Chrystia Freeland fails again on the world stage

After being ignored for months and months, even having her phone calls and requests for meetings rebuffed, foreign affairs minister Chrystia Freeland finally got a meeting with her Chinese counterpart.

But that “meeting,” wasn’t a real meeting.

It was a quick discussion on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit.

Freeland says she raised the issue of kidnapped Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, and there’s no reason to doubt that she did.

However, the government release issued following the “meeting” makes it clear that no progress was made towards freeing those held by Communist China.

“On the margins of the 52nd ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Chrystia Freeland, held a bilateral meeting with her counterpart from China, His Excellency Wang Yi. The two had a frank exchange of views. They discussed the importance of the bilateral relationship between Canada and China and underscored the deep and longstanding ties between the people of Canada and China.

Minister Freeland expressed Canada’s ongoing concerns regarding Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who have been arbitrarily detained by China.

Minister Wang expressed China’s concerns regarding the extradition of Meng Wanzhou.

The two Ministers committed to continuing discussions between their two countries.”

That’s all diplomatic-speak for absolutely nothing being accomplished.

Yet again, we see Chrystia Freeland failing on the world stage.

As I’ve pointed out before, while Freeland is regularly lauded by the international elites, her actual record has been one of continued failure.

The new NAFTA featured many concessions by Canada, and will end up costing our country a lot of money. There was no exemption for Canada from “Buy America.” Freeland managed to piss off Saudi Arabia – which isn’t a bad thing – but failed to follow up with any strength, as we took no retaliatory action against their cutting off of investment in Canada, and are still inexplicably selling them weapons. Steel & aluminum tariffs were imposed on us by the United States. Relations with India, the world’s largest democracy, are terrible. And when it comes to China, we’re being humiliated, mistreated, and repeatedly offering nothing in return but weakness.

Here’s the thing:

Not all of this is Chrystia Freeland’s fault. But taken as a whole, the collective picture that emerges is endless foreign policy failure, with no success.

And if Freeland’s reputation as an “award-winning diplomat” was based on reality, wouldn’t there be fewer failures and more successes?

The fact is that Chrystia Freeland, like many international elites, is good at only one thing: Repeating the “correct” set of words.

They can sound smart.

They can sound “measured.”

But they don’t get anything done.

They don’t understand human nature, particularly the ruthless side of human nature. They don’t understand that just because threats, brutality, and intimidation aren’t “nice,” that won’t stop other countries from using them against us.

Much of the world is run by a thug & gangster mentality, and countering that with a “diplomatic” and “intellectual” approach is a disaster, as Canada is discovering the hard way.