bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, pp. 40–43
It may be quite audacious for a non-Canadian to try to come up with something worthwhile reading after having spent just a few months as a guest in this country. The one real advantage a foreigner has, though, is a chance to take an “unspoiled” view from the outside. Quite naturally, his approach will be influenced by his own background, but unlike Canadian observers, he may be in a better position to refrain from mixing too many personal convictions and experiences into an evaluation of what has been and what might be the focus of the foreign policy of this country in the years to come.
Imperialism, isolationism, internationalism: dominant ideas throughout the decades
It is generally accepted that around the beginning of the 20th century up to World War I, Canada’s foreign policy behaviour was clearly dominated by the “imperial” phase of the country’s relations with the outside world, a mixture of cultural, economic and legal attachments to the British Empire. Particularly on matters of foreign policy, Canada was — at least in theory — subject to the authority of the imperial government in London. That dependence was not static, but varied in intensity as far as the practical consequences were concerned
Decision-makers in Canada did not feel obliged to follow every single British dictate as early as 1885, when Canada, unlike Australia, strictly rejected the idea of sending its own troops to the Sudan to assist the British. Only 14 years later in 1899, however, the reluctant government of Sir Wilfred Laurier was pushed by the overwhelming public mood to dispatch troops to South Africa to support the British in the Boer War. One editor told Laurier at the time that the government’s choice was simple: send troops or get out of office. However, enthusiasm in favour of undifferentiated support for the Empire suffered a blow when the Crown awarded the Pearse and Wales Islands to the United States in the Alaska border dispute in 1903. Furthermore, French Canadians have always had less sentimental attachment to the Crown and therefore did not see their participation in Canadian support missions for Britain as being automatic. The underlying contradiction – unconditional assistance to and sacrifices for the Empire on the one hand, no participation in foreign policy decisions on the other — also fuelled a general social urge towards greater Canadian autonomy and eventually led to the Statute of Westminster in 1931.
Although the strong emotional links to Britain continued to play a significant role in politics as late as 1956, when during the Suez Crisis Prime Minister St. Laurent was loudly criticized for “knifing our best friends in the back,” the phase of imperialism in Canadian foreign policy gave way to a growing “isolationism” between the two World Wars. During that period, politicians and the public alike, tired of paying for European “statesmanship” with the lives of Canadian soldiers, believed it was right to act unilaterally, avoid prior commitments in future conflicts and engage in international institutions. The one notable exception was that of supporting Canada’s membership in the League of Nations, mainly because, at that time, membership represented a distinct symbol of its autonomy from the United Kingdom. With the rise of Nazi Germany and the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, that interwar isolationism came to an abrupt end, again with majority support, both from the Anglophone and the Francophone parts of the country. (The latter had different views on the question of military conscription, but not on the overriding principle of joining the allied forces to fight Hitler).
That fight cost the lives of 42,000 Canadian soldiers, but unlike after World War I, the reaction this time was not to try to isolate the country from the potential crisis spots around the world. On the contrary, key figures like Louis St. Laurent or Lester B. Pearson were convinced that the fate of any one state and the peace of the international system as a whole were inextricably interconnected. Such interconnectedness and vulnerability, in their view, demanded engagement in world politics, not withdrawal.
For many years to come, the idea of Canadian activism on behalf of the larger community of states led to participation in every major UN peacekeeping operation and to the personal involvement of Canadian politicians in the resolution of interstate conflicts. An example was Pearson’s diplomacy in the Suez crisis in 1956, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The public came to appreciate the role their governments had been taking over voluntarily and saw no reason to castigate it for its foreign policy behaviour — quite the opposite.
Alternative concepts, therefore, never really got off the ground. Neither Pierre Trudeau’s White Paper in 1968 nor the New Democratic or Parti Quebecois policies calling into question many of the traditional manifestations of internationalism were ultimately successful. In the Trudeau years, though, a number of more sophisticated questions were put forward, going beyond the somewhat simplistic internationalism-isolation argument. These included the relative importance of defence alliances (NATO, NORAD) for Canada, national vs. international interests, and ways to cope with the dominance of the US.
Apart from the public’s fatigue with 15 years of Liberal government, Brian Mulroney’s election victory in 1984 was in Large part due to his pledge to improve Canada-US relations, which had not been overly harmonious in the beginning of the ’80s. Quite obviously, a majority of Canadians felt that this sort of tension around subjects such as the National Energy Program, acid rain or a number of global policy questions did not serve their interests in the long run.
