Foreign Affairs Committee on April 9th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We're now going to move to MP Sidhu, please.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for your testimony this morning.

I had this question for the last witness, but we are discussing the same issue.

Lately in Slovakia a female president has been elected. She is a caretaker of the environment and she is anti-corruption. Will this set a tone in the right direction in eastern Europe by electing a female? What do you think of that? What's the outcome?

[Dr. William Galston]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I would reply to the member's question as follows.

I personally believe that the results of the election in Slovakia were encouraging for the forces of liberal democracy. Whether the election of women is always encouraging for the future of liberal democracy is another question altogether. I don't think, for example, that Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine did very much for the development of Ukrainian liberal democracy, but we can have a long discussion about that.

Sir, let me put your question in a larger context. The fact that democracy in Europe has suffered some serious reversals does not mean, in my judgment, that it is on the verge of collapse in most European countries. There are enough resources through democratic electoral procedures, and also for forces of resistance in civil society and the press and elsewhere, to sustain a public protest against the excesses of illiberal tendencies in many parts of eastern and central Europe.

I would say further, if you look at the outcome of the recent municipal elections in Turkey, I think it is absolutely astonishing that after Mr. Erdogan did everything possible to put his finger on the scales, the people of Turkey were still able to deliver a major rebuke to the policies of the AK Party and to the leadership style and increasingly anti-democratic tendencies of Mr. Erdogan himself.

I think, after the shock of 2015 and the immigrants, 2016 and Brexit and the U.S. election, 2017 and 2018, with the surge of anti-immigrant populist parties throughout Europe, we may be at a hinge moment now when the forces who believe in more traditional liberal democracy are beginning to regroup.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll share my time with Borys.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

On the previous panel, Ambassador Fried noted that one of the most important battles for liberal democracy is playing out in Ukraine. What we tend to focus on are the Russian military occupations, which have undermined the international rule of law and gone back to the 1930s in regard to changing of borders through brute force.

However, there's a battle when it comes to the concept of liberal democracy. This last round of elections was particularly encouraging. The far right only received less than 1.5% of the vote, which stands in stark contrast to...never mind the Visegrad countries, but also western European countries, where the far right gets up to about a third of the vote.

I am wondering whether you would like to comment on the fact that it appears that in Ukraine all the polling shows that a vast majority of the citizenry see their future as a liberal democracy in the European Union mould. There seems to be a lack of imagination in how we encourage that other battle taking place in Ukraine.

Would you like to comment on that?

[Dr. William Galston]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would respond to the member's question with emphatic agreement. We have to ask ourselves why Russian troops are in the Donbass and other parts of eastern Ukraine. The answer is that they were a last play on Mr. Putin's part to prevent Ukraine from slipping out of an orbit defined by the gravitational force of Russia and moving closer to the west. Left to its own devices, Ukraine would indeed seek closer economic, cultural and political integration with the west. I agree with your assessment of polling and public opinion. I think it is absolutely clear on that point.

Although I am a member of the Democratic Party, I was not happy when the Obama administration refused to consider Ukraine's request for defensive weapons. I think it sent a signal that we were not prepared to back Ukraine's desire to join the west—obviously not formally, not as a member of NATO, probably not for a long time as a member of the EU, but western-oriented.

I don't have a precise answer to your question, but I would say that Ukraine is such an important country by virtue of its size and strategic position. It ought to receive a much more sustained focus than it has tended to receive in the United States and elsewhere.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Dr. Galston.

We're now going to move to MP Caron.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Galston.

I'll talk about economics. You said that the rise of populism could coincide with mismanagement by the economic establishment. You mentioned the manufacturing sector. We saw this in the United States, when the Rust Belt and other sectors supported Mr. Trump. We also saw this in the case of Brexit. Yes, it was related to immigration, but also mainly to the economy. The decline of the manufacturing sector in areas where the sector used to be strong coincides with the further liberalization of markets, including through trade agreements.

Do you agree that mismanagement by the economic establishment, which you call the elites, is the result of not paying enough attention to the negative impact of trade agreements? These agreements can help promote trade, but they also lead to economic dislocation. They may help promote sectors with higher wages. However, the new jobs wouldn't necessarily be available to people who have been uprooted and forced to move, for example in the manufacturing sector.

