I have been alternately amazed and appalled by the recent political writings of my long-time friend, Terry Glavin. After reading his latest ["Reinventing diplomacy", Jan. 12-19], I feel compelled to respond.

In this feature, Glavin described the phenomenon that is being referred to throughout various circles as new diplomacy, the new internationalism, the new institutionalism, and cooperative multilateralism. In his view, "It is marked by a focus on the interests of humanity rather than national interests. Its primary method is in mobilizing citizens groups to rally public opinion within and between nation-states. It's reshaping the basic architecture of global politics." This is precisely the manner in which its proponents are characterizing these initiatives. What bothers me is the uncritical manner in which Glavin has accepted their perspective as his own.

Glavin informs us that "the new diplomacy" is responsible for things like the Ottawa Landmines Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the "responsibility to protect" doctrine at the United Nations, UNESCO's Convention on Cultural Diversity, the Kyoto Protocol, and the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances. Apparently, the only things the new diplomacy has not generated are motherhood and apple pie.

He views these various initiatives as embodying "an alternative to traditional statecraft" and constituting "an effective challenge to America's post-9/11 unilateralism."

It is difficult to know where to begin in addressing the numerous issues raised here. For starters, perhaps we can try to imagine the humanitarian interventionists advocating an invasion of the United States, a country whose government has participated in the waging of aggressive war in Iraq. Out of the question? Exactly.

Glavin states that "the new diplomacy's greatest successes have landed well-placed blows against unilateralist American foreign policy." But the likelihood that George W. Bush will be brought before the International Court of Justice for invading Iraq or for approving the use of torture is remote. So how is an International Criminal Court that ignores the crimes of one of the most powerful violators of human rights in the world qualitatively different from earlier international institutions?

Glavin knocks English-speaking Canadians for being prone to what he describes as "a kind of American-counterculture-left view that Ottawa is engaged in an 'imperialist' adventure in Haiti”¦" Why the quotation marks around the word imperialist? Is this to signify that it is absurd even to suggest that Canada could play an imperialist role? Ignoring the source of international hostility toward the Haitian government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide-the fact that it resisted pressure to impose the World Bank's devastating structural adjustment programs on its people-he notes benignly that "Canada is a key player in the controversial UN mission there, which took over from the troubled regime of Jean-Bertrand Aristide." We are not told why the UN's Haiti mission is controversial or that the takeover Glavin refers to involved overthrowing Aristide. Nor do we learn anything about the role that Canadian forces are playing in the post-coup occupation.

In recent years, we have seen government-initiated public-relations efforts that strove to put a human face on objectionable political projects, particularly in the international sphere. Remember the Kuwaiti babies torn from their incubators by Iraqi invaders prior to the first Gulf War? Remember the weapons of mass destruction that provided the rationale for invading Iraq again? Sorry, Glavin, but the "new internationalism" is nothing more than a more subtle version of the same phenomenon.

> Sid Shniad / Surrey