There is something going on with Stephen Harper. He has the look of a leader who, at game’s end, is trying to burnish his legacy.

How else to explain his increasingly hawkish rhetoric over Ukraine? All NATO leaders have harshly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin for his actions against Ukraine. But Harper’s language is almost Churchillian in tone.

Putin’s “aggressive, militaristic and imperialistic” activities in Europe, the prime minister said Monday at a deliberately-arranged photo opportunity, aren’t just wrong. They threaten the “peace and stability of the world.”

Harper and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird have already compared Putin’s annexation of Crimea to Hitler’s land grabs of the 1930s. The prime minister now seems to be positioning himself as the Winston Churchill of the modern age, the leader who recognizes Satan for what he is when others are willing to temporize.

That Canada alone can do nothing to stop Russia is immaterial. The point is to be seen as prescient, to be on the right side of history.

It is a side that, in foreign affairs, has eluded Harper up to now.

Indeed, in far too many cases Harper has ended up on the wrong, or at least the indeterminate, side of history.

In opposition, he pressed for Canada to join U.S. president George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. A bad mistake.

In government, he invested his prestige in an Afghan war that the Canadian public eventually tired of.

He was one of the first to call for military action against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. Gadhafi was quickly defeated. But Libya remains a mess that few NATO leaders, including Harper, want to be reminded of.

He went out of his way to scupper international action against climate change. Unfortunately for his legacy, he did so just as the practical effects of climate change — including summer droughts and vicious winter storms — were becoming obvious.

His rock-hard support of Israel has endeared him to many Jewish voters in Canada. However, history’s verdict on Israel and the Palestinians has not yet been rendered.

And now Ukraine.

At one level, supporting Kyiv against Moscow is cheap politicking. Most Canadian voters of Ukrainian descent are pro-Kyiv. Most others don’t care. All three major parties recognize this political fact.

It is also easy for Canada to declare sanctions against Russia, a country with which it does little business.

But, rhetorically at least, Harper has gone beyond what is necessary to garner domestic votes. Indeed, if Canada possessed nuclear weapons, Putin might be taken aback by Harper’s warlike language.

Canada, however, does not have nukes. Nor, in spite of Harper’s soothing words to Eastern European governments, does it have any kind of military force able to confront Russia.

What Canada does have is a prime minister who, after eight years in power, is nearing his shelf-life expiry date.

Harper’s domestic legacy is settled. He will be remembered as the prime minister who negotiated free trade deals with the European Union and South Korea. He refocused government attention on resources, particularly bitumen from Alberta. He made the most serious effort of any prime minister since Pierre Trudeau to wean Canada from its dependence on the U.S. market.

He continued the work, started by Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin, of dismantling the welfare state. And he wisely abandoned his own ideological predilections in order to spend his way through the first years of the post-2008 slump.

But leaders also want to be remembered for their actions on the international stage. Lester Pearson’s name will always be linked to United Nations peacekeeping. Brian Mulroney will be viewed by history as a leader who helped end apartheid in South Africa. Chrétien’s claim to fame as a statesman is based on his refusal to join the U.S. coalition of the willing against Saddam Hussein.

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Stephen Harper? If events turn out as he predicts, Canada’s 22nd prime minister will be seen as a prophet — as a leader who recognized evil in the world and urged international action to stop it. That, I suspect, is what he’s aiming for.

Or he could be wrong again. That’s possible too.

Thomas Walkom's column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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