Dithers in Wonderland

Prime Minister Paul Martin has resorted to tough talk, emboldened, it seems, by his announced 13 billion on future military expenditures. There even seems to be a veiled threat to the US in reply to American comments about our relinquishing of sovereignty. He has been quoted as saying:

This is our airspace, we're a sovereign nation and you don't intrude on a sovereign nation's airspace without seeking permission.

A few of things jump at me from this jewel:

1. Sounds a lot like a Soviet apparatchik ready to shoot a Korean plane, doesn't it?
2. A nation? A sovereign one? Which nation in this state is the sovereign one? The English-speaking one? The French-speaking one? Or is it the archipelago of aboriginal nations?
3. Sovereignty can be asserted with words and with policy statements, but that is a world far different than the one in which sovereignty needs to be defended.
   
4. Let us assume for a second that the US do not seek permission to "intrude" into our air space to take down a threatening missile. Does Martin understand where things go next? To say that an unauthorized violation of our air space is a violation of our sovereignty is just short of saying that such violation is akin to an act of war.
5. An act of war is usually met with some force (unless one wants to run in the opposite direction and wish to set up a government in whatever our equivalent of Vichy might be. Alert, anyone?). What does Martin think we are going to do? No disrespect intended to our armed forces, but how in G-d's green earth will we defend our state sovereignty? With new helicopters? Will the French, the Germans, and the Secretary General come to our defense?

The Americans will likely laugh at such talk from Martin. And that is the point! Martin may get through with his first Budget fairly okay, but on the issue of sovereignty he is following the example of one Joe Clark. Clark simply expected that verbally asserting Canadian sovereignty over the northern passages would be enough for others not to "intrude." He still thinks that way. What does that tell you?

PS (11:55AM). See also Proud to be Canadian, and Tom Cerber at The Politic.