Anti-Imperialism should be the way forward, Not Centrism nor Sinophobia: On the Green Party Foreign Policy debate
Photo Credit: (National Observer / Google Images)
On September 10, Rabble.ca, in collaboration with the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, hosted a Foreign Policy debate involving the candidates still standing in the Green Party Leadership race. The debate discussed important topics often not discussed in Canadian mainstream political discourse such as foreign policy independence from the US, Palestinian rights, the global climate crisis, as well as the effect the international mining and arms industries continue to have on Canadian Foreign Policy. It was hosted and moderated by Bianca Mugyenyi of the CFPI and journalist Judy Rebick.
The Left Shows the way Forward, the Centre Falters:
The debate provided a window of opportunity for the leftists running in the Green Party to push forward an anti-imperialist foreign policy alternative that has been shot down elsewhere in Canadian political discourse. With regards to that opportunity, left leaning Green candidates, particularly Dimitri Lascaris, articulated a strong foreign policy platform challenging the foreign policy status quo in Canadian society.
On the topic of foreign policy independence from the US, while all of the candidates understood the dangers of Trump, Lascaris, and to a lesser extent Haddad, pointed out the fact that a democratic president (in this case Joe Biden) in charge of America would not be much of an improvement.
Lascaris calls out Joe Biden for being complicit in the destruction of Libya under the Obama administration in 2011, as well as his complicity in both deploying waterboarding as a form of torture and the expansion of Drone Warfare in the Middle East, both of which were carried out during the Obama years. From there, Lascaris calls not only for political independence from the US, as the other candidates are doing, but also for Canada to take measures opposing American Imperialism. He calls on the Green Party to work with social democratic and progressive politicians in the US, such as Bernie Sanders and the Squad, along with working with progressives and leftist activists in the US. In addition Lascaris also seeks to push for international law to be used as a means to bring American war criminals to justice.
Later on in the debate, Lascaris hinted at what an ecosocialist foreign policy independent of the US could look like. During a question asked by debate moderators on whether Canada has a debt to the global South in helping to fight the effects of climate change around the world; the effects of global warming being labeled by Nigerian environmental activist Nnimmo Bassey as a “death sentence” for Africa (this in turn, according to the debate moderators, makes climate change anti-black). In response to that question, Lascaris states that our support for the fossil fuel industry is racist and has led to massive negative effect on our relations with our first nations and the global south as the Canadian government is subservient to the dictates of the fossil fuel industry. In response, Lascaris seeks to cut down our military spending and our commitments to NATO in favor of using that funding to help our first nations communities and develop alternatives to fossil fuels.
In addition, both Lascaris and Haddad also challenged the power of the mining sector during the debate. When asked how she would make Canada a force for good in the world, Haddad stated that Canadian imperialism is tied to the mining sector, which to her, comprise 50 per cent of the mining sector and are responsible for destroying indigenous communities all over Latin America. For instance, Haddad notes, our opposition to the Venezuelan government is tied to lobbying from Canadian mining companies, which have successfully lobbied for Canada to impose sanctions against Venezuela along with the US that were deemed by the UN to be a “crime against humanity”.
While Haddad has not given specific details on how an ecosocialist Green Party would confront the threat Canadian mining companies pose to the world and to Canadian democracy, Lascaris, in response to the same question, put forward solutions to combat the influence of the extractive industry on our foreign policy. Lascaris states that we need to break up Canadian businesses that perpetuate injustices around the world and at home, while reforming the legal system to weaken the business and mining sectors, and ensure our foreign policy is no longer beholden to them.
Left leaning candidates further led the way on various other issues that while not extensively debated about, were mentioned during the debate, with the moderators telling the candidates to give thumbs up or thumps down, or remain undecided with regards to issues they could not discuss during the debate. Both Lascaris and Haddad opposed continuing involvement in NATO, the Five Eyes program and the Lima Group, and wanted Canada to stop buying expensive fighter jets. Amita Kutner, another left-leaning candidate in the race, was undecided about NATO, but also opposed the Five Eyes program, continued involvement in the Lima Group, as well as the buying of expensive fighter jets.
As left wing policies are shown to be a way forward, the position of the establishment wing of the Green Party is further weakened by a refusal to defend or stand by progressive policies. On issues such as continued NATO involvement, staying in the Lima Group, purchasing fighter jets, joining the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty and supporting the campaign to oppose Canada's recent bid for a seat at the United Nations Security Council, the establishment has exposed itself as a un-viable option going forward.
