Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror 3031258509, 9783031258503

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CANADA AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror

Taylor Robertson McDonald

Canada and International Affairs

Series Editors David Carment, NPSIA, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Philippe Lagassé, NPSIA, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Yiagadeesen Samy, NPSIA, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada

Palgrave’s Canada and International Affairs is a timely and rigorous series for showcasing scholarship by Canadian scholars of international affairs and foreign scholars who study Canada’s place in the world. The series will be of interest to students and academics studying and teaching Canadian foreign, security, development and economic policy. By focusing on policy matters, the series will be of use to policy makers in the public and private sectors who want access to rigorous, timely, informed and independent analysis. As the anchor, Canada Among Nations is the series’ most recognisable annual contribution. In addition, the series showcases work by scholars from Canadian universities featuring structured analyses of Canadian foreign policy and international affairs. The series also features work by international scholars and practitioners working in key thematic areas that provides an international context against which Canada’s performance can be compared and understood.

Taylor Robertson McDonald

Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror

Taylor Robertson McDonald School of International Service American University Washington, DC, USA

ISSN 2523-7187 ISSN 2523-7195 (electronic) Canada and International Affairs ISBN 978-3-031-25850-3 ISBN 978-3-031-25851-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Danielle Donders This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Alexandria, who has enriched my life beyond articulation

Acknowledgements

Reflecting on the years of work that have gone into creating this book is a firm reminder of how far the project and its author have come. The book is rooted in my dissertation research conducted during my years at the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville. At UF, I was privileged to have learned from Ido Oren who opened my mind to so many insights that informed the theoretical and epistemological basis of this book. I thank Ido for his encouragement, guidance, and dedicated feedback over many years. Likewise, this book would not have been possible without Laura Sjoberg whose support and incisive commentary allowed me to improve the project after each and every discussion. The same must be said of M. Leann Brown, whose notes and encouragement helped me steer the project out of the gate at its earliest embryonic stages. It was not until I met Robert D’Amico that my interest in language games was sparked and our many vibrant philosophical discussions have aided this book immensely. During my years at UF, I was lucky to have many excellent mentors who have all contributed to my sharpening of the project at various stages of its development, including Dan O’Neill, Les Thiele, and Zach Selden. This project developed substantially during my time at The Jagiellonian University (UJ) in Kraków, Poland. As a post-doctoral fellow, I found an incredibly welcoming and vibrant community of scholars at the Taube Centre for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. I am grateful to the entire Taube Centre board, in particular Paweł Laidler and Zdzisław

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Mach who supported me and this book from our first meeting. The opportunity to join such a historic and intellectually rich institution as UJ has been a true honour and an incredibly rewarding experience. I must give a special thanks to the Centre’s coordinator Sylwia Fiałkiewicz who immensely aided my transition to life in beautiful Kraków. I am forever indebted to my brilliant colleagues Ivan Kozachenko and Tore Bernt Sorensen for their camaraderie and chats about all things identity, but most importantly for their continued friendship across continents and time zones. While scholarly research and writing can be an isolating experience (especially during a global pandemic), I am more grateful for moi przyjaciele than they know. Various parts of this book, in both early and later stages, benefitted immensely from my participation in conferences and meetings, including the 2019 Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS), 2021 International Studies Association (ISA), and The Jagiellonian Interdisciplinary Security Conference meetings. In presenting what would become the basic framework of this book, I received especially invaluable feedback, encouragement, and enduring inspiration from the Interpretive Methodologies and Methods Conference Group at the American Political Science Association (APSA) conference in 2017. I also acknowledge my colleagues at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC, who warmly welcomed me into their community during the latter stages of this project. This book has also benefitted greatly from two anonymous reviewers who provided excellent feedback for which I am extremely thankful. I would also like to thank the Palgrave Macmillan editorial and production teams for their assistance throughout this process. I thank my parents, Charlotte and Mark, for being my greatest cheerleaders and for always keeping questions of what it really means to be Canadian at the top of my mind. Last but certainly not least, I thank my partner Alexandria, to whom this book is dedicated. Alexandria has been an unwavering source of support and inspiration. She has been my top interlocutor and confidant over all these years and this book reflects her incredible patience and ceaseless confidence in me. Tackling life together, with all its exciting twists, unexpected turns, and incredible triumphs has been my greatest joy.

Contents

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1

Introduction

2

Identity and Foreign Policy as Discursive Practices: A Framework

43

Won’t You Be My Neighbour? Discourses of Canada’s “Neighbourly Relations” and the War on Terror

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3 4

5 6 7

Crusading Saviour and Condemning Onlooker: Discourses of Canada the Protector and the War on Terror

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All for One, One for All: Discourses of Canadian Multilateralism and the War on Terror

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Re-imagining Canada? Foreign Policy Discourses in the Age of Trump, Putin, and Pandemic Politics

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Conclusion

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Index

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About the Author

Dr. Taylor Robertson McDonald is a scholar-in-residence in the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He is a former Post-doctoral fellow at the Taube Centre for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences at The Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida.

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Abbreviations

BQ CA CAF CPC FIAP GWOT IR LP MNCH MP NAFTA NATO NDP NORAD ODA PC

Bloc Québécois Canadian Alliance Party Canadian Armed Forces Conservative Party of Canada Feminist International Assistance Policy Global War on Terror International Relations Liberal Party of Canada Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health Member of Parliament North American Free Trade Agreement North Atlantic Treaty Organization New Democratic Party North American Aerospace Defence Command Official Development Assistance Progressive Conservative Party

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Table 4.1 Table 5.1

Historical discourses of “Canada as America’s neighbour” Historical discourses of “Canada as protector of foreign civilians” Historical discourses of “Canada as champion of multilateralism”

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In late August of 2021, much of the world watched, stunned by increasingly grave scenes emerging from the Kabul airport. The Americanspurred NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in a chaotic and deadly fashion. While Canada had ended its formal military operations in the country in March of 2014, the Canadian government was nevertheless embroiled in the pandemonium. Canadian citizens, permanent residents, military personnel, and interpreters were among the thousands on the ground in Kabul, with the government scrambling to organize their evacuation. The heart-breaking images, the precipitous collapse of the Afghan government’s military forces, and what appeared to be a total lack of anticipation and coordination on the part of Canada and its NATO allies, brought an unimaginable conclusion to a seemingly never-ending war. After twenty years, the Taliban had returned to power in Kabul. Despite the inconceivability of these tragic events, the Justin Trudeau government’s rhetorical response was entirely predictable. In the days preceding and immediately following the summer’s frantic withdrawal efforts, Trudeau and his cabinet members relied on all-too-familiar narratives of Canada and the direction of its foreign policy to make sense of the chaos and response. The message from the government was consistent: Canada would remain steadfast in doing what it has supposedly © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_1

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always done—work with the United States and its closest allies, continue to defend the rights of the most persecuted, namely Afghan women and girls, and support multilateral efforts to hold the Taliban accountable. In other words, Canada would be who it has always been, and act accordingly. One could easily mistake the words of the current Prime Minister with those of a former Prime Minister uttered almost exactly twenty years prior. In the first sitting of the Canadian Parliament following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City in September 2001, Jean Chrétien declared that Canada would “stand with the Americans as neighbours, as friends as family. We will stand with our allies,” and reminded the House that Canada “will continue to offer refuge to the persecuted” while addressing the collective “threat terrorism poses to all civilized peoples and the role that Canada must play in defeating it.”1 Twenty years later, with Trudeau’s government playing the same old tunes, these narratives appear to have outlived the very war they were first deployed to legitimate. This book is about how politicians talk about Canadian identity when discussing Canadian foreign policy. It begins by asking a central question: despite shifts in political leadership, geo-politics, and security threats, how can we understand the Canadian government’s continued reliance on these same parochial representations of Canada and Canadian foreign policy? As times change, how are the same old tunes still at the top of the charts? The main argument that unfolds is that a limited set of narratives of Canadian identity dominate foreign policy discussions among Canadian politicians in the House of Commons. So much so, that the legitimacy of foreign policies relies on politicians’ ability to convey them within the terms of these basic narratives, regardless of the actual particulars of the policy. Stated differently, the invocation of a set of familiar narratives of Canadian identity is so indispensable in the process of Canadian foreign policy becoming politically possible that politicians habitually and inescapably filter their preferred policies through the prism of these limited narratives. Key to this argument—standing contrary to dominant approaches to the study of foreign policy in International Relations (IR)—is that the pictures politicians paint of who Canada is are integral to pursuing how Canada acts internationally. Political representations make certain foreign policy possibilities more realizable than others. This is not because politicians are attuned to a fundamental or “true” Canadian identity to guide Canada’s foreign policies. Nor is it because politicians are merely “selling” feel-good stories to pacify the populace while pursuing

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policies necessitated by Canada’s middling position within the global order. Rather, it is because foreign policies rely on narratives of identity that articulate “who we are” and “who they are” to legitimize “what we must do.” Canada’s initial involvement in Afghanistan does not occur according to an automatic “logic.” It relies on narratives that articulate a Canadian Self facing certain threats that must be addressed, “good” and “bad” actors involved, and Canada’s interests at stake. Responding to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City requires an understanding of who a terrorist is, whether such terrorist attacks are isolated incidents or perpetual threats to all of “Western Civilization,” and appropriate state-sanctioned responses. Foreign policies, in other words, need a story about the problems they aim to address and those stories require leading characters or identities.2 Identities do not, however, exist as objective and unmediated “facts” one can simply uncover to reveal a “true” Canadian or American identity “as it really is.” On the contrary, the framework developed in this book approaches identities as narratives under constant construction, negotiation, and articulation. This is in line with IR research that embraces discursive approaches to the relationship between state and national identity3 and foreign policy and stresses the more fluid character of identities as various narratives compete for hegemony. According to these discursive approaches, identity is not discovered, but (re)articulated, it is not revealed, but negotiated, it is not stable, but constantly contested. These insights, however, only get us part of the way to understanding the familiar chorus of Canadian foreign policy that seems consistently sung in the same tunes. Insights drawn from discursive approaches in IR and applied to Canadian foreign policy episodes may aid our understanding of how a certain narrative came to dominate within a particular foreign policy debate. But these approaches offer little to enhance our understanding of how it is that certain specific elements of these narratives persist over different foreign policy episodes across multiple years. For this, a novel theoretical framework is required. Understanding the dynamics of this innovative yet also repetitive rhetorical process is imperative not only to elucidate why these parochial representations seem so inescapable but how Canadian identity and foreign policy will be defined in an increasingly turbulent world.4 Thus, this book makes two main arguments, one theoretical and one empirical. Theoretically, I introduce a novel framework for analysing the interplay of the political rhetoric of Canadian identity and Canadian

