Book Review: Greatness and Decline: National Identity and British Foreign Policy
| Author | Victoria Honeyman |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020221123935 |
| Published date | 01 June 2022 |
| Date | 01 June 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
But this is all good, for it allows Thomas Juneau and Bessma Momani, two of
Canada’s foremost experts on the Middle East, to focus on a more important task:
exploring contemporary Canadian policies towards the region. In this book, they have
assembled a team of seventeen academics and practitioners to provide us with an
excellent and well-researched survey of contemporary Canadian policies and ap-
proaches to the Middle East.
To be sure, the contributors make clear that we cannot meaningfully talk about a
singular or coherent Canadian “policy”towards the region. Instead, Canada’s approach
has been messier, more disjointed, and more muddled. This reflects not only the di-
versity of the region itself, but also the region’s lack of strategic centrality to Canadian
interests, which allows the Canadian government to take a less integrated policy
approach to the range of key issues that have confronted decision-makers in Ottawa.
The chapters in this collection explore those key issues over the last two decades.
Three opening chapters focus on the broader geostrategic context, examining how
Canada’s relationship with the United States has shaped Canada’s policy towards the
region, Canada’s contributions to the multilateral coalition organized against the Is-
lamic State, and Canadian efforts to support security services in the region. The
transnational link is examined in chapters on foreign fighters returning to Canada and
the Canadian approach to Syrian refugees. While the editors purposely do not try to
cover Canada’s policies towards each of the countries in the region, there are chapters
on Canada’s approach to development in Jordan, “illiberal democracy”in Turkey,
political Islam in Egypt, and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. While the issue of human
rights appears in numerous chapters, one chapter focuses on Canada’s often confused
efforts to promote human rights in the region. Three chapters focus on different aspects
of Canada’s approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. A concluding essay summarizes the
chapters and makes an eloquent pitch for the development of a broader strategic vision
by Canada in the region.
While this collection might not tell us much about Canada as a middle power, it does
nicely demonstrate how—and why—the Middle East continues to matter to Canadians.
Srdjan Vucetic,
Greatness and Decline: National Identity and British Foreign Policy.
Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2021. 379 pp. £24.99 (paper)
ISBN: 978-0-22800-587-2
Reviewed by: Victoria Honeyman (V.C.Honeyman@Leeds.ac.uk), University of Leeds,
Leeds, UK
DOI: 10.1177/00207020221123935
Books on foreign policymaking tend to focus on politicians, institutions, nations and
international organizations, and trends. Where the public do feature, they tend to be bit
Book Reviews 379
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