Watching American politics over the last few weeks has been very interesting. The international intrigue regarding Edward Snowden and his attempts to seek asylum as well as the subsequent cancellation of the meeting between President Obama and Vladimir Putin rings of an earlier time in history when the Cold War kept the East and the West separated by ideology and suspicion.
President Obama appeared on Jay Leno the other night and, when asked about whether or not he was surprised that Russia had granted Snowden asylum, Obama said (among other things) "... there have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality." That "cold war mentality" shaped international relations for the latter half of the twentieth-century and there are still remnants of the fears of that time throughout the world.
In fact, there are remnants of those times in my sister's basement - and I'm not kidding. My sister's 1875 farmhouse in Aurora, Ontario (just north of Toronto) houses the last existing municipal emergency bomb shelter in Canada. My sister and her husband bought the home from the City of Toronto in 1996. It was being used as a training centre for emergency services. There were mock hostage takings at the home where emergency workers would practice tactical training and rescue services. But hidden under the ground just a few feet from the side of the home exists a 35 x 60 concrete bunker that was built in 1963 as an emergency preparedness centre for a potential nuclear strike on the city of Toronto.
Once they became owners of the home, my sister and her husband found that the bunker was accessible by a side entrance that had been added to the home and led to the already deep basement of the old farmhouse. The basement itself held all kinds of equipment and supplies to keep the city officials and staff safe underground so that they could coordinate rescue efforts with other bunker locations. In fact, there were phone lines and carrels throughout the basement that worked as communication stations. There was also a generator and plates and cutlery and two large water tanks.
The bunker itself was really like a large debriefing room. My sister did a lot of homework on the bunker and learned that it was never meant to sustain any kind of direct hit. It is fascinating to see the large Plexiglas map and record keeping board that runs the width of the room. There is a large etched map of Toronto from Lake Ontario north to Aurora where the shelter is located and at the side of the board there are headings that read: "Estimated Dead / Wounded / Unhurt" and "Reported Dead / Wounded / Unhurt." The place is rather eerie and stands as a testament to the very real tensions and fears that existed particularly during the early 1960s.
As tensions rise again between the East and the West, the Edward Snowden story can help us to think about the nature of freedom in democracies and the real challenges of 21st century security. Edward Snowden revealed secrets about the American government's surveillance practices and opened up the debate about the fine line a state must walk between protecting individual freedoms while at the same time protecting public safety. The post-9/11 world is very different than the traditional state-to-state confrontations of the Cold War period. And, without doubt, technological changes including the rise of the internet and the ubiquitous cell phone have led to a different set of "rules" about war and security.
There is a constant tension in the debate regarding security about what the state "should know" and what the state "should be prepared for" versus how much the "state should know about any individual or group." These tensions are in fact part of the legacy of the Cold War: the rise of state surveillance and "Big Brother" watching were characteristics of the Soviet enemy and recent ideas about liberty in America have been shaped by fears about the Soviet experience. Edward Snowden has put himself at the centre of an old conflict but also at the centre of a current and on-going debate about freedom.
