bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2003) — Spring/Summer 2003 // Printemps/Été 2003, pp. 19–24
WHILE CANADA SLEPT: HOW WE
LOST OUR PLACE IN THE WORLD by
Andrew Cohen, McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
2003, 220 pp., $32.99.
In this issue bout de papier presents two viewpoints on Andrew Cohen’s discussion of the Foreign Service
Andrew Cohen has written in clear, well-crafted prose about the gradual decline in Canada’s ability to project itself abroad and to exert any real influence on other countries and groups of countries, such as the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and NATO. At times he describes events in almost allegorical terms. It is a sad account which, unfortunately, accurately describes what has happened to us without ascribing blame to particular individuals or political institutions, such as Parliament, except to make the devastating general criticism that we all are to blamel
Cohen’s analysis of the unwelcome situation in which we now find ourselves is cleverly presented within the framework of Canada’s activities in defence, trade, foreign aid and diplomacy, astutely comparing what we have done in the past 60 years with the present. Particularly trenchant are his comments about Pearson, Robertson and Wrong, their quite different characters and abilities and the extraordinary relationships they created, which contributed so much to our achieving a truly remarkable position in world affairs during and after World War II. Cohen wisely makes clear, however, that what he has written isn’t an elegy for Canada and that “decline doesn’t mean despair or disintegration” but rather that the real issue is “to know the kind of country that we will be in the world – with what means and what ends, with what authority and what ambition, with what self-image and what self-respect.”
I think the author is right. Canadians have been deluding themselves for many years but I am not optimistic that the weaknesses he describes can be corrected quickly or effectively. For example, I am struck by the fact that even if we were able to rebuild our diplomatic service and armed forces to something approaching their former glory and usefulness there wouldn’t be much point in doing so if those responsible at the highest level of government for using them effectively were so obviously incapable of devising fresh foreign and military policies to fit the needs of our time or of having those policies properly implemented.
Andrew Cohen’s comments about the former Department of External Affairs and many of those who then worked in it are interesting and generally fair, although on a few matters I disagree with his judgements. For example, in January 2003 Cohen very kindly sent me a copy of the draft section of the book dealing with the vexed question of homosexuality in the Canadian Foreign Service. In a letter dated 12 February 2003, thanking him for the material, I offered a few comments about what he had written about Norman Robertson in particular and more generally about homosexuality in the foreign service.
I wrote, in part; “I think the statement that ’the Department was hostile to homosexuals’ is far too general, untrue and thus misleading. It leaves the impression that those responsible for administering External Affairs — the minister, the deputy minister and his senior officers — were hostile to homosexuals. To my knowledge this is simply not true. ’Hostility’ (if that is the right expression), however, is clearly enunciated in a security| directive by Cabinet (Cabinet Directive CD35), which applied throughout the public service and not simply to the Department of External Affairs. The directive was introduced by Louis St. Laurent while Minister of Justice and had the backing of his colleagues in Cabinet.
When it comes to the brief quotations from my autobiography, Closely Guarded, A Life in Canadian Security and Intelligence, I would be happier if they included the context or at least some of it, which would make it quite clear that Norman Robertson went to unending lengths to protect those with homosexual tendencies caught in the toils of CD 35 and far from forcing them out he protected them and, no less important, their families from the fear, pain, anguish and humiliation which inevitably seems to accompany these human tragedies (pages 93-94 of Closely Guarded). It wasn’t simply that homosexuals were considered to be vulnerable but the certain knowledge that in some cases they would be rendered very vulnerable.”
Unfortunately, however, the word hostility appears on page 146 of the recently published version of the book, together with some of the comments to which I took exception, leaving readers with the distinct and wrong impression that those administering the Department handled such problems harshly and with a singular lack of compassion. Alas, what has been published cannot be erased. It remains on the record.
Cohen has told me he had wished to take account of my comments, but unfortunately this proved impossible to do given the advanced stage which production of the book had reached by February 2003. One hopes that, at least for the record, eventually these unfortunate impressions can be corrected by means of errata or in some other suitable manner.
