Jul 13 2023 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — Alliances are hard things to keep together, especially when they work on the consensus principle. Four years ago, President Emmanuel Macron accused the North Atlantic Treaty Organization of being “brain dead”. Then came the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Suddenly, the Alliance, first set up in 1949 “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, […]
Mar 30 2023 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — As presidential visits go, the nearly 30 hours that Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden spent in Ottawa last week was as good as it gets. And while the optics were so exuberant and the mood so jubilant that it may actually go down in history as the “Fun Summit”, the substantive takeaways attest to […]
Mar 19 2023 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — Meetings with an American presidents on Canadian turf present rare opportunities for Canadian prime ministers. The overnight visit this Thursday and Friday, March 23-24 — especially the face-to-face time that Justin Trudeau will have with Joe Biden — must be used as effectively as possible. Success means differentiating between the transactional and the important. Discussion […]
Jan 12 2023 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — The “North American idea” — closer collaboration for continental common good — got a boost this week when Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO as he is popularly known, and the US’s Joe Biden met for another North American Leaders summit (NALS) in Mexico City. Going forward, the challenge, as with […]
Sep 20 2022 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — The Russian invasion of Ukraine marks the end of the post-Cold War period. Coming on the heels of the pandemic and the pressing urgency for action on climate change, inequalities within and between nations are exacerbated and key multilateral institutions like the UN Security Council and World Health Organization have proved inadequate to the challenges. […]
May 31 2022 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — The current Taiwan Strait deliberations of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development (FAAE) could not be more timely, especially as they relate to Taiwan, China and the South China sea. The government should pay heed to the committee’s deliberations and integrate them into its long-promised, long-overdue, Indo-Pacific strategy. This […]
Apr 10 2022 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — The global cold war between autocracy and democracy has suddenly turned hot. Unless we stop him, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will be the first in a series of such hot wars. Canada and its fellow democracies must now quickly deliver to Ukraine the weapons that can prevent that cascade. As many, including President Joe […]
Jan 4 2022 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — So, is democracy in America done? About to be served out like Thanksgiving turkey? Much of the slew of commentary around the anniversary of the January 6th storming of the US Capitol takes as its theme, not without elements of smugness and schadenfreude, that the United States is spiraling downwards. But to paraphrase Mark Twain, […]
Nov 14 2021 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — The North American idea gets a revival this Thursday in Washington when President Joe Biden hosts Canada’s Justin Trudeau and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador for the first “Three Amigos” summit in five years. According to the White House, their meeting “will reaffirm their strong ties and integration while also charting a new path for […]
Oct 26 2021 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — This weekend’s G20 summit in Rome is important on a number of counts: as part of the international community’s ongoing pandemic and economic recovery response; in setting the tone for the COP26 Glasgow climate summit that immediately follows it; as well as for the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial in Geneva at the end of […]
Aug 25 2021 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — On the advice of an American friend – one of the many American foreign service officers who had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan – I’d started reading Carter Malkasian’s The American War in Afghanistan: A History. It was early July and President Joe Biden had just given a news conference at the White House […]
Jun 13 2021 — Colin Robertson — Canadian Global Affairs Institute — Presidents and prime ministers of the thirty NATO nations will meet in Brussels on Monday, June 14. The agenda, for this their 29th summit since the Alliance was formed in 1949, will discuss safeguarding the rules-based order in the face of the rising challenge from China and Russia. NATO operations in Afghanistan and Iraq will […]
Jun 9 2021 — Colin Robertson — Canadian Global Affairs Institute — The leaders of the advanced economies and leading democracies will meet this coming weekend at the Carbis Bay Hotel in Carbis Bay, a tiny Cornish seaside village in Britain’s most southerly county. While the issues change, since its creation in 1975 in the wake of the oil shock crisis, the G7 leaders have had two […]
Jun 7 2021 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — This coming weekend, the leaders of the advanced economies and leading democracies will meet at the Carbis Bay Hotel in a tiny Cornish seaside village in Britain’s most southerly county. While the agenda has evolved annually since its creation in 1975 (Canada joined in 1976) in the wake of the oil shock crisis, the G7 […]
Apr 13 2021 — Colin Robertson — Policy Magazine — My experience with “Buy America” began in Albany in 1981 when, with my boss, Consul General Ken Taylor, we traveled from New York City to Albany to press Governor Hugh Carey for relief on “Buy New York” policies affecting sales of Canadian steel and cement. As Canadian ambassador in Tehran in 1979, Taylor had given […]