While National Newswatch does not keep an archive of external articles for longer than 6 months, we do keep all articles written by contributors who post directly to our site. Here you will find all of the contributed and linked external articles from Bob Rae.
The decision by the Trump administration to launch an arrest operation in Caracas, Venezuela, capturing Nicolás Maduro and his spouse Cilia Flores, has profound consequences for all of us. Trump’s triumphal press conference and initial media coverage from US media focused on the level of organization, discipline, technology and expertise required to extract the Maduros in the middle of the...
With both Chantal and Bruce away this week, a special program for our final Good Talk of 2025. Bob Rae, fresh from his five years at the United Nations as Canada's Ambassador, and with his wealth of political experience, joins us to talk Canada and politics. It's a wide ranging discussion, so strap in for an engaging Good Talk.
Just a few short weeks ago, I was sitting in the United Nations listening to statements from the Trump administration emphasizing that the United States would never agree to anything that limited state sovereignty. This assertion — echoing the recent use of sovereignty as a fig leaf by autocratic states to justify a multitude of sins against international law and...
Twenty years ago, I released “Ontario: A Leader in Learning,” a report that presented a simple truth: a prosperous province and country invest in knowledge, skills, and innovation. We recognized then — as we must today — that long-term economic success depends on the strength of our colleges and universities. The current mix of policies — tuition freezes, an uncertain...
Analysts are always searching for “turning points”, “tipping points”, and “inflection points”. For me, February 2025 was such a moment. It was the month when the world we thought we understood was turned on its head. As the third anniversary of the illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine approached, Ukraine was determined to have another General Assembly debate and a resolution...
A quotation I have turned to more than once is Blaise Pascal’s famous dictum that “Justice without enforcement is powerless, but power without justice is tyranny”. Many critics argue that international law is not really law because it is powerless. The reality is that any kind of law is powerless if enforcement never happens. The more complicated truth is that...
One of Brian Mulroney’s favourite quotations was Teddy Roosevelt’s famous praise for life “in the arena”: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is...
