Canada, Iran and “Controlled Engagement:” A new start with Afghanistan?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
While Canada will end its combat mission in Afghanistan this year, Ottawa's commitment to provide military trainers, its continued development and humanitarian assistance programs as well as on-going support for its NATO allies means that formulating a long-term Afghan strategy remains paramount. Given that Canada and its international partners support a regional approach to resolving the Afghan conflict, Kabul's neighbors – including Iran – will need to be involved in the process. As such Ottawa will have to revisit its own often fraught relationship with Tehran. Since 1996, Canadian foreign policy toward Iran has been framed by a strategy known as “Controlled Engagement.” This policy limits the level of official contacts between the two states as well as the issues that Ottawa will put on the table for discussion. One of the permissible topic areas is “Iran's role in the region.” DFAIT has interpreted this phrase to include Afghanistan. In other words, the Canadian Government would not have to alter its stated policy to dialogue publicly with Iran. This article argues that Afghanistan provides a shared and meaningful diplomatic space in which Canada, its allies and Iran can cooperate. Further, while operating within pre-existing governmental guidelines, Canadian-Iranian interaction on Afghanistan may also provide a window for rebuilding other aspects of their currently troubled bilateral relationship. Alors que le Canada arrive au terme de sa mission de combat en Afghanistan cette anné e, l'engagement d'Ottawa à envoyer des instructeurs militaires dans ce pays, à y maintenir des programmes de développement et d'assistance humanitaire, et à y assurer un appui continu à ses alliés de l'OTAN, signifie que l’élaboration d'une stratégie afghane à long terme reste d'une importance capitale. É tant donné que le Canada et ses partenaires internationaux sont en faveur d'une approche régionale pour résoudre le conflit afghan, les voisins de Kaboul – y compris l'Iran – devront être impliqués dans ce processus. Ainsi, Ottawa devra revoir sa relation souvent tendue avec Téhéran. Depuis 1996, la politique étrangère du Canada vis-à-vis de l'Iran a été encadrée par la stratégie « d'engagement contrôlé ». Ce concept limite les contacts officiels entre les deux pays, ainsi que les problèmes qu'Ottawa souhaiterait voir figurer à l'ordre du jour des discussions. L'un des sujets acceptables est « le rôle de l'Iran dans la région ». L'AECIC considère que cette expression doit englober l'Afghanistan. En d'autres termes, le gouvernement canadien ne devrait pas avoir à modifier sa politique officielle pour dialoguer publiquement avec l'Iran. Cet article soutient que l'Afghanistan offre un espacediplomatique partagé et significatif au sein duquel le Canada, ses alliés et l'Iran peuvent coopérer. De plus, en se produisant dans le cadre des directives gouvernementales préexistantes, l'interaction entre le Canada et l'Iran à propos de l'Afghanistan peut également offrir une fenêtre d'opportunité pour la reconstruction d'autres composantes de leur relation bilatérale, actuellement perturbée.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.036 | 0.026 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".