The French ambassador to Canada says the Canadian government must choose between tying itself entirely to the United States or expanding its ties to associate itself more with Europe.
“The question of American engagement abroad offers more than ever the opportunity for Europe, France and Canada to play a role together,” said Ambassador Michel Miraillet on Tuesday, in a speech delivered before the Council on International Relations of Montreal (CORIM).
The ambassador argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is the culmination of a decade of work by Moscow and Beijing to weaken democracies.
In his view, Russia and China sold their citizens patriotic nationalism, while building up their military capabilities and involvement in developing countries, in anticipation of the decline of a Western world. “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping share the same hatreds, including that of the West, which they want to weaken and push back, and that of democracy, which, according to them, leads to the decadence and disintegration of nations. They also became convinced of the inevitability of the erasure of the United States from the international scene,” according to the French ambassador.
Michel Miraillet quoted the presidency of George W. Bush, without directly referring to the war in Iraq, and noted that the Obama administration had chosen not to intervene in Syria, nor to delay the takeover by Russia in 2014 from the Ukrainian region of Crimea.
“The withdrawal from the world stage, initiated under Obama and amplified under Trump, proved disastrous, as it created a vacuum quickly filled by rival powers and opened up a field of expansion for Russia,” according to Michel Miraillet. “If it was to be feared that Joe Biden would go in the same direction, especially in Afghanistan, let us agree that he adopted a firm and courageous attitude in the Ukrainian conflict. »
In his opinion, Vladimir Putin hopes that Americans will elect an isolationist president in the fall of 2024 and that Europeans will choose the comfort of Russian oil rather than the difficulty of higher energy bills that they pay because of respect for values and democracy.
Military spending
Ambassador Miraillet also referred to the recent increase in military spending by France, which is a major arms producer and is pushing for more military manufacturing on the continent. Canada must demonstrate a similar commitment to global security, he said.
“Canada deploys a weak defense effort; he somewhat forgets his past commitments, the courage he has shown in all major conflicts, as in peacekeeping operations. »
In this context, Mr. Miraillet wants Canada to deepen its partnership with countries like France, in the same way that Australia has formed alliances with South Korea and Japan. He reminds us that the world today is organized around new axes of power, with the Sino-Russian pact on one side, and that democracies should not align themselves only with American interests.
“There is a unique opportunity for Canada and France to act together, which consists of stepping out of their comfort zone and beyond the games of internal politics to have a great destiny”, specified the French ambassador.
He argued that France wants to partner with Canada on essential minerals for green technologies, on small-scale nuclear technology and on hydrogen projects that can help electrify public transport.
He noted that France and Canada are often the only ones to constantly defend individual rights in the UN and G20 forums “in the face of countries from the South, which are culturally often hostile and also increasingly impervious to the interests of the individual”.
“Democracies are superior to all other systems, according to the ambassador, on one condition: that all the citizens concerned can be persuaded to defend them better. The danger is that the refusal of risk, the feeling of comfort and the habits of our Canadian and French societies blind us. »