The script for American ambassadors is very clear. No matter what the government of Canada does, no matter how unco-operative it is in international councils, no matter how little it contributes to the common defence, no matter how many gratuitous insults it heaps upon Americans and America's head of state, the U.S. ambassador is required to nod indulgently, smile with forbearance, and repeat his lines as written: Canada and the United States are the best of friends, largest two-way trading relationship in the world, we are grateful for Canada's invaluable contribution, etc.

Well now the United States is fighting for its life, Canada has just kicked it in the gut, and strangely the ambassador is no longer in the mood. Yesterday's extraordinary speech to the Toronto Economic Club was not merely a departure from standard diplomatic code. It wasn't even a mild rebuke. It was an angry, wounded cry, direct from Washington and heavy with meaning.

"There is no security threat to Canada that the United States would not be ready, willing and able to help with," Paul Cellucci said, or rather bellowed. "There would be no debate, no hesitation. We would be there for Canada ... And that is why so many people in the United States are so disappointed and upset that Canada is not there for us now." "Not there for us" was perhaps a vestigial twitching of the diplomatic- restraint nerve. The Chretien government is not just "not there for" the Americans, it is very much here and against. If not actively hostile to the United States, it is certainly passively so -- as the ambassador also noted. He compared Ottawa's reaction to recent remarks by the Alberta Premier, Ralph Klein, and the federal Minister of Natural Resources, Herb Dhaliwal. "When Mr. Klein issues strong support for the United States the Canadian government comes down hard on him," he said.

"When Mr. Dhaliwal makes totally inappropriate remarks about the President of the United States, they totally ignore it." American ambassadors never say these things. Certainly the Chretien people were taken aback. They had calculated that, after months of waffling, Canada had made itself too small and insignificant for the Americans to be bothered with, lacking either the military capacity or the diplomatic clout to make much difference either way. Officials in the Prime Minister's office had confidently predicted there would be no consequences to breaking with the Americans, even on a matter of such vital concern as Iraq. The way was clear to turn loose the Liberal "street," to ride whatever waves of national emotion the war might set off -- anti-American, pacifist, what have you -- or at any rate, to prevent others from doing so.

But it turns out that, with advances in modern communications, what is said and done in Canada can be picked up in the United States, even in far-off places like Washington. They have noticed, and there will be consequences. (What might these be? Again, the ambassador threw away the script. "We'll have to wait and see.") It needn't be as obvious as trade, or as overt as retaliation. But there is a world taking shape after this war, and Canada, it grows ever clearer, will not be part of it. The institutions of our imagined influence -- the UN, NATO, the whole apparatus of Cold War statesmanship to which our Foreign Affairs thinkers cling, as if drowning -- have shown themselves to be obsolete, at least as far as the Americans are concerned. Whatever takes their place will be reserved to those who have proved reliable allies in the crunch.

We can debate whether a unipolar world is a good thing -- personally, I cannot imagine a better alternative -- but it takes a special kind of blindness to pretend that is not in fact the case. There are huge potential advantages to Canada in a world centred on the United States, and we have just thrown them all away. While our other historic allies, the British and the Australians, fight alongside the Americans, with more than 40 other nations in support, we have cast our lot with the French, and as Brian Mulroney wickedly put it the other day, "our new friends": the Russians, the Chinese, and the Germans.

I don't mean to suggest we should be guided strictly by narrow calculations of profit and loss. We are a sovereign country, and should not feel bound to take part in something that is fundamentally at odds with our principles, even at some cost to our interests. But, well, what principles? What genuine principled objection does the Chretien government have to the intervention in Iraq? That it is illegal? But Mr.

Chretien has said it is not. That it involves regime change? But the Foreign Affairs Minister has just said we support the effort to "get rid of" Saddam Hussein. That Saddam has no illegal weapons, or could be induced to give them up short of war? No serious person believes that.

But the best is yet to come. Watch as the government now scrambles to get back onside with the Americans, without the slightest trace of irony or self-respect. For all we care, we've just told them, you can die in the sand alone. But we're still your best friends, right?