Ironically, in spite of the apparent popular support, Mulroney silently threw many of his campaign pledges on foreign policy overboard once he entered office as Prime Minister. In practice, he proved to be neither as pro-American nor as anti-Soviet as his earlier rhetoric suggested. While it is true that the climate between Canada and the US improved drastically — the US, especially the Reagan administration, had never really ceased regarding Trudeau as a somewhat idealistic dreamer — Mulroney frequently distanced his government from the Reagan administration on a variety of issues, such as SALT, SDI, Central America or South Africa.
Despite or maybe because of their pragmatic approach, after nine years in office the Conservatives were accused by the Liberals of having contributed to a slow erosion of Canada’s proud foreign policy tradition. The Liberal “Red Book” in 1993 proclaimed a change of focus from Cold War ideological and political rivalry to adapting the country’s role to a rapidly changing post-Cold War environment. It pledged a more critical approach to relations with the US (including renewed negotiations on NAFTA), new directions in peacekeeping, foreign aid, multilateral fora and a more democratic process for foreign policy-making.
Measured against their initial promises, the foreign policy balance of the Liberal governments since 1993 seems mixed. The idea of renegotiating NAFTA was quickly abandoned. Peacekeeping has put ever more strains on the budget and the capability of the Armed Forces to deliver. Foreign aid has, in terms of percentage of GDP, slipped further down from the 0.7 per cent goal. On the other hand, Canada’s presence and role in multilateral fora such as the UN, the G8 or NATO has been reinforced, mainly because of its continuous efforts to promote its agenda of “soft power” issues, ranging from the Land Mines Convention to the more recent emphasis on “Human Security” issues. The government has also lived up to its promises regarding stronger involvement of the public in foreign policy through a number of institutional arrangements and activities.
Multilateralism and Canada-US relations after World War II: a horizontal view Canada is widely characterized as a classic middle power, whose primary national interest lies in an orderly and predictable world environment that embodies some limits to the ambition and the reach of dominant powers. Middle powers always feel the need for international institutions and international law and regulation more acutely than stronger powers. It is through international institutions that they can hope, by consolidating their interests with those of other countries, to have some impact on the great powers.
Canada’s approach to international politics in the second half of the 20th century has been greatly influenced by its location to and relationship with the United States. Much of Canada’s foreign policy since World War II has been designed to adjust to the conditions resulting from its geographic proximity to the US, the asymmetrical distribution of power that exists between these two countries and the emergence of the US as a global superpower. The differing concepts of shaping relations with the US have been, if not the major decisive factors in Canadian elections, among the most decisive. This was obvious in 1963, where Pearson defeated Diefenbaker not least because of his support for Canadian nuclear armament as asked for by the US, and again in 1984, when Mulroney campaigned in favour of improving bilateral relations.
Given Canada’s geographical proximity to the US and the extensive transnational links in everything from trade to defence to sports, multilateralism has not only been an objective in itself, but also a vitally important mechanism to constrain the superpower, a counterweight to an exclusively continental foreign policy, in which, looking at the uneven relations in economic and military resources, Canada was bound to be the weaker, dependent partner.
A particularly vivid reflection of this dependency can be found in the development of trade flows in recent decades, with the US having an ever-growing share of Canada’s total foreign trade. While exports to the US already accounted for some 58 per cent of total Canadian exports in 1951, the figure had risen to close to 90 per cent by 1999. In the same period, the share of Canadian exports to Europe dropped from 25 per cent to well under 10 per cent. By the end of the 1990s, Canada was earning 40 per cent of its GDP from exports, the highest figure of the G7 countries. Given the importance of foreign trade for jobs at home, the need for a system of international rules to provide the stability and security in which trade, including and especially with the US, would be conducted is obvious. The Canadian government had neither the will nor the capability to impose such a system bilaterally. The only viable option was to establish multilateral institutions and procedures that would bring about such an order, be it within the UN or through regional cooperation in organizations like the Commonwealth, la Francophonie, the OAS or APEC.
Some have celebrated Canadian participatory activities in multilateral fora as indicative of the country’s commitment to a constructive global order. Others have discounted it as a façade for close collaboration with the Americans for the pursuit of narrow self-interest. It is probably fair to say that there is some truth in both assessments. Canada has tried to maintain its high international profile to counterbalance the ever stronger embrace of the US, both politically and economically.
Quite naturally, this international, multilateral dimension of Canadian foreign policy has often created tensions and conflicts with the US. Such tensions cannot only be seen as unavoidable, but rather as necessary in order to make the remaining superpower feel that its closest neighbour and biggest trading partner does have the right to be heard, to be respected and to have its own decisions taken into account, just like other international partners. This dialogue with the US can be seen as a very welcome counterweight against the sort of inward-looking paranoia the US, especially Congress, seems to be falling into ever more often since the end of the Cold War. It seems highly desirable to tell the Americans that instead of dividing the world up into “good” and “bad”, ’, into allies on the one hand and so-called rogue-states like North Korea or Sudan on the other, they may be serving their own interests far better by taking a subtler view of historical, cultural or other roots of international conflicts.
