By Mike Archer. So; imagine you’re Barack Obama trying to manage your sensitive relationship with Russia as the Middle East descends into chaos and Russian leader Vladimir Putin stares down the West testing your resolve in Ukraine.
Every couple of days this gnat on your northern border hurls another insult at Putin, pokes him in the eye, calls him names, threatens him and rattles his tiny little saber in Putin’s face.
What would you do?
I’m speaking, of course of Stephen Harper in the role of the gnat, whom the rest of the world has been ignoring ever since they discovered that the only audience Harper has ever cared about in international relations is the audience back home.
Showing voters how brave he is to hide under the skirts of American military protection while shadow boxing with one of the true tough guys in the real world.
To top it off Harper visits Northern Canada, where the majority of people are Aboriginals for whom he has little time or care, and shows his limp machismo by talking about Canada’s military presence in the arctic.
Has it even occurred to Harper that he has systematically turned one of the world’s most Machiavellian leaders with one of the largest armed forces and nuclear arsenals into a personal enemy of Canada?
Does it even enter the bizarre world in which this strangest of all Canadian politicians lives that a phone call from Vlad to Barack asking that Stephen be told to shut the $%*^ up is all it would take for have Harper be reminded of his impotence on the world stage?
Probably not.
It will take at least two terms of a new government to convince the world we are not the country Stephen Harper has been telling them about for the last ten years. You know … the country that doesn’t believe in climate change; doesn’t honour treaties; doesn’t believe in science, and no longer intends to play the role for which we were once respected – that of peacekeeper.
Now the new government will also have to convince Putin that Harper wasn’t really speaking for us when he hurled all those insults to convince himself he was a tough guy.
Actually Russia has the most potent nuclear arsenal in the world. The amount of warheads is very similar to the states, due to the treaty. However Russian warheads deal significantly more damage than it’s counterparts making it the best among it’s rivals.