My question arises from this issue. What would you tell the elites, the leaders, to limit the dislocation resulting from these economic changes?

[Dr. William Galston]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would respond to the member's question as follows.

Let me just talk about the case I know best, that of the United States.

I was a member of the Clinton administration. I did not have any responsibility for China policy, but it is certainly the case that the major thrust of the Clinton administration's China policy was to open up world markets to China and vice versa. This policy culminated in the accession of China to the WTO in 2001. I believe that American policy-makers dramatically underestimated the impact of Chinese competition on the U.S. manufacturing sector. It is a matter of fact that between 2001 and 2007, before the great recession hit, the United States lost 3.3 million manufacturing jobs. That was more than 15% of its manufacturing base. We did not have policies in place to mitigate either the economic or the social consequences of that disruption.

I believe it is too late to reverse those consequences. I do not believe that the effort to dial the economic clock back 25 years and restore the iron and steel industry, the aluminum industry and mass manufacturing to the place that they enjoyed as recently as the 1990s can succeed. That's a policy of nostalgia.

All the horses have left the barn, but one reason that Mr. Trump is president is that he promised to do something about that. I believe that any leader of the United States or any country facing massive dislocation because of the disruption of the manufacturing sector has to have a plausible plan to address that.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

My question will be quick, but it will probably require you to elaborate.

You talked about the challenges that can result from populism. Can there be a good and productive populism, which could counter the excesses and negative impact of the current populism? If so, what would be the characteristics of a good populism?

[Dr. William Galston]

Let me give you a short answer to a question that deserves a longer answer.

Populism can be useful when the established political parties agree on fundamentals but are failing to ask certain very important questions about the evolution of the economy and society. I think it is fair to say that when it came to trade, for example—and once again, I'm talking about my own country, the United States—the elites of the two major political parties did agree on fundamentals. That's one reason that China's accession to the WTO passed with strong bipartisan support.

To the extent that populism challenges easy agreements and brings to the surface important issues, I think it can be positive. Where it becomes negative is when it takes a pure majoritarian form that seeks to override liberal protections for individuals and minority groups. That undermines a fundamental building block of liberal democracy as I understand it.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Chair, I don't think that I have any time left.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We are now going to move to MP Baylis, please.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

We can start with Ms. Vandenbeld, and then she'll pass it to me.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much.

We've spoken about one of the geopolitical fault lines, obviously, which is Ukraine. The other is the Balkans.

You've talked about nationalism and said that nationalism is still very alive and well and that it has to be factored in if we're to be fighting some of the illiberalism and anti-pluralism that's occurring. Where does that factor in when we look at the Balkans?

Particularly, I'm looking at the former Yugoslavia. Obviously, there's Serbia, with its close ties to Russia. Russia is still factoring large in that part of the world and the question is whether it's going to be integrating more toward Europe versus more toward Russia.

Could you talk about how this is playing out in that part of Europe?

[Dr. William Galston]

I would respond to the member's question by saying that the Balkans now are what they were a century ago, namely, a venue for great power competition. I'm going to refrain from passing judgment on that fact, but simply say that it is a fact.

The good news is that most Balkan countries are being allowed to make their own choices. You have, for example, Slovenia, which has integrated quite comfortably into the European economy and society, as far as I can tell.

You have Montenegro, which is joining NATO.

Encouragingly, you have a concord between Greece and what's now known as North Macedonia. I think the world breathed a sigh of relief when the Greek prime minister, at some considerable political risk to himself, was able to stand up and defend that agreement and allow it to go forward.

So yes, there is great power competition in the Balkans, but at the same time, at least so far, the great powers have refrained from preventing individual Balkan countries from making their own choices.

Now, there are some very complicated cases like Kosovo, for example, and I don't think it would be useful to start drilling down into the micro-texture of that issue. But I am modestly encouraged. The Balkan countries, for the most part, are trying to govern themselves democratically. They have ethnic issues left over from centuries. Those aren't going to go away overnight, but at least they're not slaughtering each other anymore.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you.

