One is a calm, rational economist. The other, an impulsive, power-hungry would-be dictator.
But Carney seems to be picking up one of Trump’s trademark characteristics: a maddening capacity for inconsistency.
When the U.S. and Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Iran on Saturday, February 28 Carney almost immediately weighed in with what sounded like unqualified support.
The Canadian prime minister issued a statement saying:
“Canada supports the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime from further threatening international peace and security.”
Carney had prefaced that endorsement with a description of Iran as “the principal source of instability and terror throughout the Middle East, [with] the world’s worst human rights records.” He added: “[Iran] must never be allowed to obtain or develop nuclear weapons.”
Others in the Canadian Liberal universe were quick to differ with the PM.
Former United Nations ambassador Bob Rae pointed to the dubious records of both Israel’s Netanyahu and the U.S.’s Trump.
In his first term, Rae noted, Trump blew up the nuclear agreement with Iran his predecessor Barack Obama and other western leaders had achieved.
Then, just a few months ago, Trump and Netanyahu claimed they had succeeded in “obliterating” Iran’s nuclear capacity.
Apparently, Rae wrote, obliteration can be short-lived.
Bob Rae counseled Carney that, given the larger context, this was not a time for Canada to jump to attention and say “ready-aye-ready” to the U.S.
Former Liberal foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy expressed a similar view, as did the Liberal member of parliament for Victoria, Will Greaves, in a public YouTube video.
Greaves said he was faithfully expressing the clear opinion of his constituents.
And so, it was not a surprise when, a couple of days after the bombs started falling, Carney’s Global Affairs minister Anita Anand offered a more nuanced view.
Annand said Canada supports the U.S. and Israeli goals (meaning a non-nuclear Iran), but prefers a “diplomatic solution”.
Anand did not say how one would diplomatically achieve one of the other among the oft-changing objectives Trump has enunciated for this war: regime change in Iran.
It is hard to imagine there is any diplomatic tactic that could convince Iran’s Islamic leadership to give up power voluntarily.
Then, on Tuesday March 3, Carney interrupted his trade mission to Australia to push Anand’s amendment to his original statement even further.
He said Canada not only much preferred diplomacy to war, but added that what the U.S. and Israel are doing could be “inconsistent with international law.”
That is a 180-degree shift from the almost servile support Carney had offered on the first day of this war.
The Canadian prime minister is not, evidently, worried by the observation Ralph Waldo Emerson made more than a century and a half ago, to wit: “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
“No democracy building” says key Trump cabinet secretary
In the few days since it started, this war has claimed hundreds of lives, including 168 children at an elementary school. Many more will die before it is over.
Notwithstanding all of that bloodshed, some Iranians in the diaspora are celebrating.
At demonstrations in Canada and in other Western countries, protesters have waved portraits of Donald Trump and the Israeli flag.
Other Iranians – both in that country and outside it – are more circumspect. For the most part they are remaining silent, for now. But, overall, they are more fearful than jubilant.
There are many Iranians who are not fans of their brutal and repressive theocratic regime who nonetheless doubt it is possible to transform a country’s political system by bombing it mercilessly.
And even those Iranians who are now cheering the U.S.-Israel offensive might want to pay close heed to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s angry, finger-wagging expression of the American view of this war:
“No stupid rules of engagement, no nation building quagmire, no democracy building exercise, no politically correct wars,” Hegseth said. “We fight to win, and we don’t waste time … As the president warned, an effort of this scope will include casualties.”
What Hegseth is telling the world, not too subtly, is that whatever the Americans’ goals might be – and they have yet to clearly state them – facilitating democracy and human rights in Iran is not among them.
We must not forget that, when he was a candidate, the current U.S. president adamantly opposed the nation-building projects of previous presidents.
Trump was particularly critical of the war in Iraq George W. Bush started in 2003. At the time, U.S. decision-makers said the conflict would be over in weeks. It dragged on for many years.
George W. Bush and company boasted Iraq would, in short order, become a model, western-style democracy for the entire Middle-Eastern/Western Asian/North African region.
In fact, Iraq became the scene of almost endless, sanguinary warfare, inflaming and engaging armed fundamentalists of various kinds throughout the region.
