And it could force Paul Martin to make good on his talk about a new world order

JAMES TRAVERS

When Americans cast their presidential ballots Tuesday, they won't just be choosing between a Republican and a Democrat with starkly different visions. They will also be mapping the way ahead for Canada and setting Paul Martin's course.

If in their wisdom, U.S. voters give George W. Bush a second term, the future of the sweeping, complex relationship between mostly good neighbours will look much like the past. Two countries converging economically and diverging over values will muddle along, making the best of the world's most profitable trading partnership while trying to keep sharp cross-border irritants from becoming something much worse.

That would fall well short of the purpose and new sophistication this Prime Minister promised. But it would be a relatively comfortable status quo for a minority Liberal government up to its hips in domestic problems.

At home, Martin's ministers would busy themselves working tirelessly, if apparently fruitlessly, on regaining fair access to the southern market for lumber and beef. And on the international stage, the Prime Minister would continue to publicly press for a new order while avoiding the costly, high-risk commitments needed to make multilateral solutions effective in an increasingly violent and chaotic world.

But should a deeply divided nation settle on John F. Kerry, political realities will shift precipitously for Canada and for Martin. To paraphrase Bush, there will be no room to run or hide for this country or its Prime Minister.

It is now conventional wisdom that the first conversation between Kerry and Martin will include a difficult request. A president-elect desperate for an Iraq exit strategy will ask the Prime Minister for Canada's help in cleaning up Bush's horrible mess.

What isn't well understood is the weight Canada's decision would carry. Consequences would flow from it that would alter much more than defence policy.

Trade, foreign affairs and a late-winter budget that could lead to this government's defeat will ultimately be shaped by Martin's response. In those few seconds, the Prime Minister must choose between change and only talking about change.

Measuring the significance of that choice is easy. It would almost certainly make obsolete Ottawa's long-standing trade dispute strategy and, along with a lot of money, it would cost lives.

After decades of neglect, this country's Armed Forces are far from ready for a challenge as treacherous as imposing peace on Iraq. Top brass is warning its political masters that a military that is now far better at downsizing than recruiting, training and equipping new troops will take years to fully absorb the 5,000 regular and 3,000 reserve troops promised in this month's unusually controversial throne speech.

So, Martin will have to put something else on the table if he hopes to link Canada's international co-operation to the successful resolution of nagging trade disputes. In the absence of other viable options, that would have to be the unequivocal assurance that Martin will pursue his priority of re-establishing this country's international pride of place.

Just two months before voters stripped Liberals of their majority, Martin went to Washington to explain that part of his foreign policy. In a well-crafted and now perhaps too-memorable speech, the Prime Minister defined that plan with what he called the three "Ds" — continental defence, constructive diplomacy and innovative development.

A cornerstone of Martin's approach is to reinforce traditional strengths and values by sending Canadians to some of the world's worst places to restore, or create, institutions needed by failed and failing states. It's a noble idea that happens to trace an important line of demarcation between Bush and Kerry.

Bush's war on terror draws heavily on Cold War thinking to frame threats to the U.S. as a philosophical and religious clash of cultures. The president's view is that war can best be won by infecting wayward countries like Iraq with what is now being called viral democracy.

Kerry's approach is subtler, even if in practice it proves equally muscular. He sees the conflict as a struggle between order and chaos that is best fought not by armies but by robust governments and agencies that control lawlessness while applying the antidote of justice and prosperity.

In Iraq and beyond, a president Kerry would badly need the benign interventions that Canada's Prime Minister says this country is eager to provide. In fact, it's pretty well assured that Kerry will quote Martin back to Martin in asking for that help.

Unfortunately, that won't be quite as pleasing for the Prime Minister as it first appears. Since April, Martin's fine speech has grown cold on the page.

So cold, in fact, that it would be only a slight exaggeration to add a fourth "D" to Martin's three — dead. Shared continental defence is bogged in the fevered debate over U.S. plans to build a ballistic missile shield, attempts to add flesh to the bones of the Prime Minister's foreign policy are stalled at the aptly nicknamed Fort Pearson and the Canadian International Development Agency appears not to have noticed Martin's groundbreaking United Nations study on freeing Third World entrepreneurs to fight poverty.

It's true, of course, that Martin, the ruling Liberals and the country have since April been through a wrenching election. And it's also true that since then the Prime Minister has been overwhelmed by problems that are far more provincial, prosaic and partisan.

A minority government must look first to saving itself and that, plus a health-care accord, a simmering constitutional battle over asymmetrical federalism and a smouldering submarine are dominating Ottawa life. But those issues and that excuse won't impress a leader emerging from one of the ugliest presidential campaigns in history.

Kerry would have to move fast to convince the U.S. majority, as well as a hostile Congress, that his policies are making America safer. Allies would be needed to make that happen, and allies with political will as well as state-building capacity are in notably short supply.

A new president could expect little help from old European friends still smarting from their spectacular tiff with Bush. That means Canada would feel more pressure than at anytime since Jean Chrétien did the right thing for the wrong domestic political reasons by keeping the troops at home.

Should that attention and that pressure come, Martin's administration must be ready. Rallying to Kerry means putting Canadians at risk, a fact of bilateral life that makes it essential for the Prime Minister to get in return something that is tangible and lasting.

Settling the lumber and beef disputes would be a start. But the financial and personnel costs of quickly increasing Canada's international role will be so high, so politically dangerous, that Martin would have to be able to prove that they were made worthwhile by overall cross-border benefits.

The U.S. policy shift that would help Martin most would be Washington's acceptance of new protocols taking at least some of the petty, political protectionism out of what is supposed to be North American free trade. That would let the Prime Minister trumpet that partnership abroad pays dividends at home.

A Kerry presidency would also lead to other challenges, including on the environment. Bush's tilt toward fossil fuels and away from conservation now gives the Martin administration an economic excuse for a go-slow strategy on the Kyoto Protocol that Kerry's greener approach does not.

All those considerations are important. But they won't change two constants.

One is that a superpower and its weakling neighbour will continue, each to the best of its ability, to defend its own interests. The other is that, on balance, Liberals in Ottawa prefer Democrats in Washington.

Bush, despite the freedom to disagree that his radical, neo-con foreign and domestic policies give Canada, has only strengthened that preference. Right-leaning though it is, even the Martin administration is profoundly uncomfortable with the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes, go-it-alone military adventures and a president who sees himself as God's operative on Earth.

Kerry brings other challenges, but they are challenges more comfortable and familiar.

A Massachusetts senator who knows as much about Canada as Bush knows about Mexico, speaks French and is willing to blend U.S. muscle with multiculturalism is the kind of U.S. leader Ottawa understands. Better still, once in the White House, Kerry would push Martin and the Liberals in directions they say they want to go.

So, come Tuesday, U.S. voters will have more than a difficult choice. They will also have a rare opportunity to thrust greatness toward a Canadian prime minister.

If they elect Kerry, the similarities in U.S. and Canadian agendas will again outweigh the differences. If that happens, the pace of change will quicken and Martin will have to decide if he, his government and this country are to be in the vanguard or are to be left behind.

Should he seize that moment, the Prime Minister will again be defined by the ideas that made Chrétien seem so pedestrian and built expectations so impossibly. Should he not, those ideas, those expectations, will be judged as empty words.