Given Canada’s unique position vis-à-vis the US on anything concerning the American foreign agenda, from international trade to security policy, it seems fair to conclude that it has become one of Canada’s main tasks on the international scene to act as the correcting factor, the “teaser,” to the US. Fulfilling this role serves two broad objectives closely linked to each other: protecting Canada’s own economic and political interests as well as tying the giant into an international system of rules and regulations, the establishment of which in itself, again, serves Canada’s interest.
For most of the post-war period, a core element of Canadian multilateral activity to support an international order that would facilitate Canadian interests has been Europe, largely motivated and sustained by security considerations. Today, while European security concerns remain important, they no longer dominate the internal agenda the way they did until 1989. The transatlantic economic bonds, which were never as strong as the defence priority, have been drastically loosened, mostly by stronger ties within the American continent, not least through NAFTA. In political terms, one of the most acute issues is whether and how Canada can secure an autonomous role in transatlantic security between the US on the one hand, and a Europe developing its own defence capacities on the other.
Staying or even getting on the EU’s radar screen is not an easy task, due to the general perception of Canada in Europe. While the European public widely sees Canada as a large nature park and Canadians overall enjoy a more positive image than their American neighbours, governmental and executive circles do take a more businesslike view, dominated by the high regard Canada has gained largely as a consequence of the NATO connection. Large segments of European governments, however, all too often do not distinguish between the US and Canada as far as security and other issues are concerned. Although it is not given a lot of thought, Canada is frequently seen as the natural ally of the US, regardless of whether a more differentiated analysis of differing Canadian views and potential leverage vis-à-vis the US might be helpful in Europe’s own dealings with the one remaining superpower.
Some thoughts on the future direction of Canada’s foreign policy At the turn of the millennium it is hard to see how the present geopolitical setting with its two main interconnected determinants of Canada’s foreign policy —relations with the US, and multilateral ties as control and counterbalance — could possibly undergo fundamental, rapid changes. The main general framework of action for Canada will remain fairly stable: how can bilateral relations with the US be nurtured and at the same time how can the one superpower on earth be made to refrain from unilateral action with considerable collateral damage to any other country in the world, including and particularly Canada?
The question of just how to achieve this double objective and which fields of politics on the international level should get particular emphasis will have to remain the choice of the executive. In making these choices, the government will try to take into account the opinion and the interests of an ever better informed public, simply because the next elections are always around the corner. Lately, the government seems to have been quite successful, both in the eyes of the Canadian public as well as measured by the amount of support from international partners, in the pursuit of ideas around the concept of “soft power”, starting from the remarkable role it played in getting an international ban on land mines and continued in its high profile Human Security Agenda.
One question frequently asked in this context is that of resources and credibility. The resurgence in the 1990s of peace operations, in which Canada has traditionally felt obliged to participate, has stretched the country’s military resources to their limit at a time when the defence budget was cut by a third in real terms between 1991 and 1999. Critics doubt that Canada will be able to maintain its high profile on the international and multilateral scene, if it does not match its words with deeds, if the country does not, for example, provide additional financing for its armed forces to maintain its peace-keeping capacity, or for development aid. Surely, the government has to take this critique seriously. On the other hand, if one accepts that the most important objectives for Canadian foreign policy are directing the remaining superpower with its resources in the right direction and mobilizing international support for causes considered by Canada to be just, then much more can be achieved by continuous, intelligent and imaginative political, diplomatic work. Of course, such additional diplomatic effort does not come without cost, either. Compared, however, to the amounts needed to modernize armed forces on a national and international scale, Canadian tax-payers’ money seems better invested in strengthening diplomatic rather than military capacities. This is not to say that modernizing the armed forces is not necessary to improve interoperability with partners and cost-effectiveness in view of changed tasks. But the fruits of Canadian efforts would multiply many times more if the country managed, as it has done so successfully in the past, to get other actors on the international scene to follow along the same path.
From that point of view, trying to set agendas and promote single issues according to its self-imposed set of priorities, possibly together with a group of like-minded countries, in the United Nations, G8, NATO, OSCE, OAS or others should remain Canada’s first priority. It may be worthwhile for Canada to remind other partners of its special status vis-à-vis the US, the bilateral (inter)dependence and the amount of leverage the country can have on its southern neighbour. Doing so would help prevent international partners from inadvertently excluding Canada from important decisions on the international scene. It would at the same time limit the scope for accusations that Canada is out of its depth.
