With America in decline at home and its influence waning abroad, the question of which nation might be the next global superpower has gained urgency. While the world arguably needs a dominant power to protect global order and prevent regional conflicts from spiralling, this can’t just be any country with sufficient arms and ambition. America’s replacement should be a moral superpower, one that safeguards freedom and enables prosperity for every nation, as the U.S. has done for the last 80 years. In the first installment of this two-part series, Lynne Cohen proposed that India could fulfill that role. She put forth 10 characteristics that together make a moral superpower, and dug into the first five, examining India’s economic and demographic strengths. In this second part, Cohen focusses on politics and power, assessing India’s performance on the final five criteria, starting with perhaps the most important – military might.
It’s more than just dispiriting to behold the Canadian military’s disintegration and the current government’s deliberate neglect of our national defence. It raises the question of who might protect Canada in the future, given we can’t protect ourselves. For decades, the answer was simple: the United States. But with America in turmoil and decline, we can’t take that for granted anymore. Who could step up to become the next global hegemon? Lynne Cohen puts forth a provocative and bold answer: it might just be India. Cohen offers 10 criteria by which to measure the potential for a rising power to be not just expansionist, acquisitive or exploitative, but to become a moral superpower, one dedicated to safeguarding freedom and building prosperity for all. In Part One of this special two-part series, Cohen examines and rates how India has progressed in the first five criteria.
Time was when nearly everyone – even schoolkids – understood and accepted that geologic time was measured in tens if not hundreds of millions of years, a barely-fathomable vastness that animated our awe over the Age of Dinosaurs or the mysterious arrival of intelligent, upright apes. So how to explain the small but determined scientific movement intent on winning acceptance that geology can now be measured in a comparative blink of an eye, and that humanity has entered a new geological epoch defined by…itself? Applying his professional geologist’s scientific rigour and his amateur cultural historian’s perspective, John Weissenberger urges scientists to maintain a measure of humility, to recall the bitter lessons of past pseudo-scientific fiascos, and to be wary of the pitfalls of activist science pursuing political ends.
Unceasingly masked up, we are now marching through the 16th month of the Covid-19 pandemic. With potential new health crises around the corner, it is time to ask whether the public mask mandate is justified. Although media “fact-checkers” would surely say otherwise, as would most political leaders and public health officials, the effectiveness of masking against Covid-19 is not scientifically proven. In Part I of a special two-part report on the science around population-wide mask use, Masha V. Krylova reminds us how it all began in March 2020 and explains that not all “emerging evidence” is of equal scientific quality – nor uniformly conclusive.
Influence-peddling. Self-dealing. Nepotism. Junketeering. The ways politicians can betray the public trust are legion. But should this list include behaviour that not only abides by the law, but offers a welcome example of independent thought and self-care? Politicians from diverse parties across Canada have been excoriated and, in some instances, dramatically punished for going abroad for personal reasons during the holiday season. While this may contravene government “recommendations” to stay home, C2C Journal editor George Koch argues passionately that all Canadians – including those whom we elected – should be allowed to act as the law permits. And that includes international travel.
The mutual gains created by international trade have been well-established since 1817, when economist David Ricardo first explained why Portugal sold wine to Britain, and Britain traded cloth to Portugal. Capitalizing on each’s “comparative advantage,” Ricardo observed, raised overall incomes and left consumers better off in both countries. The same still holds today. Yet our current global pandemic has many claiming self-sufficiency in all things is not only a virtue, but a national necessity. With Canada’s future prosperity at risk from an outbreak of Covid-19 inspired protectionism, Peter Shawn Taylor explains just what’s at stake and offers a stout defence of classic free trade principles.
Urban parks were once amenities local residents escaped to – welcome refuges from the noisy chaos of city life where one could exercise, meet neighbours or simply commune with nature. Lately, however, many of these parks have become something residents desperately want to escape from. With dangerous, drug-infested homeless camps now occupying once-beloved downtown green spaces in numerous Canadian cities, and with governments seemingly incapable of stopping this invasion, it is has fallen to a few brave locals to lead the resistance. Veteran journalist Doug Firby recently sat down with one reluctant warrior, a former overseas journalist and neighbourhood mom from Vancouver who’d simply had enough.
It is fair to say that nearly any Canadian feels empathy towards the survivors of Indian Residential Schools, is glad they are being compensated and wants justice visited upon the abusers. But who was actually at fault? Individual perpetrators? The churches that ran the schools? The government that ordered them established? Canadian officialdom has decided that, in fact it’s every one of us – even those who immigrated from overseas or were born 150 years after the schools were set up. With the deep empathy and unique authority of a survivor of abuse at the hands of people entrusted with his care and education, David J. MacKinnon issues a defence of the Canadian people and a denunciation of the doctrine of collective guilt.
To a Canadian of good will and fair disposition, the hostility of “protesters” who vandalize or tear down statues commemorating Canada’s past is as mysterious as it is unnerving. Where does such anger come from? And short of unconditional surrender and abject self-abasement, what is to be done to satisfy these urges? Applying a veteran educator’s perspective, Patrick Keeney finds the problem rooted in progressive reforms that have gradually debased the education of four generations of North American children, leaving the youth of today not just willfully ignorant of their past but openly hostile towards it. With a necessary note of optimism, Keeney proposes the solution is to be found – and the battle must be joined – in the soil whence it sprang.
Remember those anxious days last January when news of a deadly new virus first appeared out of China and then, like an avalanche gathering speed, spread to Italy, Spain and France? Remember how no one seemed to know what to do as the contagion made its way to our shores? If only our governments had a plan – a plan to arrest the disease and protect us from the collateral damage of our own clumsy responses. Drawing on decades of high-level experience in military and civil emergency planning and preparation, David Redman explains what went wrong with Canada’s planning process, how the errors heightened a tidal wave of fear, and what it will take to rebuild confidence in government.
