If revenge is indeed a dish that's best served cold, the President of Cool just served up a four-star pièce de résistance for Stephen Harper.

Tuesday's announcement of Obama's planned veto of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline should not have been surprising, yet when the blow came it carried a shocking intensity.

And how did things go so badly that Canada doesn't have the heft or goodwill in Washington to add a single pipeline to a nation benoodled with them? The answer lies in the delusional hubris of Stephen Harper.

No close watcher of the president should be surprised. In myriad ways, the prime minister's personal ambition shredded our nation's single most important relationship and drew us into the toxic swamp of Washington's poisonous politics.

It's been going on for years.

In early 2008, during the heat of the U.S. primary season, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) leaked a highly confidential communication by the Obama campaign to the benefit of the Republican Party. While no culprit was ever found, speculation fell on the Canadian embassy in Washington, and the 27-year-old son of a Republican congressman who'd been installed there at the behest of the PMO and Stockwell Day.

Unfortunately for Harper, the young candidate Obama overcame the Republican trap laid for him, displaying a masterful command of politics and the art of rope-a-dope. Wiser heads might have been chastened by that experience, and taken heed of the new president's admonition that "elections have consequences," and wiser heads might have considered the damage done to Canada when our PMO's confidentiality isn't trusted.

But wiser heads would not have been so intoxicated by a vision of Canada as a 21st-century energy superpower.

Harper's unbending ambition set him on collision course with a president intent to act on climate change. For anyone watching closely, all the signals were there that Obama would turn to the environment as a major pillar of his legacy.

So it was a foolish miscalculation for Harper to turn Canada and the oilsands into an international symbol of climate obstinacy. But that's a fight he picked. Not content to simply promote the Canadian energy industry and accommodate international pressure for action on the climate, Harper raised the stakes by muzzling scientists and launching an an all-out vendetta on prominent conservation groups.

And while the PM maintained a rigid stance on climate change policy abroad, his proxies at home unleashed a campaign to single out and vilify some of America's and the world's most illustrious scientific research foundations, governed by people like Bush's White House director of science and technology policy, the provost of Harvard, Stanford dean of law and the like.

There probably isn't a more effective way to become an international pariah than the path chosen by Stephen Harper.

But that's only part of the story. In the autumn of 2012, with America in full campaign mode, it was Benjamin Netanyahu's turn to "blatantly interfere" in the election on behalf of Republican candidate Mitt Romney's financier Sheldon Adelson, which he did by single-handedly making war with Iran an election issue.

The U.S. Republicans are certainly refining their game of luring foreign allies into meddling in American elections against their own interests. The 2012 Netanyahu war maneuver was a major step up on the 2008 Harper PMO leak.

In September 2013, Harper travelled to New York to pointedly skip (again) the opening session of the UN General Assembly, but make a high-profile appearance to lecture Obama in his backyard that Canada "would not take no for an answer" on Keystone. What does that even mean?

Yet just months later, in early January 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry was in Israel on a delicate mission to restart talks with the Palestinians. Because the State Department also has management of the Keystone file, John Kerry was important to Canada. But no sooner had Kerry left Israel than Netanyahu caused an uproar by unilaterally approving annexation of another settlement block in Palestinian lands.

By sheer coincidence, Harper arrived on Kerry's heels to serenade Netanyahu with a Beatles song, pick up an honorary degree, and rise in the Knesset to equate criticism of Israel's policies with anti-Semitism.

Translation: the White House can stuff it.

It's nothing short of bizarre that Harper publicly dissed the U.S. cabinet minister in charge of the Keystone file at the same time he's hounding the U.S. for a favourable outcome. That's not diplomacy – it's not even manners. And something's very unsettling about both leaders' connections with the Republican party and their peculiar tag-team with each other. If Barack Obama views Harper with suspicion, it's for good reason.

All this drama made a shambles of Canada's primary international relationship, which will always be with the White House.

