Review: Reluctant Crusaders
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300119 |
| Author | David S. McDonough |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| International Journal | Autumn 2007 | 221 |
| Reviews |
bipolar consequences of the Cold War, Canada was notably more perspicu-
ous on a range of incidents, from Suez to Vietnam.
Canada also led the way in living with difference. Bothwell’s history
relates the shifting complexities of the national question: again and again it
is Québec that challenges the status quo. Out of this need to reconcile the
two ethnic communities, Canadians worked out arrangements that served
the country well as it coped with new forms of diversity. It took in non-
English-speaking immigrants earlier than Australia, which actively recruit-
ed them only after the Second World War and soon borrowed Canada’s mul-
ticulturalism to absorb them.
Going first is not always an advantage, however. Australia’s federal sys-
tem suffers from many of the same problems as Canada’s—fiscal imbal-
ance especially—but it was accomplished by popular participation and
made provision for amendment by referendum, thereby avoiding the prob-
lem of constitutional veto.
This and other aspects of Canada’s political system feature prominent-
ly in Bothwell’s closing chapters. He is attentive to economic and social
change, more perfunctory in coverage of intellectual and cultural history,
but the political narrative becomes increasingly insistent. If Canada is not
so much a victim of its geography as a beneficiary, then Bothwell provides
a persuasive account of how Canadians have adapted their arrangements to
maintain the nation and secure its advantages.
Stuart Macintyre/University of Melbourne
RELUCTANT CRUSADERS
Power, Culture, and Change in American Grand Strategy
Colin Dueck
Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006, 224pp, $29.97
(ISBN-10 0691124639)
The United States responded to the 9/11 terrorist attacks by embarking on
an expansive “global war against terrorism.” This has resulted in, among
other things, the promulgation of the “Bush doctrine” to project American
power, the renewed willingness to project American primacy to democra-
tize the Middle East, the military invasion and reconstruction of
Afghanistan and Iraq, and the infusion of significant financial and materi-
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