History of the Present (three weeks ending 20 April 2024)
A horrible three weeks for the world have included further misery in Gaza and Ukraine and the Middle East coming to the brink of a wider war, sparked by the military confrontation between Israel and Iran. Tom Friedman argues persuasively here that ‘when Tehran fired all those drones and missiles, it could not know that virtually all of them would be intercepted’. Only at the last minute for this newsletter comes one piece of good news: that the US Congress has finally passed the $61 billion aid for Ukraine.
I've been busy on other things: a big essay on the new German question, to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the Federal Republic on May 23, coming in the next issue of the New York Review of Books; a playful piece (forthcoming in the TLS) on Central Europe, to mark the 40th anniversary of Milan Kundera’s famous essay on ‘The Tragedy of Central Europe’; and an altogether enjoyable short trip to Canada to collect the Lionel Gelber Prize for Homelands and speak at the excellent Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. You can watch the video of the ceremony and my lecture here.
Shock, horror - even Canada has problems
As my older son, who lives in Vancouver, can testify, there are a few luckier countries than Canada.
'How are things?' I asked my driver in from the airport in Toronto. (Ah yes, the taxi driver, that indispensable resource of all journalists and travel writers. Or, as a satirist once quipped, 'a taxi driver in high government circles'.)
'Any wars, revolutions, crises...?'
'No, none of that here,' he replied, in a disconcerted tone, as if I had asked a vaguely indecent question. But mortgage rates were coming down, he said, and the economy was doing well.
A model, prosperous liberal democracy; a decent, tolerant multicultural society; peaceful, law-abiding, and officially bilingual in English and French – in short, a perfect member of the European Union. If only God could arrange for Canada to swap places with Russia, how happy we in Europe would be. (Sorry, US.)
No wonder the University of Toronto registered a 'Trump bump' during the first presidency of Donald Trump, with an increase of faculty and students fleeing the United States.
But in our changed, disorderly and war-torn world, even Canada is unsettled. A decade ago, our Dahrendorf Programme at Oxford did a big research project on 'Freedom in Diversity', comparing the ways in which Britain, Canada, France, Germany and United States accommodated people from different backgrounds. Canada stood out both for the extraordinary diversity of its immigrant population, especially in the big cities, and the degree to which most of them were integrated and felt at home there. But now, with an ambitious target for increased immigration under the government of Justin Trudeau, it's becoming an issue – especially as housing in cities like Toronto becomes almost unaffordable for most first-time buyers.
Canada, like Germany and many other NATO members, let its always modest defence spending slide during the halcyon years of the post-Wall period (1989-2022). It was still only at 1.35% of GDP last year, one of the laggards in the transatlantic security family. But with the full-scale war in Ukraine being felt particularly strongly by a large population of Ukrainian origin (including Chrystia Freeland, our St Antony's, Oxford alum, now Canada's deputy prime minister), Canada is again involved in a European war – as it was, one way or another, in most of Europe's 20th century wars, hot and cold.
Then there's the prospect of a second Trump presidency just next door. Canada has a 8,891 kilometre border with the United States, the longest international border in the world. Trump has been obsessing about building his 'beautiful wall' along the Mexican border, but I was told in Toronto that there are some real issues about illegal immigration, smuggling and organised crime across this huge and largely open frontier. And obviously the Canadian economy would be vulnerable to protectionist measures that a more extreme and unpredictable Trump 2.0 might impose.
The most fascinating story I picked up, however, is a growing worry about the Arctic, where global warming meets geopolitics. In the extraordinary geography of the second largest country in the world, Canada reaches almost to the North Pole, in a vast, icy archipelago. Now, due to global warming, the ice is melting. This means that ever larger ships are going to be able to navigate through the North West Passage and the Arctic Ocean, potentially creating an important new route between Asia, Eurasia and Europe – and a whole new theatre of geopolitical competition, with Russia already militarily active there and China declaring itself to be an Arctic power. And here, too, the delineation of territorial versus international waters is beginning to be disputed. So, beside the contested South China Sea and Black Sea, this …?
For most countries in the world, there are one or two short words, usually adverb or adjective, that capture something important about its position in world affairs. For Britain it's 'still'. (Still one of the world's biggest economies, still a permanent member of the UN Security Council etc.) For China it's 'already' and for India 'not yet'. For Canada it's 'even'. You know the world is in a bad way, when even Canada has problems.
Wonderful - and well done again on the prize!