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foreign policy. I argue that politicians, in the heat of parliamentary debate, engage in a rhetorical performance, one that engages both the power of discourse and practice. Discourses, and in particular discourses of a state’s identity, have the power to shape foreign policies based on how they represent allies, enemies, the self, and others. The ways in which we talk about who we are, what we stand for, and who we stand with and against inevitably inform the actions we pursue. As Foucault noted, “[w]e must not resolve discourse into a play of preexisting significations; we must not imagine that the world turns towards us a legible face which we would only have to decipher; the world is not the accomplice of our knowledge; there is no prediscursive providence which disposes the world in our favour.”5 Language, in other words, mediates the complex world around us that unavoidably requires interpretation to be made sense of. In the forum of foreign policy debate, then, identity discourses compete to have their representation of actors and events become dominant, making certain policies more realizable than others. If the United States is represented as Canada’s “brother,” rather than a “bully,” for example, a policy of partnership with the United States may be more readily realized than one of isolation. While the study of foreign policy through discursive approaches is not a new phenomenon in IR, the substantive study of Canadian foreign policy through such approaches has been widely neglected. To overlook the power of discourse in Canadian foreign policy in favour of traditional focuses on material capabilities is to overlook the very narratives through which these material elements are made sense of in the first place so a fitting response can be pursued. It is to relegate, as most studies of political rhetoric and Canadian foreign policy have, discourses of identity to secondary stature—seeing this rhetoric as mostly inconsequential to foreign policy decision-making, rather than worthy of analysis in its own right. Yet, as mentioned at the outset, Canadian politicians’ construction and deployment of identity discourses have not, at first glance, been particularly wide-ranging. While their rhetorical performances can be discursively innovative in the absence of any “prediscursive providence,” the fact is, their post-9/11 representations appear considerably narrow. The field of IR is flooded with various approaches as to why politicians say what they say in attempting to have their messages convince, persuade, or resonate with an audience. But these approaches, which lean heavily on the intentions of the speaker, under-theorize the key element of political rhetoric this book is focused on: repetition. Regardless of the intentions of the

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speaker or how persuasive the audience finds the words,6 Canadian politicians habitually invoke the same set of narratives even when debating very different foreign engagements and arguing for opposing foreign policies. This is what they do, over and over again. Invoking these frequently deployed words is so pervasive a habit that all sides of debate inescapably articulate their preferred policies by invoking these same basic stories even to represent opposing portraits of Canadian identity. Focusing specifically on these repeated practices, the “doings ” themselves, attunes us to the power of these habitual utterances in their own right, their stickiness and ability to somehow stay relevant, rather than the usual focus of simply being outcomes of the intentions of the performer. Theorizing exactly how the role of repetition factors into discursive articulations of identity and foreign policy has proved to be an illusive goal in IR. Repeating representations of identities appears to be consequential for how foreign policy decisions are ultimately developed, but there remains an absence of theorizing how exactly repeated rhetorical practices matter. To remedy this absence, I draw insights from a segment of scholars in IR who have taken practices seriously as their conceptual focal point, practice theorists. The key insight offered by theories of practice in the study of IR is that everyday behaviours matter beyond the intentions or beliefs of those engaging in them. Practices engage a form of power, “not only because habit engrains standard ways of doing things, but the need to engage one another forces people to return to common structures.”7 Falling back on common tropes, narratives and stories to discuss novel events is simply “what one does.” In light of these theoretical insights, grasping the interplay of discourse and practice—what I refer to as discursive practices —is crucial to understand how certain Canadian foreign policies are realized over others. Deploying narratives of Canadian identity anchored by specific words and containing attributes of often-repeated narratives is key to legitimizing one foreign policy over another. Yet, because the habitual repetition of the words is necessary to provide one’s preferred policy with legitimacy, politicians on all sides of a debate channel their preferences through the same limited set of narratives. The result being that Canadian foreign policy debate is not only a battleground of differing policies but a battle of differing conceptions of Canadian identity as discourses compete to anchor their meanings to these familiar narratives. Because specific elements of these narratives are constantly repeated and live on through successive debates, even though the meanings attached to them differ over

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time, there is an impression that certain features of Canadian identity are essential and enduring over time, but as this book will argue, they are actually the lightning rods of contestation. So what are these narrative anchors that seem so indispensable when discussing Canadian foreign policy? How should we think about these constantly repeated words that various representations of Canadian identity seem to always be channelled through? This book draws insights from social psychologist John Shotter to think through the role of discursive practices of identity in foreign policy debate. In particular, Shotter’s conceptualization of “commonplace” rhetoric or “rhetorical commonplaces.”8 Shotter’s conceptualization of rhetorical commonplaces is useful precisely because it theorizes the juxtaposing nature of discursive practices: the habitual, practice-based repetition of certain central words alongside the discursive innovations that fill in the meaning of these words in various ways. Rhetorical commonplaces, frequently repeated words and concepts that are familiar and appropriate in a given situation, act as the raw materials out of which diverse meanings of those situations are articulated and re-articulated. Bringing repeated practices and discursive innovation to the forefront, Shotter conceptualizes these commonplaces as rhetorical resources, the deployment of which is necessary if one seeks to make their actions appropriate for or fitting to the given circumstances but as resources, they act as the building blocks out of which diverse representations can be rhetorically erected. Shotter theorizes that individuals speak through these familiar resources without fully conscious knowledge of why they are doing this, but rather, a tacit acknowledgement that one is “‘speaking into’ a context not of our own making.”9 And while we invoke rhetorical resources appropriate to fit the context, individuals work within an “order of possibilities” established by previous social activity within which one can innovate. Thus, Shotter’s theorizing of rhetorical commonplaces is helpful to grapple with Canadian parliamentarians’ repeated invocation of and discursive innovation on familiar discourses of Canadian identity. These points are elaborated in Chapter 2. Empirically, this theoretical framework is mobilized to offer insights into how Canada became involved in what would become the centrepiece of Canadian foreign policy for nearly a decade and a half: the so-called “Global War on Terror.”10 This book offers a systematic analysis of the House of Commons debates over Canada’s two most impactful foreign policy decisions following the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Canada’s “yes” decision to the Afghanistan War in 2001 and “no” decision to the

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Iraq War in 2003.11 Scholarly attempts to explain these decisions from various perspectives began almost immediately following the decisions themselves. Further attempts persist even today, especially in the shadow of the tragic withdrawal efforts in Afghanistan, as questions surrounding how exactly Canada became involved in this protracted war in the first place have once again rose to prominence.12 While many have explored what led to Canada’s decisions on these two foreign engagements, few have explored precisely how these decisions became a matter of Canadian identity. While Canadian parliamentarians debated Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq by discussing issues of alliance obligations, international law, and national security concerns, they did so by making these issues a matter of identity. Canada’s role in these wars could have been discussed in various ways, yet parliamentary debates consistently framed these issues in terms of how they did or did not reflect who Canada is, what Canada stands for, and therefore what Canada must do. In short, extant examinations of Canada’s two most impactful foreign policy decisions in the early twenty-first century have paid little attention to how the language of identity came to matter to these foreign policy decisions. Without accounting for these rhetorical factors we are left to assume that discourses of Canadian identity, which were at the centre of these parliamentary debates over whether and how Canada should or should not join these military efforts, matter little to the decisions themselves. This book argues quite the opposite: these foreign policies were not politically possible without the stories told about them. The empirical analysis of this book unfolds through charting the historical development, articulation, and re-articulation of three dominant rhetorical commonplaces of Canadian identity habitually deployed by Canadian politicians in relation to Canada’s decision on Afghanistan and Iraq. The three commonplaces, what I call (1) Canada as America’s neighbour, (2) Canada as protector of foreign civilians, and (3) Canada as a champion of multilateralism, were and continue to be, at the centre of foreign policy debate over how Canada should behave in the international arena. While examinations of the discourses surrounding these three commonplaces do not entirely exhaust every discursive variation Canadian parliamentarians articulate at every moment, discussions of an extensive range of political concerns do, however, occur with these commonplaces at their centre, as the empirical chapters will demonstrate (Chapters 3–5). Grasping the dynamics surrounding how identity narratives function in relation to Canadian foreign policy decisions offers

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inroads to our understanding of two still salient questions, one from the recent past and one for the future: first, how the Canadian government could articulate Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan as necessary based on these narratives yet only two years later deem it necessary to abstain from coalition forces in Iraq while relying on the same narratives? Second, how will these narratives impact the future of Canadian foreign policy as Canada confronts an inflection point about its own identity in an increasingly chaotic world? The remainder of this chapter situates a discursive practice-based approach to Canadian foreign policy analysis within the existing literature of IR and Canadian foreign policy in particular. It discusses the absence of such approaches in contemporary Canadian foreign policy analysis and the importance of filling this gap before concluding with a summary of the book’s chapters.