These regrettable faults aside I think it is a good book and the average reader not only will find it enjoyable, but will benefit from the author’s shrewd analysis of the true state of our realm and the extent to which Canadians have been able to delude themselves. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) would have recognized the unreality of our pretentions so artfully described in his delightful poem Jabberwocky:
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Last year Canadians were shocked when foreign service officers picketed for higher pay and the media reported soldiers visiting food banks. Most Canadians had believed that Canada led the world in peacekeeping, aid, and international policy. Andrew Cohen attacks this belief head-on. “Canada,” he writes, “is in decline in the world today. It is not doing what it once did, or as much as it once did, or enjoying the success it once did.” In contrast with Canada’s “golden age” in the 1940s and 50s (personified for him by Hume Wrong, Norman Robertson, and Lester Pearson), Canada today has a military which can no longer sustain peacekeeping operations; it is 20th out of 22 OECD donor nations in development assistance; its foreign service “no longer attracts or keeps the best; pays poorly and promotes slowly; emphasizes too much commerce and not enough conscience; and employs more foreigners abroad than it does Canadians”.. This neglect of the 3 Ds (defence, development, diplomacy), in Cohen’s view, reflects the decline of Canada itself into a parochial nation without vision, grit, or greatness.
Throughout Cohen’s discussion there runs a fourth ’D’— iDentity. For Cohen, as for a long line of writers throughout the last century, foreign policy for Canada is not about “vital interests” and realpolitik. It is about defining and expressing who we are and what we would like to be as a nation. Wrong, 3 Robertson, and Pearson believed strongly that Canada should play a role in the world worthy of our aspirations and our destiny. Cohen continues this tradition by insisting that the achievements of the “golden age” must be “our standard.” For Canada, excellence must be the norm. We must punch above our weight, all the time.
Not everyone will agree with everything in this book. Some will dispute its basic premise. Certainly there is much to be proud of in Canada’s international policy during the past thirty years and I am proud to have been part of it. We were not asleep, like Rip Van Winkle. There were many reasons for disillusionment, decline and budget cuts in foreign affairs, defence and aid, not least of which was the realization that we could not endlessly finance our social idealism on a credit card. But Cohen’s main concern is to stimulate a public debate. In this he has succeeded. If his description of the illness is at times more convincing than his prescription for the cure, what rings most true is his passionate conviction that rediscovering the internationalism of the past is a first step to doing more, and being more, in a world that needs us.
Cohen’s discussion of the decline of foreign policy from the 1960s to the budget cuts of the 1980s and 1990s makes gloomy reading. As tools rusted and resources dried up, international policy became a conjuror’s compulsion to pull a continuing series of rabbits out of a hat, as long as it cost little and continued to reinforce the illusion that Canada remained a key player in the world. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes self-indulgent, this diplomacy was increasingly built on sand. Foreign service morale declined as successive governments tinkered relentlessly with the department, attacked its “relevance”, and seemed obsessed with destroying all vestiges of the special status it had once enjoyed. The department faced unprecedented challenges of administration, of information management, of new issues, roles and functions, and of the changing needs of diplomats and their families. This picture is probably overdrawn and in any case we are now moving in a more positive direction. The foreign service of the future will not be, and should not be, that of the “golden age”. It will have a different face, perform different roles, have different partners, be in different places, and draw on different skills. But job one in its renewal must be to ensure that pride, professionalism, and excellence are as central to its future as they have been to its past.
Cohen well recognizes that the Canada and the world of the “golden age” are no more. Then, “when the stars were aligned and the men and the moment in harmony”, Canada could play a role well beyond its size. The brilliant renaissance men — always men and mostly “anglos” — of the foreign t service were “very atypical Canadians, an élite in an age of élitism” when the public trusted their governments, their public servants, and their experts. Cohen believes we can regain a high level of international engagement (though not everyone would agree with him that $4-5 billion more a year is easily affordable), but some of his specific proposals for how a changed Canada should address the challenges and opportunities of a changed world have a certain “back to the future”quality.
Particularly evident is Cohen’s ambivalence toward trade. In my view, economic liberalism is as much an expression of Canadian values as human rights; helping establish market economies which can integrate with the world trading system is a major objective of development assistance; and rules-based international trade is essential to global as well as Canadian prosperity. Cohen acknowledges that trade is “the brightest face of Canada’s internationalism.” But he appears to share the prejudice of some old-time gentleman diplomats that commerce is inferior to the high-minded pursuit of internationalism. While accepting free trade, he is uneasy about our “emotional dependence on America” and advocates a new Third Option to dilute it “in a positive, useful way — by pursuing other opportunities in other places”. Sound familiar?
