Politics & Power Quote by Stephen Harper

Harper’s line lands like a rebuke dressed up as a security briefing: the “should have been there” is less nostalgia than a charge of dereliction. By invoking “shoulder to shoulder,” he reaches for a phrase that Canadians associate with wartime solidarity and treaty credibility - moral language that doubles as strategic language. It’s a compact way to say the current government isn’t just making a different choice; it’s failing a basic test of allied reliability.

The second sentence sharpens the knife. Harper isn’t primarily worried about the ally’s instability; he’s worried about Canada looking unstable as an ally. That inversion is the point. It reframes foreign policy as reputational capital: once partners start pricing in your unpredictability, you pay in diminished influence, weaker intelligence sharing, and fewer invitations to shape outcomes. “Instability” becomes a diplomatic credit rating.

Then he shifts to the ominous: “playing again with national and global security matters.” “Again” is doing heavy lifting, suggesting a pattern of reckless experimentation, not an isolated misstep. “Playing” infantilizes the decision-makers, implying amateurism where consequences are lethal and long-term. The subtext is domestic as much as international: Harper is arguing that competence in government is legible abroad, and that partisan zigzags at home translate into strategic costs overseas.

Contextually, this is Harper in his familiar register: hawkish, alliance-first, skeptical of symbolic distance from partners. He’s not just selling a policy; he’s selling a theory of Canada’s place in the world - earned through consistency, not commentary.