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When U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry bloviated last fall about officially ending the Monroe Doctrine (the U.S. belief that God grants only Americans the right to interfere with the internal affairs of other western hemisphere countries), one wonders if Stephen Harper and his foreign affairs pitbull John Baird immediately took the concept on for themselves. Perhaps they also adopted a bit of manifest destiny thrown in for good measure. How else -- other than through the lens of someone who truly feels anointed by the heavens -- can one begin to understand Harper's messianic foreign policy, one in which he and John Baird play tag-team John Waynes making the world safe for Canadian corporate profits?

What happened in Geneva last month between Iran and the UN Security Council P-5 plus Germany was more than just a deal on the right to peaceful nuclear technology; it was, for the NATO P-3 (U.S., U.K., France) certainly, a pivotal return to diplomacy in world affairs after decades of knee-jerk first use of arms as weapon of choice in "resolving" conflicts.

Following in the wake of the Russia-brokered agreement on the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons arsenal, the Iran deal confirms that the U.S. administration has finally and effectively decided (for how long?) to break with the war-mongering strategy of its predecessors, including one-term "peace" president Jimmy Carter -- under whose watch began the Iranian Revolution and the Jihadi war that continues in Afghanistan.