While few would disagree with Cohen that military spending must be increased if we are to effectively perform as peacekeepers or peacemakers, hard choices will have to be made. The days are past when peacekeeping usually meant small numbers of soldiers deployed into relatively low-risk operations, perhaps to win diplomatic kudos. Peacemaking missions will put Canadian men and women in harm’s way, and they may defend themselves or even be the attackers, not always with blue helmets on and sometimes with ambiguous outcomes. Canadians will need to be clear on the objectives and risks of each mission and will expect continuous accountability as they unfold.
Increasing our aid budget to .36 per cent of GDP would also be welcome but Cohen’s proposals to define our priorities, address the poorest of the poor, enter fewer sectors and fewer countries, and reduce tied aid, are also déjà-vu. As he acknowledges, we’ve been there, tried all that, and we still face the same daunting dilemmas as before. There are no easy answers.
Everyone is fond of saying that Canada has changed and Cohen is no exception. But I am not sure whether the magnitude and impact of that change has been fully reflected in foreign policy discussions. Canada has become one of the first truly post-modern nations. Our history is not an unbroken saga bout de papier Vol. of wisdom or success, but in our own quiet way we have created a prosperous, democratic, transcontinental nation, a bilingual, multicultural society with aboriginal roots, with liberal values and progressive social policies, a place where people can have multiple identities and loyalties in the most decentralized federation in the industrialized world — all during a century when nationalism and ideology destroyed nations and empires and too often engulfed the world in war. According to Michael Adams, we are now less deferential to authority, less religious, less interested in history and institutions than before, and more willing to espouse flexible gender identity, ethical consumerism, and global consciousness. As we have become more economically integrated with the United States, we have also become more innovative, productive, and confident. A northern tiger with post-modern values wants prosperity, security and fulfilment. Canadians will want an international policy that reflects their values and ensures their security and prosperity but does not threaten core values like the open border with the United States, or social programs. They would never defer to a Wrong, Robertson, or Pearson.
The new world is dominated by a hyper-power and faces very different security challenges from the days of the Cold War. Crime, the environment, terrorism, religious and cultural conflict, disease, poverty, and human rights have become issues essential to our security but they can only be effectively addressed through international cooperation. What is really new is the information revolution of the last two decades. People are more mobile and better educated. As Marshall McLuhan foresaw, information technology has blurred the distinction between the human and fibre-optic neural net. Ideas travel at the speed of light (as does money) and shape human consciousness and behaviour in a way incomprehensible to those who think in terms of economic determinism or rational thought. In this post-modern world, identity— individual, group, and national — has taken on a new meaning. The diplomat of the future will have to understand religion and culture, poetry and psychology, MTV and the internet, even as she understands political analysis and trade rules.
All this points to the importance of the fourth ’D’— defining our identity and projecting it abroad. Cohen believes there should be more public discussion and education about foreign affairs, more “public diplomacy” abroad (meaning information and culture), and measures such as Michael Ignatieff’s idea of Canada as the “governance state”, exporting and defending our values; but these and other proposals are confined to the last few pages of the book and I wish they were better developed. I think the fourth ’D’ should be a centrepiece of our international engagement. Canada is seen by many other countries — both well-established democracies and newly emerging nations — as having addressed many problems they are only beginning to wrestle with. They want to know more about us. The world does need more Canada, but not only what we make, say, teach, and do. It needs more of what we are. The fourth ’D’ means encouraging others to encounter us, and opening Canada to the world, not only through information and culture, but through youth exchanges, scientific cooperation, connectivity, broadcasting on the internet, scholarships and student recruitment, Canadian studies abroad, and much more. When others begin to see us in three dimensions as a diverse and sophisticated people with values they admire, we will have more influence, we will sell more goods and services. we will attract people, investment and ideas to our shores. Canadians with experience of other cultures and ideas will have the global outlook and skills to succeed in a globalized, knowledge-based economy. A Canada that knows itself better, that has “a particular idea of itself in the world”, that can see itself reflected in the perceptions of others, will worry less about the influence of its neighbour. It will approach the world with confidence and purpose, offering not only its exertions, but its example. bout de papier Vol.
View the original scanned pages →
Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 20, No. 1 (2003) — Spring/Summer 2003 // Printemps/Été 2003, pp. 19–24. Read the rest of this issue →