Identity and Foreign Policy in IR Identity rhetoric and foreign policy are no strangers. Invoking conceptions of “who we are” and “who they are” has long gone hand-in-hand with politicians’ pronouncements of foreign policies. George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address infamously cast America and its allies as members of the “civilized world” prepared to take preemptive measures against an “axis of evil” states (Iran, North Korea, and Iraq).13 In his first trip abroad after becoming Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper used a March 2006 speech in Afghanistan to reinforce his commitment to Canada’s continued efforts in the region by famously proclaiming the calls of some to “cut and run” were “not the Canadian way.”14 More recently, during a surprise visit to Kyiv in May 2022, Justin Trudeau reiterated Canada’s unwavering support of Ukraine against invading Russian forces, proclaiming Ukraine to be a “friend” standing with Canada on the side of democracy and against Russia and “enablers in Belarus.”15 These seemingly simple identity “codes”16 appear inescapable in discussions of foreign policy. Yet, the field of IR in general, and the study of Canadian foreign policy in particular, have historically paid relatively little attention to the relevance of identity to foreign policy. Moreover, despite many theoretical and analytical insights offered by more recent studies of the relationship between identity and foreign policy, IR continues to lack a systematic account of how certain rhetorical elements of identity endure across various conflicts while others fade away.17 As this section

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elucidates, in failing to grasp the interplay of narrative endurance and change, IR research is unable to capture exactly how recurrent elements of identity narratives function and the power they exert on foreign policy decision-making. Prior to the 1990s, scant research in IR considered the relevance of the concept of identity to foreign policy analysis. So the often told (though not uncontested18 ) story goes, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the unexpected end to the Cold War laid bare the shortcomings of “traditional” theories of IR, namely variants of neorealism and neoliberalism, that appeared ill-equipped to account for this abrupt turn of events. Riding a broader wave in the social sciences, constructivist approaches, positing a now popular notion that reality is socially constructed,19 received an unexpected “thrust”20 into the scholarly spotlight as a viable alternative to “traditional” IR approaches. Whereas “traditional” approaches considered states’ foreign policy a product of the anarchic system, objective self-interest, and the distribution of material resources in the international arena, a basic tenet of constructivist approaches is that identities, and in particular identities of states, shape state behaviour. Regardless of a state’s material capabilities, whether they are deemed an “ally” or “enemy” matters to foreign policy. Likewise, “national interests” to be pursed and “security threats” to be addressed are not ready-made concepts with objective meanings state actors can find in a preexisting “portfolio.”21 Rather, constructivist approaches posit that these concepts are shaped through social processes of interaction among states based on intersubjective meanings, rather than governed by objective covering laws. The basic notion of “traditional” approaches, that the condition of anarchy begets a self-help system, is challenged by constructivist approaches positing that state behaviour is always mediated through interpretation. Self-help is then not a natural “logic” inherent in an anarchic system, but exists only insofar as the various social practices and interpretations of actors and identities have made it so.22 Alexander Wendt provides an illuminating and frequently cited example of the social construction of the so-called “self-help system” in that the United States would be less threatened by Britain’s possession of 500 nuclear weapons than North Korea’s possession of 5 nuclear weapons. Despite Britain holding far more material power and destructive capability than North Korea, power that could be turned against the United States at a moment’s notice, the intervening variable is that the United States, through its various international interactions, considers Britain and North

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Korea to be of very different identities. Hence, the possession of these weapons is read differently, one more adversarial and threatening than the other.23 The social construction of the identity of states has informed a diverse range of constructivist research on foreign policy analysis. So wideranging, in fact, that attempts to encapsulate the various constructivist camps, their affinities, and fault lines is itself an ever-expanding literature.24 Acknowledging the many fissures and nuances among constructivist approaches to foreign policy analysis at the outset, a major division within this literature of particular relevance to this study are opposing perspectives on the relationship between the material and the ideational and how this relationship informs the relative stability or instability of the identities of states. Two major constructivist camps are usually cast as standing opposite one another on these issues—a group of “conventional” constructivists on one side and “critical” constructivists on the other.25 The hallmark of “conventional” constructivisms26 usually exemplified by Alexander Wendt’s seminal monograph Social Theory of International Politics,27 has been demonstrating the utility of “identity as a variable.”28 As variables, ideational factors like identities, norms, and culture, are considered distinct from material factors and are often measured against them in examining competing explanations of state behaviour.29 Focusing on the causal powers of identity on state behaviour, conventional constructivist contributions have been frequently cast as more agreeable to traditional rationalist theories of IR like neo-realist and neo-liberal variants which much of this constructivist research engages with directly.30 Moreover, many conventional constructivist approaches assume that material factors ultimately ground and (relatively) stabilize processes of the social construction of identity,31 suggesting that world politics is not “ideas all the way down” but is anchored by material forces with some powers existing independent of any ideas about them.32 Hence, by embracing the social construction of states’ identities while still falling back on a “rump materialism,” conventional constructivisms have been cast as “seizing” the “middle ground” between rationalist approaches on one side and those of a poststructural bent on the other.33 “Critical” constructivist approaches, on the other hand, take issue with the assumed distinction between the ideational and the material and emphasize the instability of identity, its need for constant (re)articulation, and the central role of language in this process. Housing wide-ranging

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insights drawn from poststructuralism, critical theory, semiotics, and other approaches,34 critical constructivisms approach the material and ideational as having no “meaningful presence separate from each other.”35 Certainly, the material components of what we call a nuclear weapon actually exist: the uranium, the metal casing, the launching system, and so forth. But their very existence as a “nuclear weapon” is reliant upon various discourses that give those individual material components meaning. Discourse “delineates the terms of intelligibility whereby a particular ‘reality’ can be known and acted upon”36 and understanding a nuclear weapon as a nuclear weapon relies on discourses of national security, who is and is not to be targeted, and the level of destruction such a weapon can cause versus traditional weaponry like grenades and rifles. This is not to suggest that critical constructivists argue physical objects either do not exist or that there is no way of knowing if such objects exist “out there” in the real world. It is instead to concern oneself with what those material objects are and the possibilities these understandings make more realizable. Are cats “sacred and revered deities” or “overbreeding pests?”37 Is an earthquake a “natural phenomenon” or an “expression of the wrath of God?”38 Was the Bosnian War inevitable as a product of ancient hatreds about which no external actor could hope to prevent or was it a genocide perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces that Western countries could have stopped?39 If critical constructivisms can be accused of advocating for “discourse all the way down,” it is insofar as their commitment that there is no extra-discursive realm from which one can view the world. In other words, there is no analytical vantage point from which one can view an earthquake or the Bosnian War and perceive these events as they “truly” are, unburdened by the discourses that make these events knowable to us in the first place. In short, “there is nothing outside of discourse.”40 Given this assumption, critical constructivisms tend to be unconcerned with uncovering any static essence or “true” nature of a state’s identity. On the contrary, these approaches can be seen as primarily concerned with states’ perpetual processes of becoming rather than being.41 If a state’s identity cannot be separated from the discourses that articulate that identity, meaning one cannot locate the objective source of the state’s identity—like in its peoples’ “character” or popular attitudes—then states are perpetually under construction—every assertion of identity is ultimately fleeting, requiring a re-assertion, and the cycle continues. Given

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this condition, the state is very much a paradoxical entity, perpetually asserting the “reality” of its existence as more than just discursive practices but only able to do so through these very practices that give it existence. As David Campbell argues: As a consequence, all states are marked by an inherent tension between the various domains that need to be aligned for an ‘imagined political community’ to come into being—such as territoriality and the many axes of identity—and the demand that such an alignment is a response to (rather than constitutive of) a prior and stable identity. In other words, states are never finished entities…This paradox inherent to their being renders states in permanent need of reproduction: with no ontological status apart from the many and varied practices that constitute reality, states are (and have to be) always in a process of becoming. For a state to end its practices of representation would be to expose its lack of prediscursive foundations; stasis would be death.42

Critical constructivist research tends to focus on these moments of becoming, most often examining states’ representations of identity during various foreign policy episodes. The main concern being more with how certain foreign policy paths and outcomes are realized—the processes that allowed them to come into being—rather than analysing which path should have been taken or how any material force alone dictated some automatic response. Unsurprisingly then, language has played a central role for critical constructivist examinations, in particular, those that embrace discursive approaches to the relationship between identity and foreign policy. Drawing on insights most often associated with Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, discursive approaches situate the importance of language through two main theoretical tenets: the productive power of discourse and the relationship between Self and Others.43 These approaches “emphasize the linguistic construction of reality”44 and the power of discourses to constitute political subjects and objects. According to Charlotte Epstein, discursive approaches to the study of identity in international politics ask what states say when they “speak:” This ‘talking’ is central both to what they do and who they are—to the dynamics of identity. States, like individuals, position themselves in

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relation to other states by adopting certain discourse and not others. Moreover, these discourses function as important principles of coherence for statehood.45

Yet, discourses are not benign descriptions of subjects and objects in the world, but systematically produce the subjects and objects they articulate. Power as productive draws our attention away from the common notion of power as a coercive or repressive instrument that allows the will of one to be imposed onto another and instead towards thinking about power as a process based on relationships within dense networks of meanings. Productive power does not preexist relationships but instead emanates from them.46 The act of articulating Canada as a “brother” to the United States or the Taliban as a threat to “the civilized world,” constitutes the very terms in which foreign policies are enabled and developed to respond. To articulate the Bosnian War as an unavoidable product of ancient hatred is to simultaneously open avenues for particular policies, like non-engagement, while working to exclude others, like an intervention. Such discourses are seen as not merely describing an event, but constituting the event. In foreign policy, these representations are mainly articulated through Self and Others distinctions whereby the Self is defined by its difference (whether subtle or radical) versus Others, and not just as fixed binaries but complex and multidimensional identities that may be activated differently in relation to different identities.47 As an example, Roxanne Doty’s Imperial Encounters 48 examines the United States and Britain’s representations of the Philippines and Kenya, respectively, that primarily cast these “Western” countries as “civilized,” “mature,” and “nurturing” parents justified to intervene in the “global South,” frequently represented as children in need of direction. Such representations demonstrate the power of discourse at work, as Doty argues they “enabled practices of domination, exploitation, and brutality, practices that probably would have been considered unthinkable, reprehensible, and unjustifiable were an alternative ‘reality’ taken seriously.”49 Importantly, the personal motivations, interests, or intentions of “speakers of discourse,” like presidents and ministers of trade, take a backseat to what the language actually does, the avenues that become available and those that become cordoned off. Therefore, discursive approaches are concerned not with which competing narrative is most “true,” but how certain representations of actors and events are taken as “truth,”

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and what outcomes they make possible. This book adopts and seeks to enhance these insights.

