By Paul StanwayThe news that the most paranoid government on the planet, communist North Korea, may have a nuclear-capable missile that can reach the American West Coast set off a flurry of fear and diplomatic activity this week.
Meanwhile, no one in Ottawa appears to give a rat's rear end that the same missile might be able to reach British Columbia, and perhaps even Alberta.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the North Koreans that testing such a missile would be regarded as "a provocative act." Washington also switched on its new and untried ballistic missile defence shield, just in case.
Australia, one of the few democracies to have diplomatic relations with North Korea, hauled in that country's ambassador and warned him that developing a missile that could threaten Australia's major cities would be a very bad idea.
"North Korea would be gravely mistaken if it thinks that a missile test would improve its bargaining position" in nuclear disarmament talks, said the Aussie foreign minister, Alexander Downer. His New Zealand counterpart said much the same thing.
So what's missing here?
A notorious rogue state has developed a missile that may have a range of 15,000 km, and could threaten Australia, New Zealand and the West Coast of the U.S. At that extreme range, it would also be able to vapourize Edmonton and Calgary, but apparently that's not enough reason for Canada to join the chorus of voices warning off the North Koreans.
Now, we don't want to terrify the population of Alberta and B.C. unnecessarily. Even the Americans don't know for sure the full range of the new rocket - called the Taepodong 2. It could be anywhere between 6,500 km and 15,000 km.
We also don't know enough about the capabilities of North Korean military technology. Lobbing a missile across the Pacific requires a rocket capable of reaching low-Earth orbit, so maybe they can't even do it.
But it would be foolish for Ottawa to make those assumptions, or to decide that Canada would not be a potential target. In 1941, Washington and Ottawa still doubted that Japan would enter the Second World War, and the notion that it could launch a pre-emptive attack on Hawaii seemed utterly ludicrous.
The North Koreans know that developing a long-range ballistic missile will seriously disrupt relations with South Korea, Japan, and the West. It would also be a serious embarrassment for China, North Korea's only significant trade and aid partner, which has been trying to broker talks that would halt North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons.
But maybe the North Korean leadership doesn't care. This nutty Marxist dictatorship is either on the verge of becoming a nuclear power or is already there. And it sells arms and weapons technology to anyone with the money to buy them, including Iran.
This is very scary, yet publicly at least, Ottawa appears blissfully unaware of any potential threat to Western Canada. Alberta is fast becoming America's fuel depot, and an obvious target for anyone wanting to disrupt the U.S. economy, but the strategic implications of this have yet to sink in.
So what could Ottawa do? Fire off a couple of strongly worded messages to the North Koreans? No doubt that would have them shaking in their hardened bunkers.
Or we could do the logical thing and provide Canadians with the only potential defence against rogue states armed with long-range weapons. We could sign onto the U.S. ballistic missile defence system (BMD).
Britain, Australia, Japan, Germany, Italy, Israel and Denmark have already done so (a development that received almost no media coverage in Canada). NATO, of which Canada is a founding member, is apparently considering buying American technology and equipment to create its own missile shield - covering Europe, not Canada.
The Americans say they want nothing from us apart from moral support in return for covering us with their BMD system, but when it comes to accepting the U.S. missile shield the Harper Tories have been almost as coy as the anti-American Liberals. Perhaps it might make a difference if Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver fall within range of North Korean missiles.
We live in hope.