"Hecklers Shouted 'American'"

Where did a political candidate encounter this? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Venezuela? Okay, at worst, it's France.

Nope--it's Canada, where Harvard Professor Michael Ignatieff is running for parliament. Ignatieff, a Canada native, was director of the Carr Center for Human Rights prior to his political leap. He's running on a platform calling for greater Canadian involvement in foreign affairs.

"Nothing in Canadian foreign policy seems absolutely essential or necessary," Ignatieff said in an October lecture at McGill University. "We have no coherent system of triage. We do not have a way to distinguish the vital and essential from the merely important or fashionable. We do a little development. Not enough. We do a little governance promotion, [but] not enough to be a serious competitor of the Scandinavians. We promote U.N. reform, half-heartedly, knowing that we cannot hope for much, since we are not on the Security Council and the Americans don't much care for reform in any event."

For Ignatieff, Canada is stuck in a transitional phase, where the relationships that drove it during the Cold War (NATO and the United Nations, for example) are fading from importance. What is needed now, he believes, is not lightly armed Canadian peacekeepers in Cyprus, but well-equipped and trained combat-ready troops enforcing peace in Afghanistan. Canada's economy is still heavily dependent on trade with the United States and increasingly relies on exports of natural resources such as wood, minerals, and natural gas. "I don't want us to be the Saudi Arabia of the north," says Ignatieff. "We have a kind of Canadian standard of excellence, the question now is 'Are you a global standard?' If you're not at a global standard, you've got five years [to catch up]."

I actually like the idea of Canada increasing its role in global affairs. Anything to take the burden off American shoulders, basically, is fine by me, as long as the country is relatively friendly and democratic. So I guess I'm rooting for Ignatieff.

But what have we come to when "American" is a slur in Canada? Maybe our global standing has fallen a bit too far.

With a tip of the hat to Daniel Drezner.