Repetition and Practice in Examining Identity and Foreign Policy A notable absence becomes apparent at this juncture. With their emphasis on the process of becoming, discursive approaches to the relationship between identity and foreign policy are particularly adept at capturing discursive changes in states’ identities. As Campbell reminds us, “stasis would be death” for the state, hence, the necessity for constant articulation and re-articulations of identity that the likes of Campbell, Doty, and others have all impressively captured in their research. Yet, what have these approaches offered on discursive endurance? With a major focus on the fluidity of discourses of identity, what can be said of the aspects of identity discourses that continually re-emerge and persist over days and years, time and time again? In fact, those embracing discursive approaches have said very little about how repetition matters to the relationship between identity and foreign policy, despite frequently acknowledging the central role repetition occupies in the articulation of the identity of states. For example, in Writing Security, Campbell invokes Judith Butler in stating that a discursive conception of identity is “tenuously constituted in time…through a stylized repetition of acts,” and achieved, “not [through] a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition.”50 For Campbell, it is not the mere articulation of dangers to America that comes to constitute American identity, rather, “each episode has elements specific to this location and participants, but in these various historical moments we witness the repetition of certain techniques of differentiation rather than the creation de novo of concerns, prejudices, and figurations.”51 Likewise, Doty’s “imperial encounters” between North and South rest also on “repetition and [not just] dissemination that give representations their power, not an inherent stability and closure.”52 But how exactly does this repetition function and matter? If discourses are constantly being articulated and adjusted, why do specific words, phrases, or tropes continue to be repeated and how are they significant to the power of discursive representations? At best, those adopting discursive approaches to examining states’ identities and foreign policies have offered a mostly unsatisfactory answer: repetition is significant because it helps “give life” to a particular representation. Not unlike a rumour that appears to become more

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plausible the more it is spread, it is the frequency with which particular representations are articulated that solidifies their power.53 The issue with these responses is that they do not indicate why or how repetition occurs. They say only what repetition helps achieve. While discourse-based approaches have mostly avoided any thorough discussions of the role of repetition in examination of identity and foreign policy, this task has been taken up by a number of other recent research programmes in IR, most notably those inspired by the so-called “practice turn.” A relatively new phenomenon in the field, the early 2010s “turn” of the “practice turn” in IR birthed a concerted focus on the “everyday” individual performances that, taken together, constitute the large-scale concepts IR has long been concerned with like diplomacy and war. The study of practices, the often menial, routine performances people carry out “neither because they want to nor because they feel they should…but because it is ‘what one does,’”54 extend to linguistic practices, or speech acts as well. Contrary to traditional notions of power as coercive, the power of practices lays in their “taken-for-grantedness,” the assumed normalcy of their regularities and the meanings attached to their patterned deployment. The practice turn has inspired a serious concern for the role of repetition in everyday discursive practices related to foreign policy analysis, including the role of habits,55 rituals,56 routines,57 and rhythm.58 With their focus on the recurrent, practice theories, particularly when merged with insights from discursive approaches to identity, offer fruitful avenues to explore how aspects of narratives of Canadian identity change and endure over time and their relevance to foreign policy decision-making. This merger forms the basis of the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2.

Why Not in Canada? The Study of Identity and Foreign Policy in Canadian IR Surprisingly few of these discussions and debates on identity discourse and practice have made their way into mainstream IR research on Canadian foreign policy. Even less so when it comes to examinations of Canada’s involvement in the “Global War on Terror.” This is particularly puzzling for two reasons. First, recent innovative discourse-based approaches to the study of identity and foreign policy have blossomed in the subfield of IR and have incorporated a wide range of case studies including the United States,59 Britain,60 Australia,61 Bosnia,62 China, and African

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states.63 Canada, however, has conspicuously received almost no attention from these approaches. Second, the absence of any systematic approach taking Canadian identity discourses and practices seriously is particularly odd given that identity is such a popular conceptual vehicle for scholars in analysing Canadian politics, domestic and international. Michael Hart attests that Canadians have a renowned obsession with national identity concerns claiming that “in no other country in the world can citizens lay claim to so vigorous a debate as to who they are and why they matter.”64 Yet, these debates have scantly appeared. To be sure, there is no shortage of research providing explanations of Canada’s foreign policy decisions related to the “Global War on Terror” that one would expect from mainstream IR approaches—as a product of alliance politics,65 personal calculations of individual political leaders,66 and the role of public sentiment67 —most of which brackets out serious considerations of identity discourses and practices. So how is identity discussed in examinations of Canadian foreign policy? While the study of Canadian foreign policy houses a relatively diverse set of approaches swept up, at different times, in various theoretical fads,68 examinations of Canadian foreign policy that take issues of identity seriously are narrower in scope. These examinations are often implicitly, though sometimes explicitly, undergirded by a central question: does any (relatively) stable feature of Canadian identity exist to guide Canadian foreign policy? The study of Canadian foreign policy and identity has long been bifurcated into competing approaches and perspectives on this question, most of which downplay the analytical utility of discursive practices of identity to Canadian foreign policy in favour of examining the beliefs of Canadians. On the one hand are approaches that rely on some conceptual focal point said to capture a relatively stable element of Canadian identity and therefore attempt to explain a relatively stable history of Canadian foreign policy. Studies relying on the popular notion of Canada’s strategic culture and security imaginary are particularly notable members of this camp. A limiting factor of these approaches, however, is that the explanatory power of these concepts usually resides in analysing the beliefs of Canadians via public opinion surveying. The argument that the “Canadian historical experience,” usually linked to being a former British colony, geographic location in North America, and neighbour to the United States, has produced a penchant for Canadians to support and pursue certain patterns of foreign policy is well-established. Despite being subject to significant definitional contestation,69 strategic

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culture has been considered a useful concept in Canadian foreign policy analysis in referring to “the habits of ideas, attitudes, and norms towards strategic issues, and patterns of strategic behaviour, which are relatively stable over time.”70 Canada’s strategic culture(s) is said to be a historically developed set of “persistent ideas” about Canadian identity in the world,71 usually related to Canada being a liberal internationalist,72 reliable multilateral actor,73 and friendly, though markedly independent, relations with the United States.74 Strategic culture has been relied on to explain away some seemingly “irrational” and “inconsistent” behaviours of the Canadian government related to the “Global War on Terror,” most prominently the Chrétien government’s decision to forgo participation in the Iraq War in 2003 after participating in the Afghanistan War in 2001. According to Justin Massie, it was persistent elements of “…identity, not relative power, sentiments, not utilitarian calculations, [that] govern Canada’s international behaviour. A tale of three strategic cultures best captures the realm of Canada’s international security motivations…”75 Likewise, Brendon O’Connor and Srdjan Vucetic have argued that Canada’s “no” to the Iraq War, versus Australia’s “yes,” is best explained through a combination of strategic cultural factors, namely, Canada’s longstanding history of multilateralism and dedication to demonstrating independence from its American neighbour. As the Iraq War received neither formal UN nor NATO approval, abstention allowed Canada to fulfill two of its longstanding cultural principles: refusing to partake in unilateral interventions and choosing an opposite path from its American neighbour.76 But where does strategic culture emanate from? Contemplating the existence of multiple regional Canadian strategic subcultures and their effect on Canada’s stance towards the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Massie consults survey data to investigate the existence of regional cultural differences pertaining to the international use of force, concluding that Quebec and Alberta show distinct strategic subcultures based on attitudes on support for each war.77 O’Connor and Vucetic remain “agnostic over the dominant site of the construction of strategic cultures—the elite, the mass or both,” and consider the effects of public opinion against the effects of strategic culture on Canada’s foreign policy decisions, assuming the two can be separated. Yet, they consider strategic culture to be defined as “a nationally specific system of communication made up of historical analogies, similes, and metaphors, which tend to solidify public preferences in the domain of foreign and defence policy”78 and, in fact, strive to

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demonstrate that Canadian multilateralism and symbolic “independence” from the United States was not merely a historical pattern, but a popular opinion among Canadians in the lead up to the Iraq War and months after. The same can be said of much of the research on Canada’s security imaginary, where the collective sense of self of Canadians provides the basis for producing analytical insights. As Jutta Weldes defines it, a security imaginary is “quite simply, a structure of well-established meanings and social relations out of which representations of the world of international relations are created.”79 In the study of Canadian foreign policy, the Canadian security imaginary has primarily been invoked to assess the resonance of political rhetoric encouraging Canadians to re-think Canada’s place in the world versus the longstanding ideas Canadians tend to have about themselves. Usually, these recasting efforts on the part of the government are no match for the relatively stable attitudes of the public.80 In perhaps the most comprehensive study of Canadian politicians’ efforts to sell justifications for Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, Boucher and Nossal’s The Politics of War 81 argues that successive governments failed to offer the Canadian public a justificatory claim that “made sense” within their security imaginary. They conclude that “neither the Chrétien or Martin Liberal governments nor the Harper Conservative government—was able to offer Canadians a convincing or persuasive set of reasons why Canada was in Afghanistan or why Canadian soldiers should be dying there”82 and hence, public support throughout much of the war remained tepid. On the other hand, examinations of Canadian foreign policy and identity have increasingly featured those approaching Canadian identity not as something innate or essential, but as a set of shifting myths about who Canada is to which Canadians widely subscribe. While prominent Canadian myths are frequently invoked by political elites to justify foreign engagements, this camp argues that this mythological language is just that: rhetoric without any causal connection to Canadian foreign policy. Rather than point to the presence of some consistent strategic culture or deep-seated Canadian values that supposedly guide a consistent record of foreign policy, this camp emphasizes the disparity between what Canadians believe about themselves and how the country actually acts internationally, evidencing the gulf between rhetoric and reality. Edward Said suggested that “nations are themselves narrations,”83 noting the propensity for groups of people to formulate ideas about themselves as

