Book Review: Stand on Guard: Reassessing Threats to Canada’s National Security
| Author | Wesley Wark |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211066331 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
analyzes in the third chapter. On first glance, this might appear to date the book, given
the onset of COVID-19 and further challenges to both multilateralism and liberal
democracy. Moreover, Cunliffe’s argument both about how contemporary liberalism
faltered—through a turbo-charged version of globalization that bred both inequality
and social dislocation—and about why the populism and backlash that ensued should
have been foreseen, is not necessarily a novel one. But where Cunliffe finds his stride,
and ongoing relevance, is in his insistence that populism is also a critique of the liberal
international order and thus must be understood as part of a broader reflection on
whether and how international order can change.
Cunliffe’s core frustration is that contemporary IR theory, despite the benefitof
decades, cannot seem to assist in this task of reflection. Instead, prominent scholars
respond to events like the Brexit vote or the election of Donald Trump in a manner
similar to that of the interwar liberals: “seeking refuge”in condemning the reality “that
fails to fit their preconceived standards”(Carr aficionados will appreciate this riff off
one of the most famous lines of the original Twenty Years Crisis). “Having imagined
ourselves so much wiser”than the “delusional utopians”of Carr’s time, Cunliffe writes,
many in the discipline still cling to utopian liberal forms that are ill-equipped for a “new
order of fraught global trade and geopolitical competition”(9).
Ultimately, as Cunliffe admits, The New Twenty Years’Crisis is more like a
pamphlet or clarion call than a scholarly work of IR theorizing (for the latter, see
Cunliffe’s own 2020 book on liberal cosmopolitanism). Though he reminds us that Carr
became “over-impressed”by the challengers to liberalism like Soviet totalitarianism
(11), and that we should therefore not exaggerate the strength and longevity of either
Xi’s China or populist parties, there is very little in the book about the positive
transformations brought by liberal democracy or the European Union that might
contribute to their staying power. This imbalance is a relatively small price to pay for a
chance to witness how one modern-day student of Carr draws on the first twenty years
crisis to help us find a way out of the second.
Stephanie Carvin
Stand on Guard: Reassessing Threats to Canada’s National Security
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021. 403 pp. $35.95 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-48752-451-7
Reviewed by: Wesley Wark, (wesley.wark@uottawa.ca), Centre for International Governance
Innovation
This is a timely moment for a book on national security threats to Canada. In a recent
speech, the national security and intelligence advisor to the prime minister, Vincent
Rigby,talked about Canada being at an “inflection point,”andhaving to face “acomplex
612 International Journal 76(4)
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