The Mound of Sound

India this time. The country has successfully test-fired its first, submarine launched, nuclear capable missile, the Brahmos.

Naturally it’s got Pakistan all in a tizzy with Pakistan’s top sailor claiming this will spark a new arms race between the countries.

The big news that seems to have escaped much attention is that India is planning on building its own submarines to carry the missiles. An Indian capability to deploy submarine launched, nuclear missiles goes far beyond issues of Pakistan, all of which is already vulnerable to Indian land based nukes. It would, in fact, extend India’s nuclear reach throughout the intended range of India’s navy – from the Middle East to the Sea of Japan.

The reports are beginning to roll in daily – food shortages here, food insecurity there, mass starvation risk somewhere else. A lot of the world is in a lot of trouble but, as my drinking friends would say, “who’s counting?”

I think this is another example of what Jared Diamond calls “landscape amnesia.” That’s the phenomenon where we accept today’s circumstances as normal by forgetting what normal really meant in the past. Once you forget, it saps your impetus to remedy the adverse change. There’s a lowering of expectations without any recognition that this is a regressive thing that can just keep on taking us further down. We learn to settle and, in that process, we steadily settle in.

So, what about these food shortages then? We in the industrialized world have certainly played a role in the misery that’s besetting these troubled nations. We’ve done it through AGW climate change. We’ve done it by diverting grain into alternative fuels, driving up world food prices. We’ve done it by really destructive farm subsidy systems.

What are we going to do for these people? Very little, borderline nothing.

Looked through a window of just a few years, today’s extreme weather events can appear normal. Floods and droughts from England to Africa to Asia to the southern USA have become norms but those most seriously impacted by them know there’s nothing normal in their suffering.

Flood and drought cycles impact freshwater systems. Too much precipitation when it’s not needed, causing loss, disease and suffering. Too little when it is needed, causing crop failure and other problems. That, in turn, increases reliance on groundwater resources which is a dangerous dependency, a short-term answer at best.

Now the International Monetary Fund is mulling over short-term emergency aid to countries hardest hit by fuel and food price increases. In a world where wheat prices have jumped 83% in the past year, short-term aid of any sort is a sop, a bandaid solution. More indebtedness for Africa. That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

As we drift back into the arms of Morpheus and lose sight of these people, those who survive our indifference aren’t losing sight of us. What is more easy to manipulate than a person caught in life-threatening poverty? We’re talking here about the “nothing to lose” crowd. It’s a rapidly growing club.

So what? Ask our soldiers in Afghanistan. They know the powerful role poverty plays in Taliban recruiting. The United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs has a report today on the problem:

Abdul Malik, aged 17, joined Taliban insurgents in the south after two Taliban supporters gave him a mobile phone. A short while later his dead body was brought to his family.

“He was killed in a military operation near Musa Qala District [Helmand Province],” Malik’s older brother told IRIN in Lashkargah, the provincial capital of Helmand Province.

“In our district many young guys join Taliban ranks for pocket money, a mobile phone or other financial incentives,” said Safiullah, a resident of Sangeen District in Helmand.

The report cites a new Senlis Council study:

“Where the government is failing to provide basic services, often the Taliban are filling the gap with more radical alternatives. This means that sought-after trust from the Afghan people is going to the radical militants rather than the elected government,” said the report Afghanistan – Decision Point 2008.

“Research undertaken by The Senlis Council since 2005 shows conclusively that aid destined for the south is not reaching the people,” the report said.”

These problems aren’t going away and they can’t be bombed away, that only makes them worse. Our policies aren’t working – for anyone, anywhere – and we can’t begin to develop practical alternatives until we stop our self-serving amnesia and learn again to distinguish normal from abnormal. Let’s do that, if only for ourselves.

We might just get the Afghanistan debate we so badly need after all, it just won’t be in Canada and we’ll have to wait until April. It’ll be at the NATO summit in Bucharest that several key European members will give their take on “the mission” and on the Canadian government’s demand for another 1,000 combat troops for Kandahar.

Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star’s European bureau writes that the Europeans, at least, are asking hard questions about the fundamentals of the mission:

“No matter whether you ask in French, German, Spanish or Italian, the pat response is to turn aside the question [of coming to Canada’s aid in Kandahar] itself. And to ask a series of more difficult questions instead. Such was the case yesterday, when a senior French government source told the Star:

“The question is not `how far,’ but simply `how?’ – how are we going to rebuild and pacify Afghanistan? How are we going to cope with the present strategy? How are we going to win? And what do we mean by `win’?”