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Galston.

You mentioned that Canada has a nearly unique position on the global stage and we have some kind of moral credibility. How should we use that right now? For example, what are the top three specific actions we should take to use that position?

[Dr. William Galston]

Mr. Chair, the member's question has really put me on the spot.

My view is that the Canadian government, in an organized way, should make it clear that it believes that liberal democratic values create unique relationships among nations, relationships that are much more than simply transactional.

One of the most important changes the current U.S. administration has made is to reverse or nullify what I take to be the unifying principle of American postwar diplomacy; that is to say, that liberal democracies are natural allies and friends, that despite their differences on policy, there is a kind of moral unity or at least moral sympathy that brings them together which makes it—

[Frank Baylis, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Could you say that the role of the “leader of the free world”—if I use that term—has been abdicated by the Americans? What you are talking about was usually what the Americans did.

[Dr. William Galston]

I will not say that the abdication is permanent. We had one election in the United States with an extraordinary outcome.

I believe that the presidential election of 2020 is much more important than the presidential election of 2016, because by 2020 the American people will have all the information they need to assess the benefits and the costs of this sharp reversal of American foreign policy and diplomacy. I think it is entirely possible that the American people will decide that the costs, including the moral and reputational costs, far exceed the benefits, and that it serves us very poorly to play the victim and complain that other liberal democracies are taking advantage of us.

Is this a permanent abdication? The jury is out. Is it a temporary abdication? Yes, it is. I hope very much that countries like Canada will step forward to fill the breach.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

MP Wrzesnewskyj, please.

Let me just point out there does not appear to be votes now this morning, so we will keep running, as is our normal practice, until 10:45.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

You declined to get into some of the details on places such as Kosovo. Now that we have some additional time, I was wondering if perhaps you'd like the opportunity to provide some details.

Kosovo, of course, is facing some incredible challenges with this whole concept of border adjustments or readjustments—the terminology that's currently being used. If Kosovo is to have a peace agreement, lasting peace, Belgrade, with the backing of the Kremlin, is saying that it can only happen if there are border readjustments.

That's compounded by the European Union turning around and saying to Kosovo that, notwithstanding they've fulfilled all of the requested 104 items in terms of legislative and administrative changes, they will continue to require visas for citizens to travel into the European Union.

In a certain way, is this not an abandonment by the European Union of a small country right on their borders and in a zone where, as you said, we have great world powers at play?

[Dr. William Galston]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As to the member's question, I don't think the EU has been a profile in courage in dealing with Kosovo, regrettably.

On the other hand, I think the attainment of a permanent and sustainable peace between Serbia and Kosovo is important enough to warrant the consideration of measures which, in other circumstances, would not have to be considered. I don't need to tell anybody on this committee about the extraordinary interpenetration of peoples and ethnic groups throughout the Balkans and the extraordinary difficulty of any sort of surgical division of any territory that corresponds precisely to ethnic conglomerations.

However, if there were modest adjustments to the borders that would lead reasonably quickly to a permanent peace between Belgrade and Kosovo, I think that would unlock the European Union to do the right thing, which it has not done up to now.

Obviously, the devil is in the details here, and if this were the equivalent of asking Czechoslovakia to surrender Sudetenland, no reasonable person could be in favour of it. I think that more modest adjustments are worth considering.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'd like to challenge you on that premise, actually.

You yourself have just said how difficult it would be to create surgically precise borders in places where there has been a lot of ethnic intermixing on territory. As you also said, the Balkans have a history. As soon as borders start switching, the peoples in the Balkans have a history of things spinning out of control and leading to people slaughtering each other.

Would that not also open up the potential of pre-World War II principles of might makes right and play right into the hands of the Kremlin when it comes to their case on whether it's Crimea, Donbass as you referenced, Transnistria, South Ossetia, or Abkhazia, a very different world order?

While that may seem to be small and insignificant, it has two extreme dangers. First, it could be a domino effect and things could go seriously wrong, and of course, the Kremlin loves it when chaos occurs. They've proven themselves, in many places in the world, to be very adept at working in those circumstances. Second, it undermines that principle of the unviolability of orders.