True leadership is measured by actions, not words.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney recently spoke like a thoughtful politician at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
His January speech was greeted with the kind of respectful recognition that only comes from leaders who take their global responsibilities seriously.
I think Mr. Carney’s attendance at Davos was also meant to demonstrate that Canada would be a modest and moderate force in a chaotic and turbulent world.
He warned of the dangers of geopolitical brinkmanship. He talked about self-control. He appealed to the world’s most powerful governments to resist the easy temptation of reckless escalation.
After just a few weeks, Carney’s speech had become more like cynical, disposable fiction than a statement of principle or belief.
In a predictable rant, Mr. Carney endorsed illegal wars and implied that sensible powers should avoid starting them.
The war with Iran, being prosecuted by a bold American president and Israeli prime minister allergic to nuance, diplomacy, and restraint, displays all the obvious trademarks of impulsive thinking that Mr. Carney claimed to distrust.
Any tenuous notion that Canada’s prime minister was an early custodian of a prudent national strategy was quickly dispelled when he confirmed that, like many of his dutiful predecessors, when Washington blows the whistle, Ottawa salutes.
The old familiar instincts remain.
For a leader who entered politics with a reputation for sober analysis cultivated during his time at the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, this decisive moment reveals a didactic lack of foresight and introspection.
Mr. Carney’s admirers portrayed him as an angry conservative opponent, a corrective to the ideological reflexes of technocrats who replaced slogans with evidence and thoughtlessness with deliberation.
But the decision to support this deep war reveals how temporary that division really is.
Mr. Carney has now proven that he is not a serious antidote to the politics of opportunism he promised to transcend.
He is simply its more defined administrator.
Giving an engaging speech is easy.
Challenging a war championed by a domineering president has proven much more difficult.
Wars often begin with lofty rhetoric about security and stability. Anyone who has any understanding of this deadly historical record should know that they never unfold so neatly.
War always gives rise to euphemisms – “collateral damage” and “unintended victims” – but the sobering reality behind those embalming expressions is simple. Elementary school students die.
School children who played no role in nuclear conflicts, regional conflicts, or the madness that is unfolding again in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The reported killing of 165 Iranian schoolgirls and teachers by US missiles, all casualties, should force a government that claims decency and loyalty to “stability” to pause and think.
Instead, Carney and his loyal allies continue to support, in heartbreaking detail, a war whose human impact is becoming clearer with each harrowing day.
The hypocrisy deepens when Carney considers the essential character of the president who chose war.
Canada is aiding and abetting an errant agitator who openly seeks to erase the country’s sovereignty while forcing allegiance to a war of its own choosing.
It’s hard to tell if there’s any coherent logic behind this arrogant attitude.
Perhaps the calculation in Ottawa is that today’s loyalty buys tomorrow’s goodwill.
If so, it reflects a notable misreading of US President Donald Trump’s neurotic political instincts. This is a leader who sees compromise as weakness and obedience as a right. Allies who stand in line rarely win respect. They invite further demands.
For this reason, Canada’s deference to President Trump is not only morally bankrupt, but also strategically naive.
Refreshingly, not all Western governments were so eager to bow before America’s brusque commander-in-chief.
In Madrid, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez effectively condemned President Trump’s war as a dangerous folly, persuasively arguing that it would exacerbate regional instability rather than resolve it.
Sanchez understands that war inevitably has serious and ugly consequences that go far beyond the plausible grounds that justify it.
In a credible signal, President Trump responded with threats, warning that the United States could cut off trade with Spain if President Sánchez refused to make concessions.
The tactic was classic Trump: intimidation disguised as diplomacy.
Sanchez was undaunted.
Spain’s decision not to allow U.S. forces to use its bases for a level attack against Iran is a rare and welcome show of defiance within NATO.
In televised remarks, President Sánchez insisted Spain would not engage in a war that undermines its own values and interests in order to appease a foreign president.
He characterized the decision as a matter of principle and urgency, saying Spain would not be drawn into more unrest, more deaths and more catastrophe.
He pointed to the tragic legacy of the Iraq War and said the international community must avoid repeating these mistakes and the trauma and destruction they caused.
Mr. Carney rejected Mr. Sanchez’s wise advice. He also rejected the very ideas at the heart of a speech he gave in Davos earlier this year.
Instead of opposing violence, he enabled it. Rather than preaching silence, he renounced it. Rather than protecting the territorial integrity of other countries, it sanctioned violations of it. And instead of valuing the lives of Iranian schoolgirls, it has treated their deaths as the tragic price of silence.
In sharp contrast, Sanchez stared down the remains of the old war and declined invitations to join the new one. He vetoed the request to make Spain a springboard for grief. He ignored the bullies’ threats and demands to surrender. He said no to war when others said yes.
Mr. Carney chose to follow rather than lead. He abandoned his conscience in favor of complicity.
In time, he will be judged harshly for his actions, not his words.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
