By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, December 3, 1997; Page A01

Since the end of the Cold War, the Canadian military has cut the jobs of many of its generals, closed bases around the country, reduced its troop strength to a minimum and routinely delayed replacing its aging collection of submarines, helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

Its last major equipment purchase was a fleet of naval patrol frigates. That was in the early 1980s. Its largest troop mobilization in recent times was to help pile sandbags around flood-threatened Winnipeg this year. Its combat capabilities are token at best, according to many analysts, and its strategy is oriented ever more toward peacekeeping and relief work.

But for the country's diplomatic corps, these are salad days. Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy is credited with leading more than 100 nations to agree to ban anti-personnel land mines in a treaty to be signed here Wednesday – an arms-control feat his contemporaries thought next to impossible when he set the goal a year ago.

In recent months Axworthy has also undertaken the reform of communist Cuba, coupling, to the consternation of the United States, visits to the island by Canadian jurists and other professionals with trade deals that are a key source of hard currency for Fidel Castro's regime. Canada prodded the Commonwealth to its recent censure of Nigeria and persuaded the United Nations to mount a humanitarian military mission to Congo. Each season brings a new round of trade missions and deal signings as Canadian politicians shepherd the country's entrepreneurs into places as difficult to navigate as China and as close as the United States.

If there is a new world order emerging from the fall of communism and the rise of international trading blocs, then look for a Maple Leaf stamp of approval on it. With borders secured by two oceans, a polar cap and its long-standing alliance with the United States, the country is pursuing an agenda rare in history: aggressive demilitarization combined with an expansive foreign policy.

Its defense budget has been kept big enough to retain membership in NATO, contribute to the peacekeeping missions in which it specializes and not totally surrender its national security to the good graces of the United States – still important for domestic appearances. The real emphasis, however is on boosting trade and identifying specific diplomatic targets the country feels it can influence – a concept characterized by officials here as "niche" or "value-added" diplomacy that lets Canada play a tangible role in world affairs despite acknowledged limits on its resources.

The policy attempts to meld Canada's humanitarian and commercial instincts into a single thesis: that peacekeeping, arms control and other international endeavors are important not just because they are morally sound, but because they create stable societies, and stable societies not only can buy more exports, but don't create refugees or terrorists looking for a place to emigrate.

"The traditional military alliances, the Realpolitik issues, are now human security issues. A land mine blowing a kid's leg off. A drug czar moving heroin into Vancouver from Burma," Axworthy said in an interview last week. "With the new fluidity taking place, there is room for value-added diplomacy. We made a choice that other middle powers have not. We decided to stay global."

"None of this would have been possible 10, perhaps even five, years ago," he told delegates at a three-day conference about the land mines treaty. "There was very little space in international policy, particularly given [Cold War] security interests. . . . This is symbolic of a profound and lasting shift in the conduct of international relations."

Whether it is a shift as deep as Axworthy describes remains to be seen; even among anti-land mine campaigners, there is a sense that this endeavor was unusual given the pace at which dozens of national governments adopted the idea and the degree to which they worked in tandem with private, nongovernmental advocacy groups. There are millions of land mines left in former war zones like Afghanistan and Cambodia, and they kill and maim hundreds of civilians every month. Finding other issues with that kind of universal humanitarian appeal may be difficult.

But for Canada, the result this time has been an unchallenged success as the country hosts a ceremony of "make-good diplomacy" in its capital. The highlight will be the signing on Wednesday of a treaty banning the use, production and sale of anti-personnel mines. More than 150 countries planned to send representatives to the conference, though not all will sign this week.

In particular, the United States is not signing the treaty precisely because of the type of security commitments to which Axworthy referred: American military advisers say the U.S. needs mines to protect its troops in South Korea.

During a ceremony this fall at which Canada demolished the last of its remaining land mine stockpile, campaign organizer and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams said that in championing this issue Canada had shown "the courage, conviction and leadership to take the world down a new path."

But it also showed how in these post-modern times a country can marry diverse values and instigate global change.

Canadian officials frequently argue that developed but modest-size countries would fare much better in a world where nations rely on rules and international institutions to solve conflicts. In the past, however, opportunities for furthering such a rules-based system often were limited by the strategic demands of the Cold War.

With that changed, the more ambitious of Canada's diplomats – Axworthy chief among them – say the country has more room to maneuver. On the issue of land mines, he went outside normal diplomatic corridors, endorsed the work begun by Williams and other private advocates and gathered support as if it was a statehouse lobbying campaign instead of international diplomacy. As the treaty neared completion, he talked about targeting the global small-arms trade next.

The land mine ban also tapped a humanitarian tradition in Canadian foreign policy that dates to the 1950s, when then-Foreign Minister Lester B. Pearson advocated creation of a U.N. force to quell tensions over the Suez Canal in Egypt. Advocacy of that idea earned Pearson a Nobel Prize and made peacekeeping a defining value of the country's foreign policy.

Most improbably, the land mine ban intersected, as so many issues in Canada do these days, with the country's trade agenda. In addition to the treaty signing and three days of talks about how to make it work, the government also is sponsoring a wine and cheese reception to promote Canadian "de-mining" firms – competitors in an industry poised to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in post-treaty spending around the world.

To be sure, Canada's activism hasn't always been successful. The mission to Congo, for example, began as a dramatic, global call to conscience by Prime Minister Jean Chretien but turned into a boondoggle when the refugee crisis it was meant to address evaporated.

It also demonstrated the limits on Canada's ability to fully back its ideas with assets. As Canadian officials were advocating action, they also acknowledged that no mission would succeed without U.S. airlift support.

"There are smaller countries with bigger militaries," said Defense Minister Art Eggleton, who is fighting any further reductions to the Canadian defense budget by arguing that to cut more would undermine the voice Axworthy is trying to expand in foreign affairs. To advocate peacekeeping or other international efforts, he said, Canada has to have at least minimal strength available to help.

Even in an era when large ground wars seem unlikely, "our ability to get information and be a part of what is happening in terms of security in the world is very much dependent on our making a contribution," Eggleton said.

Canada's policy is not without its critics, some of whom see a strain of opportunism at work. They note, for example, that Canada's stated concern for human rights sometimes goes silent when trade issues are involved; countries such as Nigeria and Burma, for example, are criticized very publicly, while China and Indonesia, where Canadians have more at stake economically, are scolded in the back room, with the door shut.

Even the land mines campaign has drawn some second-guessing.

Canada hasn't used land mines since the Korean War, and the weapons meet no tactical need for the country's military. For Canada, advocating their ban is a cost-free decision, one analyzed solely from a humanitarian perspective.

"The end of the Cold War has reduced even further the Canadian incentive to think much about its own security, and particularly to fund security outside of peacekeeping," said Charles Doran, a Canada expert at Johns Hopkins University. "There is a sense that security is free."