On top of all the normal reasons for wanting one’s country to act independently, we now have an urgent new one: to avoid becoming part of the apparatus of an aggressive American war machine.

Foreign Minister Bill Graham’s decision to launch a review of Canada’s foreign policy takes on pressing significance in light of the growing clarity, as President George W. Bush stomps his foot with increasing petulance, that Washington wants war and it wants it now.

The curious spectacle of the Bush administration’s obsession with getting its mitts on Iraq has helped shed light on the inner machinations at work inside that over-armed republic beneath us, with whom we often seem to feel obliged to co-operate.

Of course, we fought alongside the Americans in two World Wars, and there’s a tendency to assume our interests are the same. (We wear the same clothes, drive the same cars and share so many other pleasures associated with “modernity” — not like those evil ones so far away who dress funny and probably don’t even know who Joe Millionaire is.)

We’re told that our two countries share a belief in democracy and freedom. But the notion that U.S. foreign policy is about promoting democracy and freedom in the world seems like more and more of a stretch.

Of course, there’s nothing new about the U.S. being aggressive in the world. Interfering in the affairs of other countries is as American as apple pie. But in the past, U.S. interventionism was held somewhat in check by the existence of another well-armed superpower.

With the end of the Soviet threat, Washington hawks inside the elder Bush’s administration (including Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz) quickly spotted an opportunity. They developed plans for asserting U.S. power more forcefully in the world — plans that were taken up with new zeal when those same hawks ended up in prominent positions inside the younger Bush’s administration. And that was before 9/11 really gave them the all-systems-go.

So Iraqis shouldn’t take this personally. The upcoming invasion of their country is actually part of a larger shift in U.S. foreign policy that will likely bring more of these sorts of interventions around the globe in the future.

This seems like the most predictable thing in the world, although it’s rarely acknowledged. Everybody agrees in principle that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But, for some reason, it’s controversial to suggest that an unrivalled superpower might use its military superiority to advance its own strategic and economic interests — or those of its financial elite — while vigorously denying that that&#0146s what it’s doing. (Would we expect them to admit it?)

Take the touchy subject of oil. Despite all the diversionary talk about weapons of mass destruction, the smell of oil lingers over this whole Iraq affair.

The Washington think-tank set has lately been using media spots to scoff at suggestions that oil is a factor. They point out that the U.S. has access to lots of oil and that they could get access to lots more Iraqi oil, without invading.

True enough, but it&#0146s not access — it’s control, stupid — that Washington and the U.S. oil companies want. As Daniel Yergin documents in his Pulitzer-prize winning book, The Prize, the central focus of the oil industry has long been to gain control of the vast wealth that oil represents.

U.S. companies have always been in the forefront of this quest. Never has their relationship with the White House been more intimate than now. One of the reasons that Saddam Hussein is such a desirable target for Washington is that he’s an uncooperative, anti-U.S. economic nationalist. As a result, his torture chambers provoke denunciations by Washington, while Saudi Arabia’s do not.

The self-interested nature of U.S. motives is evident to many in the Middle East. Without CNN and its constant reinforcement of Washington’s positions, many ordinary Arabs tend to conclude that Washington is mostly interested in wresting control of their highly valuable resource — a resource which they, strange as it may seem to us, have little desire to surrender to U.S. control.

With the U.S. apparently poised to embark on an imperialistic tear throughout the world, it’s essential for us — perhaps more than ever — to have a clearly independent foreign policy, not one based on obliging our all-powerful neighbour.

Of course, Bill Graham would protest that we already act independently. But I suspect that a CNN interviewer came closer to the truth last week. During an interview about support for a unilateral U.S. action against Iraq, she asked an expert: “The Canadians should be easy to convince, but what about the French?”

Ottawa, show some backbone!

Linda McQuaig

Journalist and best-selling author Linda McQuaig has developed a reputation for challenging the establishment. As a reporter for The Globe and Mail, she won a National Newspaper Award in 1989...