The two Michaels have been reduced to pawns in a power struggle between China and the U.S.

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This article was published 18/03/2021 (1335 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASHINGTON—It may be helpful, at this point, to remind everyone that Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor are actual human beings — Canadians with families who miss them and are scared for them, men who have been held in isolation for two years, who are being put through secret trials with predetermined conclusions by the Chinese government.

In the time that they have become the “two Michaels,” it has become easy for political discussion of their situation to seem like a geopolitical abstraction — their names a term like “softwood lumber” or “emissions targets” that signals some debatable diplomatic football subject to discussions. Because that is what they have been, to China, which is by almost all outside accounts holding the two men on charges of espionage as a pure power play to secure the release of Chinese executive Meng Wanzhou, who is being detained in Canada on a U.S. extradition request.

Again, by every indication, Kovrig and Spavor have done nothing wrong. And by every indication, there is little at this point that Canada’s diplomats can do to help them.

Indeed, that they were moved suddenly to face secret trials in Chinese courts this week — Spavor on Friday, Kovrig on Monday — is likely no coincidence, because this is the week China’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, began meetings with the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Alaska. China has been flexing its muscles internationally, sensing weakness in the American position in the world and firming up what a researcher at Canada’s Macdonald-Laurier Institute characterized as an “authoritarian axis” of international influence with Russia. The lives of Kovrig and Spavor are but one pressure point among many in the growing Chinese cold war against our southern neighbour.

And that cold war showed indications of growing heated — rhetorically — as the meetings in Alaska kicked off Thursday, when the ceremonial introductory greetings turned into an hour of back-and-forth insults. Yang opened with a 15-minute scolding of the U.S. for what he portrayed as its condescension, bullying and hypocrisy. The Americans characterized China’s approach to the talks as “grandstanding,” while China said the U.S. was bringing a sense of “gunpowder and drama.”

It was that kind of week for President Joe Biden’s administration: as all that was happening in Alaska, Biden was trading trans-Atlantic insults and threats with Vladimir Putin, calling the Russian president a “killer” in a TV interview and threatened retaliation for election meddling. Putin basically responded with a Russian version of, “I know you are but what am I?” before wishing Biden “good health” and then challenging him to a live-broadcast debate.

Back in the China meetings, despite reports that the temperature was dialed down as talks continued behind closed doors, it doesn’t seem like immediate conciliation is on the table.

Not that it was expected to be. Senior U.S. administration officials had said the meetings would be “very much about sitting down, getting an understanding of each other, and then taking that back and taking stock,” and said they didn’t expect any big agreements of any kind to come out of the talks. “There will not be a joint statement,” one official said flatly.

And that was notable, given how much there was on the agenda: Chinese human rights abuses, economic pressure the Asian giant is putting on Australia, antidemocracy moves in Hong Kong, military aggression towards Taiwan, cybersecurity and trade among them.

During a State Department briefing on Friday afternoon, I asked whether Kovrig and Spavor were on the agenda in Alaska, and if so how and to what extent. Department spokesperson Jalina Porter didn’t answer directly, but expressed U.S. support for their release and said international observers should be allowed to attend their trials. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with Canada in calling for their immediate release, and we also continue to condemn their lack of minimum procedural protections during their two-year arbitrary detention,” she said.

Porter was reiterating a message of public support that Biden and Blinken emphasized after their meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a few weeks ago. But the detained Canadians certainly don’t seem to be among the headlining issues at the contentious Alaska conference.

The two Michaels are political prisoners being used as chess pieces in a conflict between China and the U.S. They’ve been moved into further jeopardy at a point when that struggle is having a prominent moment on the global stage. Yet, like pawns on a game board, concern about their fate doesn’t seem to feature particularly prominently in the grand strategies of the key players.

In that, they are symbolic of the helplessness many Canadians — and others across the globe — feel amid the grandstanding and gun smoke of superpowers clashing. Kovrig and Spavor are human beings who are suffering greatly, directly, personally. They are human beings caught in the middle of a fight they had no part in starting, and which they are all but powerless to affect the outcome. For those two human beings, and for Canada and the rest of the world, it’s not encouraging that the fight looks like it’s a long way from being settled.

Edward Keenan is the Star’s Washington Bureau chief. He covers U.S. politics and current affairs. Reach him via email: ekeenan@thestar.ca