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different from other groups. Relatedly, Canadian historian Daniel Francis has argued that a nation is merely “a group of people who share the same illusions about themselves” and members of the Canadian nation “depend on this habit of ‘consensual hallucination’ more than any other people.”84 To be clear, this distinction between long-held values and myths does not imply that the population believe in these myths any less than they would if they were actually deep-seated principles of an essentialized Canadian character. The very function of the myth is that the population believes it to be essentially rooted and a fundamental truism, though it is not. This distinction does, however, serve to highlight that since a myth is unattached to any essential root of Canadian character or distinctly “Canadian historical experience,” both the content of the myths and the foreign policies they supposedly inform can vary drastically over time. Myth-based approaches have focused particularly on the growing “rhetoric-reality gap,” supposing Canada’s foreign policies have become so varied and disconnected from the popular beliefs about what Canadian identity is, that seemingly any foreign initiatives are possible, so long as Canadians remain more interested in the stories of who they are rather than what the country is actually doing internationally. Contemporarily, prominent Canadian myths tend to cast Canadians as global do-gooders, responsible international citizens, the world’s leading proponent of tolerance and multiculturalism, and dedicated to protecting those who cannot defend themselves, often through peacekeeping rather than war-making. Canadian philosopher William Kymlicka suggests that Canadians mythologize themselves as being “good citizens of the world” who like to believe they have “played a useful and constructive role in international affairs, as UN peace-keepers, as ‘honest-brokers’ in various international negotiations or conflict resolutions, and as supporters of virtually every important international legal or political initiative… In Canada, to be indifferent to our obligations as citizens of the world is seen as ‘unCanadian.’”85 And yet, Canada’s relatively low contributions to foreign aid compared to Western European countries and peacekeeping forces routinely subject to drastic budget cuts have left “this idea of ‘Canadians as good citizens of the world’ [as] more mythology than fact.”86 Moreover, Canadians’ self-image as a “virtuously superior” peoples whose foreign policies reflect the country’s distinct values, often claimed to be freedom, diversity, and human rights, is hardly a set of values unique to Canada. Noting these

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discrepancies, Denis Stairs encapsulates a prominent sentiment among this camp in suggesting “Canadians need to get a grip on themselves.”87 Some, including Stairs, argue this seemingly obvious disconnect between myth and reality is dangerously unnoticed in Canadian society, driving identity and policy even further apart. For Kim Richard Nossal, whose research spans both theoretical camps discussed here, Canadians are so consumed by their own myths “…that in contemporary Canadian foreign policy, what matters is not what one does, but only what ones says.”88 In an analysis of the evolution of Canadian foreign policy towards the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan from 2003 to 2005, Nossal finds that parliamentary rhetoric surrounding these policies was so self-congratulatory to the Canadian people regarding their valiant sacrifices that the public cared little that their country had not actually followed through on its promises. Political elites in Ottawa “appeal[ed] to the preferences and prejudices of a population indoctrinated by its own myths,” lacing the mission in rhetoric “so sweet-sounding to Canadians that…their government was actually doing something worthwhile in their name.”89 And even though the mission stalled at many points and was vehemently criticized by foreign policy experts for failing to achieve the outlined goals, polls demonstrated that the public was convinced far more by the words of many in Parliament that they had done something worthwhile than the actual evidence that the mission was failing miserably. Hence, Nossal concludes in 2005 that “in contemporary Canadian foreign policy, rhetoric and reality operate in discrete spheres, so long as the Canadian public is routinely treated with such ‘ear candy.’”90 Sandra Whitworth further demonstrates just how removed the actual “realities” of foreign policy are from what Canadians believe about their national identity that supposedly informs it. Even after a proven murder of a local Somali teenager during Canada’s peacekeeping mission in the region in 1993 at the hands of two Canadian soldiers, the general public and investigators themselves dismissed the crime as merely “the act of a few bad apples.”91 The gulf between self-image and policy being so wide that the supposedly unwavering commitment to keeping peace around the world seemed to have survived direct empirical evidence against its mythologically untarnished record. As Sherene Razack summarizes, “Canadian naivety and passivity as a nation constitute a narrative of innocence that blocks accountability for the violence in Somalia…A nation so gentle could not possibly have participated in the acts of violence reported by the press.”92

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Forays into Canadian political branding similarly grapple with the limits of the rhetoric-reality gap. As in the sale of sneakers and laundry detergent, these scholars argue, governments brand their parties, leaders, and country through corporate-style marketing campaigns. The goal being to not only communicate clear messages about their interests and goals domestically but to advance their interests internationally through cultivating an emotional attachment to “the brand” on the part of “consumers” (the public) at home and abroad with catchy slogans and logos.93 “Brand Canada” is said to have been adapted and re-branded through various governments, perhaps never more prominently than under the current government of Justin Trudeau. Yet, as leading experts on Canadian branding suggest, Canadian identity cannot simply be branding all the way down, with the public content to merely consume the messages without worrying about the actual policies the Canadian government pursues. “[S]uccesful and valuable brands emerge,” argues Richard Nimijean, “because they deliver on their brand promises; they fail when they don’t.”94 Feminist research on identity and Canadian foreign policy gets us closest to the kind of discursive practice-based approach this book presents and offers a solid foundation to build from. Feminist research has been particularly incisive in illuminating the critical role gendered narratives of identity have played in the realization and carrying out of Canadian foreign policy. Such research has demonstrated how masculinized narratives of chivalry and self-sacrificing Canadian goodness belie the violence and racism experienced by those deemed needing protection as Canada’s post-9/11 policies play out at home and abroad. The narrative of Canada as fundamentally committed to multiculturalism obscures the reality that Canadian officials and popular news outlets frequently cast Afghan women as abject victims who could only be saved by the “knights of civilization,” namely Canada and the United States.95 Furthermore, “liberating innocent Afghan people,” and in particular Afghan women, has been a popular rallying cry in Canada in justifying policies in the Middle East, not least because it fits neatly into multiple myths of Canadian peacekeeping, international stewardship, and protecting the innocent. Yet, as Krista Hunt has pointed out, “[t]he hypocrisy of waging war in the name of women lies with the fact that women will be the greatest casualties in this ‘war on terrorism.’”96 Feminist research brings to the forefront two key insights that bear on the approach offered in this book: the productive power of discourses of Canadian identity and the

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connection of discourse and practice. Alison Howell’s analysis of prominent discourses of Canada articulated in official Canadian government documents and pronouncements succinctly encapsulates these insights. Howell leaves aside the search for “actual” Canadian attitudes and instead implores readers to “dispense with the task of defining Canadian values…instead our interest in words should be directed at the multiple effects of their use.”97 Hence, (following Roxanne Doty)98 Howell prioritizes how Canadian foreign policy is possible and what discourses it rests on rather than why one policy is chosen over another. This analysis relies on understanding identity discourses as exhibiting productive power: how representations of Canada as a “good” and “chivalrous” international actor not only work to justify actions abroad but also craft the terms for Canadian self-understandings at home, obscuring Canada’s own history of oppressions and marginalizations within its own borders. The effects of government discourses of Canada as peaceful, tolerant, and orderly works to silence instances of gendered and racialized violence at home while simultaneously amplifying discourses of “Canada the good” throughout Canadian society that “incite Canadians to autonomously self-govern” their ability to “live up” to these “standards.”99 Hence, Howell makes the case that “the discourse of Canadian values in foreign policy is seen as a practice” of its own in that “it enjoins Canadians to understand and conduct themselves in accordance with a liberal model of citizenship.”100 While the execution of foreign policy on the ground is traditionally considered the practice of foreign policy, the articulation of discourses that make these policies possible, including through the constitution of what it takes to be a “good Canadian citizen” and living up to the discourses of Canadian values, is equally implicated in foreign policy practice on the domestic front. “Collaps[ing] the distinction between discourse and practice[s]”101 of Canadian identity and foreign policy is precisely the ontological “first step” from which this book’s approach begins. But asking “how-possible” questions requires not just an understanding of the role discursive practices of identity play in foreign policy decisions, but the internal dynamics of these discursive practices, their features, and persistence over time. In other words, this study pushes beyond the focus of discursive practices of identity as integral to foreign policy to argue how it is that this integral relationship functions, not simply that it exists.

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Why Look to The House? This study also differs from many extant explorations of Canadian identity and foreign policy in a particularly stark way: it looks to the Canadian House of Commons. For many, this signifies the breaking of a cardinal rule of sorts for studying Canadian foreign policy. Ample literature suggests that Canadian foreign policy decision-making does not occur within or substantively involve the House of Commons. As Canada’s system of government does not require the executive to receive authorization from the legislature to enact its foreign policy,102 the will of the Prime Minister is widely considered a main source of policy, not the Parliament.103 Though Prime Ministers have invoked the “Parliament will decide” formula, inviting the House to debate and vote their approval on foreign policies, this is usually considered little more than a political tool for Prime Ministers to avoid pursuing undesirable policies or to provide political cover in sharing (or “laundering”104 ) responsibility for a policy that would have been pursued anyways.105 As Nossal, Roussel, and Paquin remind us, when it comes to issues of foreign policy, Prime Ministers “have always jealously guarded the prerogative to decide such matters.”106 So why consider the discourses of the House of Commons at all if the causal powers to enact foreign policies primarily rest with the Prime Minister? Answering this question gets at the heart of the research programme of this study. This book is ultimately concerned with how Canada’s foreign policies towards Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 became politically possible. As such, the focus is on the constitutive elements that converge to make these decisions possible in the first place. This positions this study opposite traditional rationalist approaches to foreign policy analysis in the field of IR, a dichotomy Roxanne Doty first articulated in the 1990s. Rather than asking the question of “why” one decision was pursued over another, a question that assumes a set number of foreign policy options unproblematically preexist the decision waiting to be chosen from a universe of options, Doty proposed asking “how” potential decisions became possible at all in the universe, an adjustment that shifts focus to the ideas and identities that converge to enable the policy to appear “reasonable, logical and ultimately imperative or even inevitable” in the first place.107 For Doty, “why” questions “presuppose the identities of social actors and a background of social meanings. In contrast, how questions examine how meanings are produced and

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attached to various social subjects and objects, this constituting particular interpretive dispositions that create certain possibilities and preclude others…”108 Doty’s approach suggests we consider a conception of power beyond what a Prime Minister wields in choosing to participate in a war or not. Instead, Doty invites us to consider an element of power “why” questions often neglect: “the way in which power works to constitute particular modes of subjectivity and interpretive dispositions…[t]his is not the kind of power that preexisting social actors possess and use. Rather, it is a kind of power that produces meanings, subject identities, their relationships, and a range of imaginable conduct.”109 In other words, rather than asking why the Prime Minister selected a certain policy from a menu, we ask how the menu came to be created in the first place and what ideas and identities the menu’s existence relies on. Focusing on this kind of power, Canadian Parliament is not relegated to the sideline, but rather it takes centre stage. The House of Commons and its debates on Canadian foreign policy are rich in what may be called Doty’s constitutive form of power—acting as an arena where a background of assumptions and social meanings are imbued within representations, understandings, and interpretations of world politics that make certain paths realizable over others. This is so for several key reasons. First, the forum of Canadian parliamentary debate is used by politicians, particularly those in the government, to justify their policies. In appealing to constituents, politicians argue for a policy’s necessity based on representations of concepts like “the national interest,” “national identity,” and “alliance obligations,” all of which draw together various understandings in situating one policy as superior to other policies. Politicians may, of course, lie, mislead, or use ambiguous terminology in justifying a foreign policy; nevertheless, they do so within certain intersubjective confines. Charting those confines reveals the “intersubjective meaning that condition the social and political possibilities within a given community, site, or field.”110 That Canadian governments, for example, strategically framed the Afghanistan War as a “mission” rather than a “war” to the Canadian public111 reveals part of how Canada’s sustained involvement in the region became possible—in appealing to preexisting assumptions about Canadian identity as peacekeepers rather than war-makers—regardless as to what the Prime Minister thought at the time.