Such tactics might for example be usefully applied in the emerging debate between NATO and the EU on the development of a European Defence and Security Identity and American concerns in this respect. Why not try to enhance cooperation with the EU beyond the bilateral disputes on fish or furs by telling the EU more openly that Canada shares some of its concerns with respect to tendencies in the US to monopolize decisions, while at the same time being in a better position than most of the allies to allay those fears in parts of the Washington establishment? Such a move might be welcomed by the EU as a counterweight to their own strong emphasis on eastern Europe in connection with the enlargement process and concerns about Russia’s future. Why not make it clearer to partners in other regional organizations such as NAFTA, APEC or the Americas how valuable Canadian support can be for them in any discussion they are having in these fora where the US plays a dominant part? Such a strategy could help bring, for example, the US and China closer together not only in trade, but also in classic questions of security, some of which have the potential of growing into quite worrying dimensions.
Even if this sounds somewhat cynical to those who like to see Canadians as the boy scouts always respecting the rules of the international game, Canada should continue to try to be where decisions are made, be it the UN or elsewhere: it is in the country’s own interest to keep a watchful eye on the one remaining superpower that for the foreseeable future will have to take part in any decision with a larger impact in the world. Canada is in the special position of exercising at least some influence over this superpower and its unfortunately well-developed tendency towards unilateralism. From that point of view, it is of secondary importance whether such decision-making is taking place within or outside established multilateral fora. What is important is to have a voice at the table. Canada itself has opted to pursue its successful landmine initiative outside existing institutions. Since there are limits for all countries as to how many new initiatives can be technically managed by ever new institutions or conferences, there will be a tendency to lead these new tasks back into existing bureaucratic frameworks, such as the UN. If this leads to increased pressure within those bureaucracies for more efficiency, so much the better.
Canada has over the years acquired considerable bilateral expertise, taking into account the variety of forces creating new political contexts in Washington every day. Canada has to keep on trying to win friends on those questions of American domestic policy that are important for Canada.
While untroubled relations with its southern neighbour are absolutely vital for Canada, they may not be seen as crucial for the US. Yet business and political links with Canada are still the single most important bilateral relationship the US has, with friends of Canada sprinkled throughout the diversified American political landscape. It is striking, though, that this fact seems to be far less openly discussed in the US than vice versa. All too often, Canada is just automatically assumed to be an ally. This then regularly leads to rather bitter US reactions if Canada “dares” to express a diverging view on issues ranging from trade to perimeter defence or the launching of radar satellites. A fair conclusion based on that sort of reaction from the American side is that it does make a difference for the United States if Canada is on their side on a given issue, even if they are in most cases able to live without such support and not suffer extensive commercial or political damage.
It could, therefore, also be worthwhile for Canada to keep the idea of enhanced cooperation on the American continent, analogous to the European integration model, under constant scrutiny. There are, indeed, certain similarities as far as some of the underlying motives for the participating countries on both sides of the Atlantic are concerned. Pan-American cooperation, which has already started with NAFTA, does not necessarily have to lead to adopting the US dollar as its single most important objective, along the lines of the euro. However, the EC/EU has undoubtedly been extremely successful, especially from the point of view of its smaller members, in integrating the continent’s big players, most prominently a reunified Germany, into a system of joint decision-making on a one-state one-vote basis on all fundamental questions. The US has, for example, manifested strong interest in cooperating in the field of policing and border security. The experience of the EU, where these issues are jointly tackled under the rubric of Justice and Home Affairs, could very well offer considerable scope for joint decision-making on the American continent, with benefits not only for the big fish in the pond, but also for countries like Canada or Mexico, providing them with some more reliable and fair rules on their direct borders, and reducing the risk of unilateral actions of their respective neighbours.
For Canada, the EU may finally serve as an interesting example for the prospects and limits of federalism, both within single countries and among sovereign states. The EU has been quite successful in resolving tensions arising from conflicts of competence at regional, national or European levels by applying what Europeans call the “principle of subsidiarity” (i.e. letting the lowest possible level of public administration deal with a specific matter) so that decisions are being taken as close to citizens as possible. National governments continue to have the important task of further developing the regulatory framework for common European policies, be it for national or regional implementation, and of jointly taking over classic executive functions such as security and defence. Openly advocating such a development might be in the long run far more satisfying for the Canadian federal government than constant constitutional arguments with provincial governments. a
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 17, No. 1 (2000) — Spring 2000 // Printemps 2000, pp. 40–43. Read the rest of this issue →
