Unsettled Balance: Ethics, Security, and Canada’s International Relations by Rosalind Warner, ed.
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | Kit Kirkland |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020702016663172 |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
International Journal
2016, Vol. 71(3) 498–512
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020702016663172
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Book Reviews
Rosalind Warner, ed.
Unsettled Balance: Ethics, Security, and Canada’s International Relations
Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015. 318pp., $32.95 (paper)
ISBN 978–0–7748–2866–6
Reviewed by: Kit Kirkland, University of St. Andrews, UK
Warner’s Unsettled Balance was ‘‘prompted by a wave of international changes
over the last few years that have profoundly influenced Canada’s international
relations’’ (3). For Warner, the growth of social media and democratization has
made us all more globally aware, while the ‘‘ethical turn’’ of international relations
has focused our attention toward transnational issues from climate change to
gender issues, human rights, and the responsibility to protect (R2P). Warner’s
book ‘‘carries on [this] discourse [on] a relatively neglected dimension of
Canada’s international relations: the relationship between ethical concerns and
security concerns ...the ‘practical politics’ involved in decision-making in a rapidly
changing global context’’ (8). Warner argues that although ‘‘Canada’s scope for
action is sometimes viewed as circumscribed by its size and structural position,
relative to other actors, [Canada’s] policies are not made in an ethical vacuum[;]
rather, decisions in a democracy call for elaboration and justification’’ (4).
Accordingly, her edited volume tackles the ethical arguments surrounding
‘‘rights, obligations, norms, values and the national interest’’ in four parts (9).
Part 1 looks at Canada’s humanitarianism and military security; part 2 explores
security across borders and the contemporary ethics of Canada’s anti-terror policy,
as well as law and order; part 3 explores Canada’s approach to ‘‘freedom from
want issues’’ through the frames of poverty, gender, and the environment; and
lastly, part 4 compares Canada’s relations with Colombia and the continent of
Africa. Due to its unusual case selection, part 4 seems a little disconnected from
the rest of the book; so readers will likely focus on parts 1 and 2, which are the most
salient to Canada, its ethics, and international relations.
Warner gives a fine overview of how Canada’s ethical perspectives,
through documents like the Canadian Charter, have made it an international
leader;
Canada had become a charter member of what we might call the ‘moral minority,’
that distinguished (and self-styled) group of states ...whose moral multilateralism is
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