Though they are presented with the freedom of anonymity, the doubtful misgivings of European officials polled by the Star in recent days point to a hidden debate on whether the time has come for NATO to reconcile the international community’s ambitious goals in Afghanistan with the drifting, uncertain reality of the mission on the ground.

French military analysts say the prospect of a stronger French commitment to Afghanistan has little appeal within the corridors of power in Paris, where the landlocked central Asian country has never before appeared on the radar of traditional French interest.

“Most people in decision-making circles don’t see Afghanistan as an problem unto itself,” said Etienne de Durand, a defence specialist with the French Institute for International Affairs.

“They see it as a place you need to go to for the sake of trans-Atlantic solidarity, even if we don’t really belong there. I don’t agree with that. We should be there and we should have been there earlier. But saying so doesn’t make it so.

“And if President Sarkozy decides this is what he is going to do, a very pessimistic French public will want explanations. Especially if we start taking casualties in big numbers.”

“Let us say France comes through with a bit more or a bit less than the 1,000 soldiers Canada wants in Kandahar,” he said. “It puts us at a huge risk, but it won’t necessarily help you guys out in a big way.

“That’s because we don’t actually have a strategy. We talk about democracy, but a lot of us now believe it is not even possible to create democracy in Afghanistan. Instead, the best we might hope for is a reasonably functioning government with an army that can keep the peace, at least by Afghan standards,” de Durand said.”

At least we can hope that we have, in Bucharest, the honest, meaningful debate we’re not getting from our own MPs in Ottawa.

Brian Mulroney has sent his stooges to Ottawa to tell the Commons ethics committee that he’d rather not face any more questions into his shady dealings with Karheinz Schreiber. That’s entirely understandable from his perspective. He’s spun so many tales that he’s cornered and, for BMPM, it can only get worse.

The committee could subpoena Mulroney to attend and even have him brought before them forcibly if he resists. Now wouldn’t that be a sight. But it seems the committee doesn’t have the appetite for subpoenaing a former prime minister, even one of Mulroney’s shabby stature.

I think the committee should just put the Mulroney issue on hold – for now. There are several other witnesses who should be called to testify including one Robert Hladun, Schreiber’s former lawyer. It was Hladun who basically confirmed author William Kaplan’s hunch that it was Schreiber who leaked the RCMP letter that led to the National Spot article that served as the launching pad for Mulroney’s lawsuit against the federal government. I’d like to hear that from his own mouth.

Then there’s the phone calls – two of them – Hladun supposedly received; one from Mulroney’s lawyer, the other from the lawyer and Mulroney himself. Schreiber’s narrative has these calls being placed to Hladun to get a letter or an affidavit from Schreiber claiming that no monies had ever changed hands between Schreiber and Mulroney. This was back when CBC’s Fifth Estate revealed it had copies of Schreiber’s Swiss bank records and – here’s the kicker – before Mulroney’s “voluntary disclosure” to Revenue Canada.

If Hladun corroborates Schreiber’s account of these calls, it’s over for Mulroney, he’s suborned perjury, and that goes directly to his credibility when he gave a grossly misleading answer about his dealings with Schreiber in his sworn evidence in the lawsuit itself. Cheque please, Mr. Mulroney – and don’t forget the interest.

The committee may not have the spine for a showdown with Brian Mulroney but there’s no excuse for not getting Hladun’s sworn evidence on these points.

Both Democratic candidates have pledged to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, if they reach the White House. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at last night’s candidates’ debate pledged to renegotiate America’s deal with Mexico – and with Canada – to get, as they put it, “fair trade.”

What’s “fair trade” anyway? Well, according to Obama it means making America’s trading partners toe some sort of line on labour and environmental standards. Wait a second, labour standards? What are we supposed to do, scrap our labour standards to scurry into the American abyss? Environmental standards? Well, he’s got a point there, we both need to do better on that score.

It’s the adjective “fair” that worries me. Americans tend to judge fair by the tilt of the table and they usually like to see it tilting their way. Take a look at the softwood lumber shakedown we’ve endured these past several years.

I wonder what “fair” means in the context of America’s debt crisis? That little problem, an entirely made-in-America brew of wanton spending and profligate borrowing, is coming home to roost and the landing may be hard and bumpy. It’s bad enough that world markets, including Canadian, have found themselves duped into holding ginned-up American subprime derivatives. Are we also to become America’s free trade whipping boy?

Navigating the coming years with the United States will require a strong Canadian prime minister and not the kind who instinctively drops his pants and bends over the barrel when Washington snaps its fingers – the kind we have now.