A Diplomatic Counter-Revolution
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070201206700110 |
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Over the Transom |
A diplomatic
counter-revolution
Conservativeforeignpolicy,2006-11
In a July 2011 wide-ranging interview with Maclean’s magazine, Canadian
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, still glowing from his majority election
victory, offered a stark confession. “Since becoming prime minister [in
2006],” he said, “the thing that’s probably struck me most in terms of my
previous expectations—I don’t even know what my expectations were—is
not just how important foreign affairs/foreign relations is, but in fact that
it’s become almost everything.”1 Six weeks later, a report in the NationalPost
revealed that the government planned to act on Harper’s new understanding
of the significance of world affairs: “Once considered an afterthought by a
prime minister preoccupied with winning a majority,” wrote Tobi Cohen,
Adam Chapnick is the deputy director of education at the Canadian Forces College and
an associate professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada. This
essay extends the argument he first made during the John Scott Cowan Prize for Excellence
in Research public lecture of 4 October 2011. He thanks Kim Richard Nossal and IJ’s
anonymous reviewers for their feedback.
1 “In conversation: Stephen Harper,” Maclean’s, 5 July 2011, www.macleans.ca.
| International Journal | Winter 2011-12 | 137 |
| Adam Chapnick |
“international relations have moved to centre for the Conservatives, who
have undertaken a quiet but sweeping re-examination of federal foreign
policy.”2
This essay addresses two questions that should be central to Ottawa’s
review: first, what might have motivated the government’s actions on the
international stage between 2006 and 2011? And, second, was this motivation
consistent with Canadian national interests? To date, analysts have offered
three answers to question one. The first two are consistent with the content
of a debate over the possibility of a distinct Conservative foreign policy that
was published in a volume of CanadaAmongNations shortly after Harper’s
first election victory in 2006. Conservative partisans argued that there
was indeed a distinctly Conservative approach to international relations—
characterized by a combination of compassion, realism, engagement,
focus, and global leadership. Opposing them were those who maintained
that the strategic constraints imposed upon Ottawa both domestically and
internationally limited the flexibility of any ruling party to effect significant
change in foreign policy, no matter its partisan leanings. The only real
difference that a new government could make was at the rhetorical level.3
Both suggestions are profoundly conservative: neither anticipates, nor
allows for, broad divergences from the authors’ general understandings of
Canada’s foreign policy history. And while analysts from both camps might
point to specific rhetoric and decisions from the last five years that support
their interpretations, considering the activist nature of the Harper regime
(not to mention the prime minister’s comments in Maclean’s), neither
theory is ultimately satisfying. Kim Richard Nossal, a professor of political
studies at Queen’s University, has offered a more plausible assessment. To
him, Canadian foreign policy between 2006 and 2011 was driven more by
2 Tobi Cohen, “Conservatives putting new focus on foreign policy,” National Post,
16 August 2011, http://news.nationalpost.com. See also Allan Gotlieb and Colin
Robertson, “We must restore our diplomatic core,” Globe and Mail, 8 August 2011,
www.theglobeandmail.com.
3 Andrew F. Cooper and Dane Rowlands, eds., Canada Among Nations 2006: Minorities
and Priorities (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006). See
specifically part one, “An authentic Conservative approach?” In response to those who
contend that one cannot draw familial linkages between the Progressive Conservatives
of Brian Mulroney and John Diefenbaker and the Conservatives of today, see Hugh
Segal, The Right Balance: Canada’s Conservative Tradition (Vancouver: Douglas &
McIntyre, 2011). For an update on the argument for continuity in Canadian foreign
policy, see Colin Robertson, “Harper’s worldview,” Policy Options, October 2011, 76-80.
