Giving in

Who says Canada has no influence abroad? Based on this story, it looks like Canada's "soft power" was enough to completely undermine an effort toward nuclear disarmament:

The planned resolution, which was abandoned at a UN committee as Canada withdrew its sponsorship, sought to jump-start the negotiations after the international community failed in May to agree on measures to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and reduce the danger posed by existing arsenals...

Six countries -- Mexico, Sweden, Brazil, Kenya, New Zealand and Canada -- had been urging a UN committee to pass a resolution to establish working groups on disarmament and non-proliferation...

Mr. Tovish said other nuclear-weapons states -- including Britian (sic), France, China and Russia -- were prepared to allow the resolution to be adopted, while only the United States was adamantly opposed.

The sad part is that Canada's power lay mostly in its ability to do harm rather than good - and in addition to undercutting the global good of better nuclear monitoring, Canada has also shot itself in the foot twice.

First, Canada has probably made a lot of enemies out of the current working group with this move. After all, the other states involved will surely be much more reluctant to work with us on future issues if they see us as unlikely to follow through on our plans.

Second, by buckling under, Canada has sent a strong message that its supposed principles will always come second to U.S. pressure. And that's so even when an initiative is part of a diverse multilateral group, and when the U.S. position (substantively, that other states should eliminate both civilian and military nuclear use while the U.S. faces no monitoring or limitations; procedurally, that the world's leading multilateral body should hold no role whatsoever on a key security issue) is based on sheer arrogance rather than anything approaching a reasonable argument.

It's far from clear that the move will carry any reward. From most of the world, Canada will receive all the scorn that rightfully comes to a lapdog, without even getting any appreciation from the lap it's sitting on. And even if a reward from the U.S. is forthcoming, nuclear proliferation isn't an area where we should be looking to make trade-offs.

Canada has at best delayed, and at worst torpedoed an initiative that had the potential to make the world safer. And that's not a power that we should want to exercise.