This is exemplified in how Annamarie Paul, the favored of Elizabeth May and the Green Establishment, refused to state her position on all of the above issues. This disappointing showing by the establishment candidate indicates that rather than embrace an anti-imperialist or progressive foreign policy, the establishment would rather embrace a foreign policy upholding the status quo if it proves to be politically expedient.
Another major stumbling block for the centre and right wings of the Green Party was the issue the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and whether Sanctions are needed to effectively oppose the Israeli regime carrying out ethnic clensing and apartheid in Palestine that has escalated further with the Coronavirus outbreak. While progressive Candiates like Lascaris, Kutner and Haddad supported sanctions against Israel in response to Israeli Apartheid, some candities hailing from the centrist and right wings of the Green party still believed that Israel should be handled less harshly and more diplomatically. Both Andrew West and Annamarie Paul suggests that Israel could be talked down or made to agree to peace terms if the right diplomacy and the right pressure is utilized. This being despite the fact that every single compromise or every single attempt to get Israel to agree to a peaceful resolution to the conflict has failed and provided no solution in sight to the problem of Israeli settler colonialism.
Furthermore, none of the centrist and right-leaning candidates have chosen to confront how Canadian imperialism and our subservience to the mining sector has prevented our foreign policy from being an actual force for good in the world. When asked the question of how they can make Canada a force for good in the world, Andrew West, David Merner and Annamarie Paul all thought that the solution to Canada’s foreign policy problems lies simply in good governance and having enough greens in Parliament, regardless of how much influence companies responsible for perpetuating an unjust foreign policy has on the Canadian government, or how much inaction, rather than action, is taken against said companies.
China Bashing and the Specter of Sinophobia
Despite the strides made by the left, particularly Lascaris, on the foreign policy debate, they unfortunately fell victim to a massive blind spot that could have negative ramifications in the long term if the issue said blind spot pertains to is not dealt with. That issue is the problem of Sinophobia. During the debate, the moderators asked the question of how each candidate would deal with the continued rise of China as a world power. The responses were very disparaging.
David Merner proved himself as the most Sinophobic candidate in the debate. When it came to the topic of foreign policy independence from the US, Merner argued that America was not a threat and that current finance minister Chrystia Freeland has done a good job wrangling diplomatically with Trump despite her foreign policy being to align us diplomatically with American imperialist interests; a fact obscured by his statement.
Instead, he sees China and Russia as the main threats to Canada, not the US. When it comes to dealing with China, he views not only the US as a key ally, but also Australia and the countries involved in the Five Eyes Program (Britain and New Zealand). The Five Eyes program, along with CSIS’ role in said program, has been implicated in the spying of their own civilians and sharing data regarding the day-to-day activities of their own civilians. The Five Eyes Program has also been outed as a means to continue to maintain British Imperialism and White Supremacy in the wake of the Second World War.
Unfortunately, Merner along with the other right-leaning and establishment-leaning candidates were not alone in their anti-China stance. Left leaning Green Candidates such as Kuttner and Haddad both called for the sanctioning of China for its human rights abuses; this being despite Haddad stating that Trump has diplomatically isolated Canada from other countries such as China earlier on in the debate.
Lascaris was the only one who dissented with the anti-China chorus to some degree, advocating for Canada to release Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, and stating that Canada has no moral authority to criticize China due to its own human rights violations, combined with support for various autocrats and it’s involvement in NATO. However, he does believe that there need to be some sort of sanctions in the form of tariffs to punish China for it’s supposed human rights violations, and that Canada can balance both attaining a just foreign policy by ending involvement in organizations such as NATO, and inflicting penalties on China for their supposed human rights violations.
It should be noted that Lascaris’ actual foreign policy platform does not call for increased tarrifs or sanctions on China. Rather, it expresses openness towards greater cooperation with China in an increasingly multipolar world. The fact that Lascaris doesn't fully challenge the anti-Chinese discourse in this debate, within the context that his actual foreign policy platform offers, was very disappointing.
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The Harmful Effects of Anti-China discourse:
Regardless of any legitimate criticisms that could be made about authoritarianism and political/human rights repression in China, this plays into a xenophobic policy espoused by both Trump and the Democrats in the US: That China was overtly repressive and carried out massive human rights violations in handling the Coronavirus; said human rights violations rendering their own efforts to handle the outbreak a failure, and it was the Chinese government that was somehow behind the Coronavirus in the US. This is despite the fact that China’s efforts to contain the virus has not only been proven to be effective, but also has popular support among it’s populace. By contrast the US not only has the highest rate of infections, but also the highest rates of deaths tied to COVID.
