‘Militarized commerce’ in Sudan's oilfields: Lessons for Canadian foreign policy
H enry Kissinger once observed “no foreign policy – no matter how ingenious – has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of a few and carried in the hearts of none” (Simpson 1988). In the wake of controversy over Calgary-based Talisman Energy’s Sudanese operations, there is reason to question whether Kissinger’s assertion will prove true for Canada’s much-touted ‘human security’ foreign policy. The Talisman Energy case amounts to the first clear collision between a foreign policy of human security and the material self-interest of a powerful Canadian company. In conflict were the operations – and, in the minds of some, the survival – of Canada’s largest independent oil company and the ‘human security’ of southern Sudanese brutally displaced from Sudan’s oil fields. The controversy over the apparent role of Talisman’s operations in exacerbating the Sudanese conflict and the Government of Canada’s seeming inability to settle this matter has given Canada a black eye in the eyes of many critics, especially in the US and the human rights nongovernmental community. Yet, the Talisman situation is merely the tip of the iceberg. Rather than being a one-time aberration, the example of Talisman in Sudan reflects a potentially persistent dark-side to the globalization of Canadian business, one that presents new foreign policy concerns for the Government of Canada. This article focuses on the Talisman case to illustrate the emerging issue of ‘militarized commerce’ by Canadian companies and the challenge it presents to ‘human security’. For the purposes of this article, militarized commerce has several characteristics: first, reliance by business firms on state military forces for security; second, the provision by companies of financial, logistical, material or infrastructural assistance to human-rights abusing troops; third, the use of force by human rights abusing-regimes to supply resources to a company; and, fourth, the generation of revenues used by human rights abusing regimes to wage war against civilian populations. ‘Human security’, for its part, reflects “an effort to construct a global society in which the safety and well-being of the individual is an international priority” (Axworthy 1999). This article begins by arguing that militarized commerce is an increasingly common occurrence, one that challenges conventional wisdom about the positive role of business in supporting human security and political liberalization. It recounts the particulars of Talisman’s Sudanese operations and reviews evidence that the company’s presence in Sudan’s oilfields was fuelling civil conflict in 1999. It describes in detail the controversy relating to the company’s project and the Canadian government reaction prompted by this public scrutiny. Relying on material obtained via the Access to Information Act, the article argues that the government’s response in the Talisman case was 37