Yet when Obama's new ambassador to Ottawa, Bruce Heyman, was "welcomed" at his first major public appearance, he was bluntly confronted over Keystone. Meanwhile, Harper blanketed Washington with a $24-million ad campaign to persuade Americans that we deserve the Keystone pipeline because we're such good allies, while giving speeches about the craziness of acting on climate change.

In reality, Canadian interests, our industry, and our environment would all be so much further ahead today had Harper adopted a responsible approach to climate change and a coherent strategy to win support from the White House.

That $24 million was all for naught. There was really only one man on the planet that Stephen Harper ever had to persuade to vote yes on Keystone. But pride goeth before destruction, as they say.

Rope-a-dope indeed.

Image Credit: U.S. Embassy

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The White House confirmed today that President Obama will veto Congressional legislation designed to greenlight construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, the contentious project first proposed six years ago to carry more than 800,000 barrels per day of Canadian oilsands crude from Alberta to refineries and export facilities along the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite strong indications of support in Congress, the Obama Administration has already indicated it will veto the bill to expedite approval of the $8 billion project if approved. A similar bill was blocked by Democrats in the Senate in November.

“If this bill passes this Congress the president won’t sign it either,” Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, said. Obama rejected TransCanada's application to build the pipeline in 2012, suggesting congressional Republicans had set a "rushed and arbitrary deadline" for the project's approval.

The bill, proposed by Republican Senator John Hoeven from North Dakota and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia, will be debated in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Wednesday with the panel set to vote on the project Thursday.

“For us to continue to produce more energy and compete in the global market we need more pipelines to move crude at the lowest cost and in the safest, most environmentally friendly way,” Hoeven said in a recent press conference. “That means that pipelines like the Keystone XL are in the vital national interest of our country.”

According to Danielle Droitsch, director of the Canada Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, Obama “made the right call.”

“What’s needed now is for him to kill the dirty tar sands pipeline outright,” she said in a statement.

Droitsch said the president is clearly focused on the question of national interest.

“On principle, the president is right to put the national interest first. It’s not the role of Congress to short-circuit the legitimate process of presidential review designed to ensure the best outcome for the country."

She added Keystone XL “would pipe some of the dirtiest oil on the planet through the breadbasket of America so most of it could be shipped overseas. It’s not a plan to help our country. It’s about big profits for big oil – and big pollution for the rest of us.”

The president indicated he will stick to the official pipeline review process and noted an ongoing challenge to the pipeline’s route through Nebraska has yet to be resolved.

In addition to massive public opposition to the pipeline, plummeting oil prices are calling into question both the short and long-term viability of North American oil projects.

As Canadian economist Jeff Rubin recently put it in a Globe and Mail op-ed, the political economy of oil is rapidly changing our relationship with fuel transport infrastructure:

“The first thing Canadians should recognize about the new world order for oil prices is that – contrary to what we’re being told by our federal government – the economy is no longer in dire need of any new pipelines. For that matter, it can live without the new rail terminals being built to move oil as well. Yesterday’s transportation bottlenecks aren’t relevant in today’s marketplace.

At current prices there won’t be any massive expansion of oil sands production because those projects, which would produce some of the world’s most expensive crude, no longer make economic sense.”

Bill co-sponsor Joe Manchin – one of the few Democrats to support the pipeline – said he is encouraged by the fact that the Keystone XL bill is one of the first pieces of legislation this year.

“We have everything to gain by building this pipeline, especially since it would help create thousands of jobs right here at home and limit our dependence on foreign oil,” he said.

Yet to the White House, the move is symbolic of potential discord with the Republican-led Congress.

"Congressional Republicans are well aware of the position of this administration, which is that we believe clearly that this administrative process is the one that should determine the viability of this project and that is a long held view," White House press secretary Earnest said.

"So it may raise questions about the willingness of Republicans to actually cooperate with this administration when you consider that the very first bill that is introduced in U.S. Senate is one that Republicans know the president opposes," he added.

According to The Hill, Hoeven and Manchin already have a plan to push passage of the pipeline legislation later in the year, despite Obama’s veto.

Image Credit: Susan Melkisethian via Flickr

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