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Second, representations articulated by politicians in the House of Commons are informed, to varying degrees, by understandings and meanings located in wider Canadian society. It is essential to support discursive analysis of parliamentary rhetoric with analysis of discourses in wider Canadian society, as this study does. While politicians do not always “speak back” such understandings verbatim, they filter their foreign policy formulations through popular narratives in Canadian society to legitimize their own views to constituents.112 In this sense, parliamentary debates reflect intersubjective meanings found in society without which foreign policies would make little sense to the public. While politicians are free to argue, for example, that Canada ought to mobilize troops in anticipation of an intergalactic war on Mars because Canadians have always been defenders of the universe, such a policy and self-understanding are foreign to Canadian society, and have little relevance to constituents and therefore little role in making a certain policy politically possible. Question Period within the House is an especially vibrant period for the appearance of such understandings as the argumentative nature of this period, in giving opposition parties the opportunity to debate the government’s justifications, often resulting in different policies, understandings, and justifications competing in such an environment. In this sense, accounting for how a foreign policy became politically possible requires not only analysing the representations of the governing party, but also those of all parties in the House as representations compete, develop, and adjust through the dynamic and competitive interactions of debate. While any analysis of societal and institutional discourses is inevitably limited in scope, the historic downplaying of Canadian Parliament’s significance to Canadian foreign policy has left parliamentary discourses mostly unaccounted for when it comes to analysing Canada and the “War on Terror.” This study contends that a full accounting of how Canada became involved in Afghanistan and not Iraq requires attention be directed to the rhetorical contests and discursive competition that took place during these debates, including those emerging from dissenting voices in the House who, while ultimately failing to have their preferred policies adopted, played a vital role in contributing to the discursive terrain through which the adopted policies took shape.

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The Purchase of Theorizing Discursive Practices in the Case of Canada and the “Global War on Terror” This book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between Canadian identity and Canadian foreign policy and one that offers a fruitful path forward through the theoretical impasse outlined in the previous section. To navigate the divisions plaguing previous approaches, I present an approach to analysing Canadian identity and Canadian foreign policy that captures both the discursive articulations of parliamentarians that produce diverse and even opposing representations of Canadian identity and the habitual rhetorical practices that structure such articulations so we hear similar sounding words and phrases, even as they take on different meanings. Such a framework approaches the “rhetoric-reality gap” not as a gap at all, but as a feedback loop. Whereas previous studies utilize political rhetoric of Canadian identity to measure how accurately Canadian foreign policy reflects this rhetoric in a linear relationship, this book approaches identity rhetoric and foreign policy as co-constitutive. The very identity discourses relied on to articulate foreign policies, work to shape the characteristics of the foreign policies themselves. Simultaneously, the articulation and execution of foreign policies provide the grounds to re-articulate and even re-imagine Canadian identity. Rather than identity rhetoric and foreign policy “reality” existing in discrete spheres, the two are constituted hand-in-hand. The purchase of this novel approach to Canadian foreign policy analysis is demonstrated through the prickly case of Canada’s involvement in the “Global War on Terror,” in particular, the Chrétien government’s decision to join the Afghanistan War in 2001 and abstain from the Iraq War in 2003. With the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal re-positioning Canada’s involvement in the Middle East back to the forefront, many key questions surrounding not only Canada’s participation in the region in the first place but how these wars relate to Canadian identity, remain unanswered. How is it that discourses of Canada as a “member of the civilized world,” “protector of innocent women and children,” and “America’s closest ally,” all political justifications for joining the Afghanistan War repeated ad nauseam by government officials, were no longer relevant justifications for joining the Iraq War just two years later? How is it that these familiar rhetorical elements suddenly ceased to be appropriate justifications? If Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan was discursively

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articulated as necessary to uphold Canada’s identity, how could this identity be maintained by not joining the Iraq War that appeared to present similar circumstances to compel Canadian involvement? Finally, moving beyond the Middle East, why does it seem that political elites repeat the same familiar discourses of Canadian identity to justify foreign policy decisions towards dissimilar foreign policy episodes, then and now? This book grapples with these difficult and perplexing questions head-on.

Plan of the Book In what follows, I present Canada’s involvement in the “Global War on Terror” through the lens of three popular narratives of Canadian identity that, I argue, played key roles in two of Canada’s most consequential foreign policy decisions in the twenty-first century: the “yes” to Afghanistan and the “no” to Iraq. Through the reconstruction of parliamentary debates in the House of Commons in the lead up to these foreign policy decisions, I explicate the ways in which the narratives of “Canada as America’s neighbour,” “Canada as protector of foreign civilians,” and “Canada as champion of multilateralism,” became introduced, adapted, and repeated as policies of active military participation and non-participation became possible. Weaving insights from theories of discourse and practice in IR, Chapter 2 develops a novel theoretical framework to analyse the relationship between identity and foreign policy. The framework is premised on its ability to capture both the stable and fluid elements of identity rhetoric emerging from parliamentary debate and implicated in making certain foreign policies politically possible. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 as empirical case studies, each focus on the deployment and re-imagination of a prominent narrative of Canadian identity within foreign policy debates on the “Global War on Terror.” Analysing the history of these narratives before turning to their deployments in contemporary foreign policy debates, these chapters explore the ways in which Canada’s position towards involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq was articulated as a matter of identity. Moving beyond the “Global War on Terror,” Chapter 6 surveys the current landscape of Canadian foreign policy in assessing the continued relevance of these narratives to Canada’s navigation of world politics

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today. In exploring Canadian articulations of major events in world politics, from the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States, to the COVID-19 global pandemic, to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this chapter demonstrates the persistence of these three familiar narratives in contemporary Canadian foreign policy discourse. Finally, the concluding chapter reflects on the consequences of their enduring place in Canadian foreign policy visions.

Notes 1. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 1st session, 1110h–1120h. 2. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Routledge, i. 3. Rather than using the phrasing “state” identity or “national” identity, throughout this book, I elect to refer specifically to Canadian or American “identity” or “identities of states.” This choice is made to emphasize “identity” as referring to rhetorical articulations of “identity;” basic statements of “who we are,” and “who they are,” that draw together ideas both from domestic society and the international sphere, rather than referencing more formal notions of “state” or “national” identity that generally emphasize one arena over the other. See Ashizawa, K. (2008). When Identity Matters: State Identity, Regional Institution-Building, and Japanese Foreign Policy. International Studies Review 10, 574–576. 4. For a review of contemporary challenges facing Canada, see Carment, D. & Nimijean, R. (Eds). (2021). Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan. 5. Campbell, D. (1992). Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press; original Foucault, M. (1984). The Order of Discourse. In Shapiro, M. (Ed). Language and Politics. New York University Press. 6. There is a plethora of studies analyzing Canadian public opinion in relation to the Afghanistan War. For a sample, see Boucher, J.C. (2009). Selling Afghanistan: A Discourse Analysis of Canada’s Military Intervention (2001–2008). International Journal 64(3), 717–733; Nossal, K.R. (2010). Rethinking the Security Imaginary: Canadian Security and the Case of Afghanistan. In Charbonneau, B. & Cox, W. (Eds). Locating Global Order: American Power and Canadian Security After 9/11. University of British Columbia Press. 7. Neumann, I.B. (2002). Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31(3), 631; Swidler, A. (2000). What Anchors Cultural Practices. In K.

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9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18.

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Knorr Cetina et al. (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Routledge, 94. Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructivism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Open University Press; Jackson, P.T. (2006). Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press; Pouliot, V. (2010). The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Rhetorical Commonplaces and Committee Meetings in Russia-Atlantic Relations. Cooperation and Conflict 45(3), 294–311. Shotter, J. (1993), 3–4. The “War on Terror” (WOT) and “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) remain phrases fraught with controversies, inconsistencies, mischaracterizations and spurious assumptions. While a key feature of the George W. Bush-era parlance in discussing the scope of America’s perceived threats and responses, the phrases were phased out of official communications during the Obama presidency. “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO) quickly replaced “GWOT.” See Wilson, S. & Kamen, A. (Mar 25, 2009). The Washington Post, A.4. While the Canadian government did not formally participate in the invasion of Iraq, it did dispatch Canadian troops to the theatre of operations in Iraq, which can be seen as far more of a contribution than those offered by many official members of the “coalition of the willing.” See Vucetic, S. (2006). Why Did Canada Sit Out Of The Iraq War? One Constructivist Analysis. Canadian Foreign Policy 13(1), 133. See ‘American Review of Canadian Studies’ special issue on Canada’s Commitment to Afghanistan (2010) 40(2). Bush, G.W. (2002, January 29). State of the Union Address. Harper, S. (2006, March 13). Address by the Prime Minister to the Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Office of the Prime Minister. Trudeau, J. (2022, May 8). Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelenskyy Joint Press Conference, Kyiv. Smith, P. (2005). Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, The Gulf War, and Suez. The University of Chicago Press. Ontological security-based approaches in IR have made, perhaps, the most headway on this front. See Kinnvall, C. & Mitzen, J. (2017). An Introduction to the Special Issue: Ontological Securities in World Politics. Cooperation and Conflict 52(1); Steele, B.J. (2008). Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State. Routledge. For an insightful accounting of narrative and foreign policy change, see Subotic, J. (2016). Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change. Foreign Policy Analysis 12. Bertucci, M.E., Hayes, J., & James, P. (Eds). (2018). Constructivism Reconsidered: Past, Present, and Future. University of Michigan Press.