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| A diplomatic counter-revolution |
a partisan desire “to make the Conservatives the dominant political party
in Canada,” than it was by clear thinking about world affairs.4 But if the
government of Stephen Harper’s approach to international relations was
designed primarily to erase any memory of Canada’s allegedly Liberal
(internationalist) past, why did Ottawa not reject the national security policy
of 2004? Why did it not distance itself from the never-popular Afghanistan
mission, or Paul Martin’s efforts to increase the focus of Canada’s development
assistance program? Further examination will demonstrate that Nossal’s
explanation is yet more compelling if one defines Liberal foreign policy
as the practices manifested most clearly during an exceptional period of
Canadian conduct in world affairs, when the national diplomatic personality
was shaped primarily by a single Liberal member of parliament—Foreign
Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy. Conservative foreign policy between 2006
and 2011 might therefore be most effectively characterized as an effort to
eradicate one individual’s, as opposed to one party’s, legacy.
To determine whether such an approach to world affairs was consistent
with Canada’s national interests, an issue that has yet to be dealt with by
scholarly analysts in significant detail, one must take into consideration
what the Harper government’s global outlook attempted to replace. In 1996,
almost exactly a decade before the Conservatives were first elected, Axworthy
launched what was arguably the most ambitious transformation effort in
Canadian foreign policy history. 5 His was an activist, spirited agenda,
designed both to raise Ottawa’s diplomatic stature and permanently alter the
international landscape. In one of the clearest analyses of what they justly
called the Axworthy doctrine, Carleton University professors Fen Osler
Hampson and Dean Oliver dissected a series of principles and assumptions
that formed the basis of the Canadian foreign minister’s thinking about the
international order and Canada’s place within it. To summarize:
4 Kim Richard Nossal, “The Liberal past in the Conservative present: Internationalism
in the Harper era,” in Claire Turenne Sjolander and Heather Smith, eds., Canada
in the World: Perspectives on Canadian foreign policy (Toronto: Oxford University
Press, forthcoming). See also Gerry Nichols, “PM Harper appeals to his counter-
revolutionaries,” Hill Times, 31 October 2011, 9.
5 Norman Hillmer and Adam Chapnick, “The Axworthy revolution,” in Fen Osler
Hampson, Norman Hillmer, and Maureen Appel Molot, eds., Canada Among Nations
2001: The Axworthy Legacy (Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2001), 67-88. Some
might find Pierre Trudeau’s first years as prime minister similarly revolutionary, but
history suggests that the new Liberal prime minister of 1968 moderated his approach
to global affairs rather quickly.
| International Journal | Winter 2011-12 | 139 |
| Adam Chapnick |
First, the end of the Cold War had moderated the importance and power
of the state in the management and resolution of conflict.
Second, if the state was no longer preeminent, then the metrics of global
security also had to be redefined. The intensity of international conflict
could not be judged solely by the deaths and injuries suffered by members
of national militaries; ensuring the security of civilian populations had to
become a priority. Efforts to develop new international norms in areas like
children’s rights and peace-building could ensure a universally prosperous
future.
Third, if human security became the basis upon which states assessed
the quality of their ability to protect their citizens, then the role of militaries
in reducing conflict would necessarily diminish. Certainly, a military element
would always be needed, but forward-thinking governments would have to
learn to use soft power more effectively.
Fourth, in a world where soft power was increasingly important, the
notion of public diplomacy—mobilizing ordinary citizens and non-state
actors (with nongovernmental organizations most prominent among
them) to serve as partners to state governments in the achievement of their
international goals—was critical.
And fifth, thanks to its history as a progressive, diplomatically agile,
respected global player, Canada was well positioned to capitalize on the
new security environment. By organizing and working through coalitions
of the willing—made up of state and/or non-state actors—to promote the
Canadian values of fairness, tolerance, and respect for the weak, Canada
could become a global leader in post-Cold War conflict prevention and the
shaping of a new world order.6
These assumptions shaped a Canadian foreign policy that was, to many
Liberals in particular, inspirational; indeed, before long, the Axworthy
doctrine became synonymous with Liberal party values.7 To others, however,
the foreign minister’s radical approach was a product of misguided idealism
and frugal diplomacy. It justified excessive Liberal cuts to the international
affairs budget, most notably within the military, and it positioned Canada as
6 Fen Osler Hampson and Dean F. Oliver, “Pulpit diplomacy: A critical...
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