Trump was scornful of Bush’s goal of regime change, and pledged he would never engage in such foolhardy adventures.
Instead, the billionaire-turned-populist-politician promised a revival of the sort of U.S. isolationism that characterized the 1920s, epitomized by the slogan “America First.”
However, as early as his second inauguration, there were unmistakable clues Trump had other role models than isolationists such as Harding and Coolidge who took centre stage in the U.S. after the First World War.
In his 2025 inaugural address, Trump evoked a late 19th apostle of American imperialism, president William McKinley, who extended U.S. hegemony over significant parts of Latin America, the Pacific and Asia.
Trump said he would, like McKinley, expand the territory of the U.S.
Hence the threats to annex this country, Canada, and Greenland, and parts of Panama.
Barging into Iran with bombs and bombast is of a piece with that expansionist, world-conquering attitude.
Rationalizations for war ring hollow
When he declared this war (without calling it war) Trump invited the Iranian people to, somehow, magically, take over their government.
In fact, Trump virtually admonished Iranians to move quickly, because, in his words, this “may be their last chance for a long time”.
Mind you, before they rise up to seize power, the president advised the “great Iranian people” to shelter at home – to avoid being killed or maimed by U.S. and Israeli bombs, missiles and armed drones.
The current regime in Iran has been oppressive and violent against its own people. Those who denounce the rule of the Mullahs are not wrong.
But the Iranian regime is not alone in its anti-democratic and violent predilections.
Take for example such well-known human rights abusers as the regimes of Burma, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, former president Duterte’s Philippines, and even the Trump-led United States itself.
Then there’s Trump’s and his allies’ other big accusation against Iran: It meddles in the affairs of its neighbours, especially its Arab neighbours.
Again, when it comes to meddling, the Iranians are in good company.
This is a region where the Israelis are engaging in a virtual ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine’s West Bank. At the same time, without any legitimate strategic motive, they have killed tens of thousands of defenceless civilians (many of them children) in Gaza.
Plus, the Saudis have been actively interfering in the affairs of Yemen for years, while the Egyptians and others heedlessly poke their fingers into the cauldron of conflict that is Sudan and South Sudan.
The bottom line here is that, as PM Carney took a few agonizing days to notice, no international law justifies the current aggressive war against the sovereign state of Iran.
And, in the Americans’ case, this de facto war is also contrary to their own constitution, which provides that the president alone cannot launch a war, but must seek the consent and agreement of Congress.
U.S. people not rushing to support Trump’s war
As a rule, when U.S. presidents have precipitated foreign wars there has been a rally-around-the-flag effect.
Not this time.
Most Republican politicians are lining up behind their leader, but not all of them.
Outgoing Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said, on learning about the elementary school bombing: “I didn’t sign up for this”.
It is hard to find a single Democrat, however, who has felt patriotically impelled to support the president in this time of strife.
When George W. Bush launched his Iraq war, most Democratic members of the House and Senate supported him. They bought the bogus argument that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction.
Such support has not materialized this time.
Trump and his cabinet secretaries’ contradictory statements do not help their cause.
In addition to Hegseth’s blunt admission that the U.S. has no interest in fostering democracy in Iran, we have secretary of state Marco Rubio making the argument the U.S. was forced to act because Israel was about to attack Iran on its own.
At best, that seemed like an implausible justification for war – and it did not last long.
Trump quickly expressed the exact opposite view to Rubio’s. The president said he had decided to launch the war, all on his own, and entirely based on a hunch.
Trump said he read the body language in the room during what turned out to be bogus nuclear control negotiations and – based on nothing tangible at all – concluded Iran was preparing to attack first. So, Trump said he decided to cut them off at the pass.
Trump insisted the U.S. did not follow Israel. It was the other way around, he said. We Americans forced Israel’s hand.
One can, perhaps, understand Mark Carney’s initial impulse to back Trump at a time when Canada is in delicate negotiations with the U.S.
Why irritate the Americans unnecessarily? The Canadian prime minister might have reasoned to himself. After all, they are not asking Canada for anything in the way of tangible support.
In any case, the Americans would, at best, ignore us if we criticized their war. At worst, they might try to punish us. (Tariffs anybody?)