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19. Searle, J.R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press. 20. Onuf, N. (2018). Preface: The Dinosaur Speaks! In Bertucci et al. (Eds), 11. 21. Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy Is What Staes Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics. International Organizations 46(2), 398. 22. Wendt, A. (1992). 23. Wendt, A. (1995). Constructing International Politics. International Security 20(1), 73. 24. For example, see Adler, E. (2013). Constructivism in International Relations: Sources, Contributions, and Debates. In Carlsnaes, W., Risse, T., & Simmons, B.A. (Eds). Handbook of International relations (2nd ed). SAGE; Barder, A. & Levine, D. (2012). “The World Is Too Much for Us”: Reification and the Depoliticising of Via Media Constructivist IR. Millennium 40(3); Berenskoetter, F. (2010). Identity in International Relations. In The International Studies Encyclopedia. WileyBlackwell; Bertucci et al. (2018); Checkel, J. (2004). Social Constructivisms in Global and European Politics. Review of International Studies 30(2); Jepperson, R.L., Wendt, A., & Katzenstein, P.J. (1996). Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security. In Katzenstein, P. (Ed). The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics. Columbia University Press; Vucetic, S. (2017). Identity and Foreign Policy. In James, P. (Ed). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. 25. Vuectic, S. (2017), 2; Hansen, L. (2006), 19. 26. I speak of “constructivisms” so as to acknowledge the diversity among constructivist approaches in IR. See Sjoberg, L. & Barkin, S.J. (2018). If It Is Everything, It Is Nothing: An Argument for Specificity in Constructivisms. In Bertucci et al. (2018). 27. Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press. 28. Vucetic, S. (2017), 5; original in Abdelal, R., Herrera, Y.M., Johnston, A.I., & McDermott, R. (2009). Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social Scientists. Cambridge University Press. 29. Hansen, L. (2006), 19. 30. Smith, S. (2000). ‘Wendt’s World’. Review of International Studies 26, 151. 31. Arfi, B. (2010). Fantasy in the Discourse of ‘Social Theory of International Politics’. Cooperation and Conflict 45(4); Doty, R. (2000). Desire All the Way Down. Review of International Studies 26. 32. Wendt, A. (1999), 77; Smith, S. (2000), 154. 33. Solomon, T. (2015). The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses. University of Michigan Press, 12; original in Adler,

1

34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

48. 49. 50. 51 52. 53.

54.

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E. (1997). Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics. European Journal of International Relations 3(3). For a critical examination on this “middle ground” see Onuf, N. (2018), 13. Vucetic, S. (2017), 11; original in Adler, E. (2013), 116–117. Hansen, L. (2006), 19. Doty, R.L. (1996). Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North–South Relations. University of Minnesota Press, 6. Doty, R.L. (2000), 138. Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, 108. Hansen, L. (2006). Campbell, D. (1992), 4. Ibid., 11. Ibid., 11. Solomon (2015), 12. Doty, R.L. (1993). Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A PostPositivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines. International Studies Quarterly 37(3), 302 (emphasis in original). Epstein, C. (2010) Who Speaks? Discourse, the Subject and the Study of Identity in International Politics. European Journal of International Relations 17(2), 342. Benabdallah, L. (2020). Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations. University of Michigan Press, 56. Ibid., 48; original in Persaud, R. (2002). Situating Race in International Relations: The Dialectics of Civilizational Security in American Immigration. In Chowdhry, G. & Nair, S. (Eds). Power, Post-Colonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class. Routledge, 54–65. Doty, R.L. (1996). Ibid., 13. Campbell, D. (1992), 9 (emphasis in original). Ibid., 165 (emphasis added). Ibid., 72 (emphasis added). Along similar lines, Jutta Weldes suggests: “with their successful repeated articulation, these linguistic elements come to seem as though they are inherently or necessarily connected and the meaning they produce come to seem natural, to be an accurate description of reality.” See Weldes, J. (1996) Constructing National Interests. European Journal of International Relations 2(3), 285. McCourt, D. (2016). Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New Constructivism. International Studies Quarterly 60(3), 478.

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55. Hayes, J. (2015). Nuclear Disarmament and Stability in the Logic of Habit. The Nonproliferation Review 22(3–4); Howard, L.M. (2015). US Foreign Policy Habits in Ethnic Conflict. International Studies Quarterly 59(4). 56. Charrett, C. (2019). Ritualised Securitisation: The European Union’s Failed Response to Hamas’s Success. European Journal of International Relations 25(1). Oren, I. & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitisation Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases. Review of International Studies 41(2). 57. Mitzen, J. (2006). Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Relations 12(3); Steele, B.J. (2008). Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State. Routledge. 58. Solomon, T. (2019). Rhythm and Mobilization in International Relations. International Studies Quarterly 63. 59. Solomon (2015). 60. Holland, J. (2013). Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11. Routledge; Vucetic, S. (2021). Greatness and Decline: National Identity and British Foreign Policy. McGill-Queen’s University Press. 61. Holland, J. (2013). 62. Hansen, L. (2006). 63. Benabdallah, L. (2020). 64. Hart, M. (2008) From Pride to Influence: Towards a New Canadian Foreign Policy. University of British Columbia Press, 203. 65. Klassen, J. & Albo, G. (2013). Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan. University of Toronto Press; Massie, J. (2019). Why Canada Goes to War: Explaining Combat Participation in US-led Coalitions. Canadian Journal of Political Science 52. 66. Barry, D. (2005). Chretien, Bush, and the War in Iraq. The American Review of Canadian Studies. 35(2); Gross Stein, J. & Lang, E. (2007). The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Penguin. 67. Boucher, J.C. & Nossal, K.R. (2017). The Politics of War: Canada’s Afghanistan Mission, 2001–14. University of British Columbia Press (ebook); Juneau, T. & Momani, B. (2022). Middle Power in the Middle East: Canada’s Foreign and Defence Policies in a Changing Region. University of Toronto Press. 68. Hart, M. (2008), 19. 69. Bloomfield, A. (2012). Time to Move On: Reconceptualizing the Strategic Culture Debate. Contemporary Security Policy 33(3); Gray, C.S. (1999) Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back. Review of International Studies 25(1); Haglund, D. (2004). What Good Is Strategic Culture: A Modest Defence of an Immodest

1

70.

71.

72. 73. 74.

75. 76.

77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

85.

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33

Concept. International Journal 59(3); Haglund, D. (2009). And the Beat Goes On: “Identity” and Canadian Foreign Policy. In Bothwell, R. & Daudelin, J. (Eds). Canada Among Nations 2008: 100 Years of Canadian Foreign Policy. McGill-Queen;s University Press, 345–347; Johnston, A.I. (1995). Thinking about Strategic Culture. International Security 19(4); Poore, S. (2003). What Is the Context? A Reply to the Gray-Johnston Debate on Strategic Culture. Review of International Studies 29(2). Bloomfield, A. & Nossal, K.R. (2007). Towards an Explicative Understanding of Strategic Culture: The Cases of Australia and Canada. Contemporary Security Policy 28(2), 288; Haglund, D. (2009), 345–347. Massie, J. (2009). Making Sense of Canada’s “Irrational” International Security Policy: A Tale of Three Strategic Cultures. International journal 64(3). Bloomfield, A. & Nossal, K.R. (2007). McKay, J.R. (2018). Why Canada Is Best Explained as a ‘Reliable Ally’ in 2017. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 16(2). O’Connor, B. & Vucetic, S. (2010). Another Mars-Venus divide? Why Australia Said ‘Yes’ and Canada Said ‘Non’ to Involvement in the 2003 Iraq War. Australian Journal of International Affairs 64(5). Massie, J. (2009), 644. O’Connor, B. & Vucetic, S. (2010). For a rebuttal, see Sampford, C. (2015). Cheerleaders of Folly: Australia’s Misguided Attempt to Be a Good Ally. In Thakur, R. & Cunningham, J. Australia, Canada and Iraq: Perspective on an Invasion. Dundurn Press (ebook). Massie, J. (2008). Regional Strategic Subcultures: Canadians and the Use of Force in Afghanistan. Canadian Foreign Policy 14(2). O’Connor, B. & Vucetic, S. (2010), 539 (emphasis added). Weldes, J. (1999). Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis. University of Minnesota Press, 10. Nossal, K.R. (2010), 107–108. Boucher, J. & Nossal, K.R. (2017) (ebook). Ibid., 77. Bhabha, H.K. (2004). The Location of Culture. Routledge, xxii. Francis, D. (1997). National Dreams, Myth, Memory, and Canadian History. Arsenal Pulp Press, 10–11. Francis hypothesizes that this is because Canada has such a diverse and sparsely located population throughout the expansive Canadian territory that, relative to other countries, there is greater need to develop narratives about what binds these disparate individuals as a collective. Kymlicka, W. (2003). Being Canadian. Government and Opposition 38(3), 358. Though neither focuses extensively on Canadian foreign policy, Canadian philosophers Kymlicka, along with Charles Taylor,

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86. 87. 88.

89. 90. 91.

92. 93.

94.

95.

96.

