties last week – a note that was echoed by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a Monday meeting of NATO ambassadors. But restraint is usually the product of a clear understanding by all involved of the consequences of unrestrained aggression. While that meeting was right to consider the dynamics relative to the alliance mission in Iraq that is now under Canadian command – a mission that has been suspended – a broader ministerial meeting to underline the reality of Article 5 would be broadly constructive. After all, it would be a serious path to restraint to make it perfectly clear that NATO would view a clear attack on the United States, its people, forces or homeland – be it kinetic, cyber or via terrorist proxy – as an act of aggression against all NATO members.

We need to take a proactive stance in this crisis:

Canada should, in fact, be calling for immediate NATO ministerial meetings so that this common resolve can emerge. Doing so would further motivate Russia – which engaged in joint naval exercises with China and Iran in the Gulf of Oman in late December and is not without substantive interests and influence in Tehran – to urge restraint on their Iranian client-state colleagues. A Canadian call for an urgent Security Council meeting would also be of value. 

If, as our Prime Minister has stated, “Canada is back,” then this crisis requires that we engage in a mature and strategic way. There are key questions that need to be crunched: What resources can we deploy from our regular or Special Forces? How can our intelligence resources be deployed in support of our NATO ally? What special self-defence measures will be required to contain Iranian hostilities?

It's incredibly easy to be dragged or to slide into a war -- particularly if you are Donald Trump's neighbours. As Justin's father famously told Americans, "Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt."

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