Bill Tieleman does a nice round up of where the BC NDP is at and where it might be headed. I like that the NDP is having this as a public debate, though this is something the party should have done in 2005 after that election. BC already suffers from having no real right wing party - the BC Liberals are a Liberal party and are strongly in sync with the federal party. To lose the NDP to the middle means that we would really have two parties that occupy much of the same political ground. How would the radical and conservative approaches to how we govern ourselves be debated?

I see the long term narrative of politics being one about changing the status quo (radical) or maintaining the status quo (conservative). For the last generation the radical aspect of politics in much of the world has been the neo-liberal view. The traditional left has become the defenders of the modern welfare state and resisting change.

With a party of the mild centre right and anther of the mild centre left, there is no one that will be coming forward with bold ideas. There will be no one passionate about the issues. The 2009 election was a wonderful example of this. The Liberals ran on "We are competent and will not rock the boat" and the NDP ran on anything some pollster told them might resonate with the public, the opposition to the carbon tax being a perfect example of this.

Frankly the boldest political party in BC is the Green party, they are the only ones trying to think outside of the bland middle. Though without any MLAs, the media coverage is not there.

An International Role for Canada

In many countries around the world the primary problem countries have is with problems of a functional civil society and a strong sense of social capital between people. This is an issue that is being addressed in many places around the world by the Open Society Institute. Canada could take a much bigger role in this all over the world.

Canada is globally acknowledged a boring country. In this context boring means a country with or no significant problems within the civil society. This boring aspect of Canada is something we could, and should, be exporting to the rest of the world where there are problems with conflict and corruption.

If Canada were to seek out countries that have problems with systemic corruption, tribal conflicts, or a lack of a state that the public trusts, it could focus on this countries to help build a sense of what a civil society looks and feels like. Some things Canada could do:

1. Allow people to come to Canada for advanced education such as at the MPA or MBA level. Have military train at the Royal Military College. Train police in Canada as well.
2. Have civil servant exchanges, having mid to senior level Canadian provincial civil servants go and work abroad in another countries civil service and have people from there work in a provincial civil service here. The exchange will show people in the other countries that there are fair and uncorrupted ways of doing things.
3. Work closely with the business sector in these countries and allow the chance to do more business in Canada if they adhere to certain ethical standards.
4. Have a Canada House in each major city and use this promote Canadian values of fairness and transparency.

It is through modeling of a different of doing things that change will come about. Most corrupt systems are self perpetuating as it is the reality that people live within. Change will take time, but all good change takes time. The change will take as long as it takes for the old guard in a country leave the centre stage. In the former communist countries of eastern Europe the ones that have done the best are the ones that have the strongest civil societies and this often means the younger people in charge.

There are no absolutes out there

I tend to think of any nation siding with the Axis in World War 2 to have been fundamentally on the wrong side. But there was one democracy that choose to ally with Germany in World War 2 - Finland.

Finland had much more to fear from the Soviet Union than from Germany. The Soviet Union started a war against Finland on November 30th 1939. The same sort of brutal attack they made against Poland only a few months earlier was now directed against Finland. In 1941 Finland saw their chance to liberate the occupied parts of their country.

December 8th 1941 saw Canada declare war on Finland. The only case I know of where Canada has gone to war with a fully functioning democracy (The attacks by Canada on Serbia are not quite the same as Serbia was not really an open functioning democracy).

I need to let that sink in - Canada chose to declare war on a European democracy that was trying to stave off being conquered by a totalitarian power. The UK, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa all declared war in Finland as well. Only the US stood apart and did not declare war on a fellow democratic country.

World War 2 is likely the best example of a justifiable war, but it is the cooperation with the Soviet Union by the western Allies that tarnishes the nobility of the cause. 1945 was not really the end of the war because Stalin was allowed to continue occupying nations it had scooped up in 1939/40. The Soviet Union was allowed to rule numerous other countries through puppet leaders.

It took till 1991 for most of the Soviet occupations to end. Even though the Soviet occupation is over Finland, Latvia, Poland, Estonia, and Germany have been forced to accept that Russia will be allowed to keep parts of their countries.

War is at best an imperfect tool and it is very hard to ever have a war that does not have some very negative aspects to it. Could World War 2 been won without the Soviet Union? Could the Soviet Union have been defeated in the 1940s as part of World War 2? It is hard to know, but given that the majority of people and weapons used in World War 2 were in the battle between Germany and the Soviet Union, it is hard to see how the western Allies could have done anything different.

In a round about way this leads me to Afghanistan. Canada is in a war that has some allies on the ground that are less than perfect. Should NATO not take part in Afghanistan because parts of the Afghan government is corrupt? Is it realistic to expect peace and civil society to develop in Afghanistan without NATO being in the country?

I know many people in the west are willing to see NATO leave Afghanistan. They know that NATO leaving removes the only forces in the country that are incorruptible and neutral. If you remove the forces that are the model of civil behaviour, is there any hope for meaningful change in the country? Should we never work with people that are less than perfect - ok with people that are pretty damn close to evil? At the end of the day, Hamid Karzai is no Stalin, he is not even as evil as Brezhnev.