In calling for sanctions against China, the left of the Green Party are complicit in the American drive to start a second Cold War that would throw the world into further instability. In addition, as China is working closer and closer towards the goal of creating a Vaccine for the Coronavirus, any attempt to impose sanctions on China might slow, if not outright harm any progress made on the vaccine, setting back efforts to prevent further COVID outbreaks.
Furthermore, as suggested by professor Tim Stanley, author of Contesting White Supremacy, to have an all-consuming focus on Xi or reducing China to just the government in power today will not put the Chinese government under more scrutiny for whatever abuses, real or imagined, it may carry out. Rather, it would only add fuel to an emerging campaign to demonize China that could have terrible consequences, as Chinese people around the world become associated with their government whether they like it or not, and this in turn creates ammo for further rounds of Sinophobia and division with racist attacks on Chinese people seen as attacks on their government.
No to Social Reactionary enabling of Sinophobia!
An rationale for the Anti-China policies of the Green Party made clear during the foreign policy debate is perhaps tied to xenophobic sentiments within their primarily British Columbian base. In British Columbia, sinophobia still runs rampant, manifesting itself often with regards to the purchase of real estate and the housing crisis in British Columbia. Progressive parties and organizations in BC have, in response to the Sinophobia directed at the Chinese in light of the housing crisis in British Columbia, often failed to stand up for the Chinese-Canadian community in BC despite rhetorical statements otherwise. In 2018, the bloc of progressive parties that ran for Vancouver’s City Council sought to be cautious about how they might be perceived as pro-Chinese. Out of the 10 candidates that were allowed to run only one candidate had an Asian name, Brandon Yan of OneCity. Said candidate failed to be elected. With regards to the Greens, the Green Caucus did not nominate a single Asian for city council.
It seems that to progressives and Greens in British Columbia, standing up for the dignity of Chinese-Canadians or allowing them to take the lead in fighting against xenophobia comes second to not alienating prospective voters. In seeking to distance themselves from Asian-Canadian issues, British Columbia progressives fall into the “social reactionary” trap of viewing the working class as inherently reactionary and can only be appealed by adapting extremely conservative stances on social principles, even if it constitutes outright xenophobia.
Social reactionaries and extreme class reductionists in the US and the UK view Sinophobia as an afterthought in seeking to cater to their falsified image of the working class as a reactionary mass. American social reactionary Angela Nagle, has defended historical cases of Sinophobia, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, as justifiable in strengthening the power of the white working Class. Her British Counterparts in Blue Labour are full participants in the drive for a New Cold War, viewing the Chinese as a danger to British sovereignty.
The effects of this social reactionary discourse, and any attempt to cater to them, will have harmful effects on the Chinese-Canadian population. It not only whitewashes historical instances of Sinophobia, but also alienates the Chinese-Canadian population from any ostensibly left-leaning movement that caters to said discourse, and helps fan the flames for more American Second Cold War saber-rattling in East Asia.
Neither Centrism nor Sinophobia
Overall, the September 10 debate hosted by Rabble allowed for leftist Green Party candidates such as Dimitri Lascaris to bring forward and articulate an alternative to the imperialistic foreign policy status quo dominant within both Federal governing parties in Canadian politics and increasingly embraced by the NDP. To that he successfully advanced leftist foreign policy ideals, all while the centrists and the right, in their effort to avoid challenging, proved themselves to be an unviable option in dealing with the threats of imperialism and climate change.
Yet the leftist participation in the September 10th debate was heavily marred by an undercurrent of Sinophobia as two of the left leaning candidates (Haddad and Kuttner) called for sanctions against China. Lascaris himself, while recognizing that Canada has no moral authority on the China issue, played into some of the discourse being thrown around in calling for tariffs on China’s human rights repressions. This being despite his foreign policy platform calling for genuine cooperation with China, not diplomatic threats. The prevalence of Sinophobia in the Greens risks not only placing Asian-Canadians in greater risk from racist violence and subsequently alienating them from the Green Party, but also bolsters the calls coming from the far right and both parties in the US for a new Cold War with China.
It is unknown why anti-China sentiment dominated this debate, but it may have been an effort to avoid alienating anti-Chinese elements within the existing Green Party Base in BC. Yet to build an eco-socialist alternative, we must build solidarity between the working class and populations facing xenophobic attacks in the wake of COVID-19 such as Chinese-Canadians, rather than exclude and create our own divisions as the US government seeks to ferment more global instability through the use of Sinophobia.
A truly progressive foreign policy lies in a principled commitment to anti-imperialism, not the perpetuation of centrism nor the perpetuation of socially reactionary sinophobic rhetoric.
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