ANOTHER TEST OF 'SOFT' POWER

China Asks Canada to Return North Korean Defectors
China has requested Thursday that Canada hand over the 44 North Korean defectors who entered the Canadian Embassy in Beijing.
Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Shen Guofang said during a press briefing Thursday that they are opposed to North Korean defectors entering foreign embassies, due to safety concerns. He added that Canada should hand over the 44 North Korean defectors because they had illegally entered Chinese territory.
All eyes are on a possible change in China’s policy toward North Korean defectors. This is the first time that China has asked for the handover of non-violent North Korean defectors seeking asylum in a foreign embassy over the past two to three years.

So, will Canada do the right thing and stand up to China and North Korea? Or will it send 44 people back to North Korea for possible execution?

For once I do hope our diplomats don't back down – but from recent previous examples, I imagine that they will.

Mark Steyn offered this recent critique of Canada's 'soft' power foreign-affairs policy. (registration required):

The ostentatiously restrained language of diplomacy was born at a time when all parties understood that there was great force behind the polite façade: a velvet glove, but an iron fist. But a velvet fist inside a velvet glove doesn't work so well. Whatever initial embarrassment they might have felt, the regime in Tehran quickly figured out that, up against the likes of Graham and Pettigrew, they could do pretty much what they wanted. Bottom line: they killed a Canadian citizen and got away with it.

The strangest aspect of this scenario is that the mullahs aren't some cocky new dictatorship on the rise. They're in their death throes. This is a regime even Canadians could have figured isn't worth kissing up to. But the ayatollahs didn't have to call Canada's bluff, because Canada didn't even bother to bluff. If you attempt to deconstruct the official statements in those first decisive days after Mrs. Kazemi's death, you understand that for Bill Graham the priority was to demonstrate, in the face of this unfortunate provocation, Canada's commitment to global harmony, which meant insisting that the Iranian foreign minister was a close personal friend and a great humanitarian even as the guy was urinating all over him....

Of course, we're a lot tougher with states with whom we don't have harmonious relations. Foreign Affairs may have done nothing for Mrs. Kazemi, but they were tireless in their efforts on behalf of that Khadr teen the Yanks were holding at Guantanamo. "Soft power," insofar as it works at all, does so only with civilized states.

That's the problem for Canada: the dawn of this new century is an era of hard power. The Graham/Pettigrew approach--speak softly and carry a very small twig--advertises our impotence; in contrast, say, to the robust utterances of John Howard, prime minister of the nation that now fills Canada's vacated slot as the doughty third warrior of the Anglosphere.

I expect that within the next 24 hours we will, to use Steyn's analogy, see Mr Pettigrew smiling while receiving golden showers from Hu Jintao and Kim Il-sung.

I do hope to be proven wrong.