Putin, Petrorubles and Our PM’s Bad Posture [View all]

Stephen Harper’s embarrassing behaviour regarding the crisis in Ukraine — demonizing Vladimir Putin and upping the rhetoric — must be welcomed in the U.S. which created the crisis in the first place and apparently believes it still has something to gain by isolating Russia. But it is not clear that Harper even realizes — or cares — what the larger game is.

And that game may include a Russia-driven shift in global currency allegiance that could devastate the economies of the U.S. and Canada.

The generals surrounding Harper in the ridiculous war-room setting where he announced Canada was sending six fighter jets to bolster NATO’s military buildup in eastern Europe looked very uncomfortable. Who likes being used as a prop for a faltering politician? The setting was a bad case of over-acting — as if we were joining the Allies in another world war rather than engaging in what one expert called “incremental posturing.”


It is difficult to know what is going on in the fevered imagination of the prime minister, but this time one has to really wonder if he has become genuinely unhinged — always a possibility with someone both paranoid and narcissistic. While it is clear that genuine foreign policy execution always plays a distant second role to micro-managing the electorate, it is still possible that Harper’s domestic framing of foreign policy vis-a-vis Ukraine could inadvertently play a role that he didn’t intend.

http://murraydobbin.ca/2014/04/21/putin-petrorubles-and-our-pms-bad-posture/