What a former ambassador to Canada learned on the job about the art of diplomacy – and why those lessons spark optimism for the future
Bruce Heyman was the U.S. ambassador to Canada from 2014 to 2017, and the co-author, with his wife Vicki Heyman, of the bookIt started as a regular Sunday in June, 2018. My wife, Vicki, and I, were going about our usual Sunday-morning ritual: getting settled in with our newspapers and tuning in to the political shows.
Mr. Navarro’s statement called to mind a notion that crystallized in my head during my term as ambassador – about what diplomacy is, and what it is not. During my time in Canada, I had the opportunity to see true diplomacy in action, and to practise it myself. I also learned never to underestimate how significant something is to someone else, even if you may not personally appreciate its importance. Early on in my term, at a public forum, I compared some Canada-U.S. stress points – such as the delays in approving the ultimately rejected Keystone XL pipeline – to a scratch on a shiny new car. I minimized these concerns as small irritants in an overall great relationship.
But throughout his presidency, Mr. Trump has treated Canada unfairly and looked at Canadians only in transactional termsIt is as if he sees John F. Kennedy’s famous words about our special relationship as a personal threat: “Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.
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