bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1993) — Summer 1993 // Été 1993, pp. 38–39
Making a Difference? Canada’s Foreign
Policy in a Changing World Order edited
by John English and Norman Hillmer,
Toronto, Lester Publishing, 1992. Paperback
$16.95.
Reviewed by Dan Livermore
In December, 1991, an all-star line-up of academics, NGO leaders, government specialists and political leaders met in Toronto at a conference marking the sixtieth anniversary of the Statute of Westminster. This book, edited by two widely respected historians of Canada’s external relations, is the product of that conference.
Following a preface by the editors and an introduction by Mrs. Barbara McDougall based on her key-note address, this anthology contains eleven essays by prominent Canadian academics which look at sixty years of an independent Canadian foreign policy and its current prospects in a changing world order. A loosely-interpreted slogan — “making a difference?” — is the organizing theme, which the contributors have chosen to address from different angles.
For the orthodox purveyors of Pearsonian statecraft, the issue is whether Canada over the past six decades has made a positive contribution to the wider world — to the evolution of the UN (Sewell), to the development of peacekeeping (Granatstein), or the emergence of Francophonie and the modern Commonwealth (Thérien and Doxey). To others, schooled in more “what’s-in-it-for-us” realist traditions, the issue is influence. When did Canada cease to have any real leverage in NATO (Bercuson)? How does one account for the demise of the Atlanticist ideal (Nossal)? Some of the essays are sweeping in time-frame and general in their diagnoses (Bothwell on Canada/USA relations). Others are microscopic examinations of pivotal issues (Bercuson on NATO in the early 1950s).
One can quibble at the margins with arguments and evidence, and with some of the conclusions. But these are good essays, the stronger ones (Bercuson, Nossal, Cooper) outnumbering the weaker contributions. This is a book that will command a small and dedicated audience of professional practitioners, and attract virtually no attention from the wider Canadian audiences.
All of which raises the main problem about both the conference and the book — its limited success in tackling the current and future agenda and in raising the newer issues about Canada in the world of the 1990s.
Where, among the contributions, do we have an author sufficiently adventurous to try to situate Canada in today’s world order? Where is the examination of Canada’s trade policy options in a book published virtually in the shadow of the FTA debate? Where are the contributions of the business community and the NGO leaders, who have something to offer on our record and prospects in the fields of trade development, investment policy, or development assistance? Where are the essays which take the traditions and values which have shaped our policies and measure them against the tougher realities of the years to come? Where, in short, are the contributions which reflect in Canada the debates now under way in every major country about adapting to the end of the Cold War and the realities of globalization?
Despite the title of the conference and the broader discussions in Toronto, the balance of the volume is heavily retrospective, historical and traditional. There are minimal linkages to current issues and emerging ideas, especially in the economic domain, which will constitute the core of Canadian foreign policy in a changing world order.
In 1931, Canada stumbled into its foreign policy independence. For the balance of a “low, dishonest decade,” we spent more of our time resisting the international arena than we did championing our newfound freedom. When we discovered foreign policy, in the so-called “golden age of Canadian diplomacy,” it was more an attitude of mind or an intrinsic disposition than a clearly-articulated sense of international interest. We have now lost the luxury that victory in the Second World War and the stalemate of the Cold War had allowed us. Even in the niche markets in which we prospered — peacekeeping or the UN — there are new competitors, hungry for a slice of the action.
Sixty years after Westminster was a good time to take stock. It marked an era now over. The UN peacekeeping, or NATO are issues still with us, but the underlying realities are now fundamentally different. Global balances of forces have been abruptly altered, and Canada’s ability “to make a difference,” either to the world or for ourselves, has changed with it. Globalization has become a new catch-word, and the economic agenda is pressing. How relevant our traditions will be to the new world order and what Canadians require to prosper and survive are critical questions which need to be addressed, not only by the academic community but also by a wider Canadian constituency whose insularity will soon be punctured by a more intrusive international environment.
This useful, and at times provocative, volume succeeds in assessing the last sixty years. We now need a companion piece, situating Canada in a newer era in which the harder realities of our foreign policy independence are coming home to roost.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1993) — Summer 1993 // Été 1993, pp. 38–39. Read the rest of this issue →