97.

have published prolifically on the sociology of identity, providing a background from which Canadian scholars of national identity have frequently drawn. See Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Harvard University Press; (1992). Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press; (2007). A Secular Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; Kymlicka, W. (1989). Liberalism, Community and Culture. Oxford University Press; (2001). Politics in the Vernacular: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Citizenship. Oxford University Press; Kymlicka, W. (2007). Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity. Oxford University Press. Kymlicka, W. (2003), 359. Stairs, D. (2003). Myths, Morals, and Reality in Canadian Foreign Policy. International Journal 58(2), 240. Nossal, K.R. (2005). Ear Candy: Canadian Policy Toward Humanitarian Intervention and Atrocity Crimes in Darfur. International Journal 60(4), 1020. Ibid., 1018. Ibid., 1020. Whitworth, S. (2005). Militarized Masculinities and the Politics of Peacekeeping: The Canadian Case. In Booth, K. (Ed). Critical Security Studies and World Politics. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 96. Ibid., 109. Marland, A. & Flanagan, T. (2013). Brand New Party: Political Branding and the Conservative Party of Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science 46(4), 952. See also Marland, A. (2017). Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control. University of British Columbia Press. Nimijean, R. (2018). Introduction: Is Canada Back? Brand Canada in a Turbulent World. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 24(2), 131 (emphasis added). See Arat-Koc, S. (2005). The Disciplinary Boundaries of Canadian Identity After September 11: Civilizational Identity, Multiculturalism, and the Challenge of Anti-Imperialist Feminism. Social Justice 32(4); Jiwani, Y. (2009). Helpless Maidens and Chivalrous Knights: Afghan Women in the Canadian Press. University of Toronto Quarterly 78(2); Young, I.M. (2003). The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State. Signs 29(1). Hunt, Krista. (2002). The Strategic Co-optation of Women’s Rights: Discourse in the “War on Terrorism”. International Feminist Journal of Politics 4(1), 120. Howell, A. (2005). Peaceful, Tolerant and Orderly? A Feminist Analysis of Discourses of ‘Canadian Values’. Canadian Foreign Policy 12(1), 51.

1

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104.

105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

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Doty, R.L. (1996). Howell, A. (2005). 49, 60–62. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 50. Nossal, K.R., Roussel, S., & Paquin, S. (2015). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy, 4th edition. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 302. Nossal, K.R. (1985). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy, 1st edition. Prentice-Hall Canada, 163–186. See also: Dutil, P. (2017). Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden. University of British Columbia Press. Nossal, K.R., Roussel, S., & Paquin, S. (2015), 305. Original in Lagassé, P. (2014). When Does Parliament Get to Vote on Military Deployments? CIPSBlog, 8 September 2014. http://cips.uottawa.ca/when-does-parlia ment-get-to-vote-on-military-deployments/. Eayrs, J. (1961). The Art of the Possible: Government and Foreign Policy in Canada. University of Toronto, 104. Nossal, K.R., Roussel, S., & Paquin, S. (2015), 295. Holland, J. (2011). Foreign Policy and Political Possibility. European Journal of International Relations 19(1), 51; Doty, R.L. (1996), 4. Doty, R.L. (1996), 4. Ibid., 4. Vucetic, S. (2011). The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialised Identity in International Relations. Stanford University Press, 5. Boucher, J.C. & Nossal, K.R. (2017) (ebook), 6. Hansen, L. (2006), 7.

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Massie, J. (2019). Why Canada Goes to War: Explaining Combat Participation in US-Led Coalitions. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 52, 575–594. McKay, J. R. (2018). Why Canada Is Best Explained as a ‘Reliable Ally’ in 2017. Journal of Transatlantic Studies, 16(2), 137–164. Mitzen, J. (2006). Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Relations, 12(3), 341–370. Nimijean, R. (2018). Introduction: Is Canada Back? Brand Canada in a Turbulent World. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 24(2), 127–138. Nossal, K. R. (2005). Ear Candy: Canadian Policy Toward Humanitarian Intervention and Atrocity Crimes in Darfur. International Journal, 60(4), 1017–1032. Nossal, K. R. (2010). Rethinking the Security Imaginary: Canadian Security and the Case of Afghanistan. In B. Charbonneau & W. Cox, (Eds.), Locating Global Order: American Power and Canadian Security after 9/11. University of British Columbia Press. Nossal, K. R. (1985). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (1st ed.). PrenticeHall Canada. Nossal, K. R., Roussel, S., & Paquin, S. (2015). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (4th ed.). McGill-Queen’s University Press. Neumann, I. B. (2002). Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 31(3), 627–651. O’Connor, B., & Vucetic, S. (2010). Another Mars-Venus Divide? Why Australia Said ‘Yes’ and Canada Said ‘Non’ to Involvement in the 2003 Iraq War. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 64(5), 526–548. Onuf, N. (2018). Preface: The Dinosaur Speaks! In M. E. Bertucci, J. Hayes, & P. James (Eds.), Constructivism Reconsidered: Past, Present, and Future. University of Michigan Press. Oren, I., & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitisation Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases. Review of International Studies, 41(2), 313–336. Persaud, R. (2002). Situating Race in International Relations: The Dialectics of Civilizational Security in American Immigration. In G. Chowdhry & S. Nair (Eds.), Power, Post-Colonialism and International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class. Routledge. Poore, S. (2003). What Is the Context? A Reply to the Gray-Johnston Debate on Strategic Culture. Review of International Studies, 29(2), 279–284. Pouliot, V. (2010). The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Rhetorical Commonplaces and Committee Meetings in Russia-Atlantic Relations. Cooperation and Conflict, 45(3), 294–311.

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Sampford, C. (2015). Cheerleaders of Folly: Australia’s Misguided Attempt to Be a Good Ally. In R. Thakur & J. Cunningham (Eds.), Australia, Canada and Iraq: Perspective on an Invasion. Dundurn Press. Searle, J. R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press. Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructivism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Open University Press. Sjoberg, L., & Barkin, S. J. (2018) If It Is Everything, It Is Nothing: An Argument for Specificity in Constructivisms. In M. E. Bertucci, J. Hayes, J. & P. James (Eds.), Constructivism Reconsidered: Past, Present, and Future. University of Michigan Press. Smith, P. (2005). Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, The Gulf War, and Suez. The University of Chicago Press. Smith, S. (2000). Wendt’s World. Review of International Studies, 26, 151–163. Solomon, T. (2015). The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign Policy Discourses. University of Michigan Press. Solomon, T. (2019). Rhythm and Mobilization in International Relations. International Studies Quarterly, 63, 1001–1013. Stairs, D. (2003). Myths, Morals, and Reality in Canadian Foreign Policy. International Journal, 58(2), 239–256. Steele, B. J. (2008). Ontological Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State. Routledge. Subotic, J. (2016). Narrative, Ontological Security, and Foreign Policy Change. Foreign Policy Analysis, 12, 610–627. Swidler, A. (2000). What Anchors Cultural Practices. In K. Knorr Cetina et al. (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory. Routledge. Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (1992). Ethics of Authenticity. Harvard University Press. Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Trudeau, J. (2022, May 8). Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelenskyy Joint Press Conference, Kyiv. Vucetic, S. (2006). Why Did Canada Sit Out Of The Iraq War? One Constructivist Analysis. Canadian Foreign Policy, 13(1), 133–153. Vucetic, S. (2011). The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialised Identity in International Relations. Stanford University Press. Vucetic, S. (2017). Identity and Foreign Policy. In P. James (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. Vucetic, S. (2021). Greatness and Decline: National Identity and British Foreign Policy. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Weldes, J. (1996). Constructing National Interests. European Journal of International Relations, 2(3), 275–318. Weldes, J. (1999). Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis. University of Minnesota Press.

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Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics. International Organizations, 46(2), 391–425. Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge University Press. Wendt, A. (1995). Constructing International Politics. International Security, 20(1), 71–81. Whitworth, S. (2005). Militarized Masculinities and the Politics of Peacekeeping: The Canadian Case. In K. Booth (Ed.), Critical Security Studies and World Politics. Lynne Rienner Publishers. Wilson, S., & Kamen, A. (2009, March 25). ‘Global War on Terror’ Is Given New Name; Bush’s Phrase is Out, Pentagon Says. The Washington Post. Young, I. M. (2003). The Logic of Masculinist Protection: Reflections on the Current Security State. Signs, 29(1), 1–25.

CHAPTER 2

Identity and Foreign Policy as Discursive Practices: A Framework

Introduction When a close friend, a neighbour, a fellow member of the great family of western civilization is affected in this way, we cannot remain indifferent. No one here in this House [of Commons] is indifferent. (Richard Marceau, MP Bloc Québécois, imploring Canada to participate alongside the US in Afghanistan, House of Commons Debate, 37th Parli., 1st Sess., September 25, 2001)1 There are some in the House [of Commons] who believe we should support efforts of our American neighbours just because they are our neighbours and because we share a common border. I am afraid I do not buy this argument. If my friend was about to commit a crime or do something that was morally wrong, I could not stand by that friend no matter how much he or she meant to me personally. In fact, I would not support a family member if that person’s actions were illegal or immoral… (Janko Peric, MP Liberal Party, arguing against Canada’s participation alongside the US in the Iraq War, House of Commons Debate, 37th Parl., 2nd Sess., March 17, 2003)2 Any reasonable student of history or of freedom, and any reasonable analyst of how the world truly works would come to only one conclusion: that the free world has an obligation to our children and all the children of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_2

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the world to insist on civilization, to purge the world of its murderers and restore stability… (James Moore, MP Canadian Alliance, articulating Canada’s obligations to join coalition forces in Afghanistan in defence of the world’s children, House of Commons Debate, 37th Parl., 1st Sess., September 17, 2001)3 Yes, Saddam Hussein has made his people suffer and is still making them suffer…but this is not a good enough reason to make war when the international order is not threatened. (Jocelyn Girard-Bujold, MP Bloc Québécois, debating Canada’s participation alongside the US in the Iraq War, House of Commons Debates , 37th Parl., 2nd Sess., March 20 2003)4

How did narratives of Canada as a “member of the civilized world,” “protector of innocent civilians,” and “America’s closest ally,” all popular justifications for Canada’s participation in the Afghanistan War in 2001, repeated ad nauseam by government officials, suddenly justify nonintervention in Iraq just two years later? In 2001, fighting alongside its American neighbour in defence of innocent civilians, an action apparently demonstrating both Canada’s membership in “Western civilization” and reinforcing the country’s supposed basic principles and duties, compelled Canada to take action in Afghanistan. Just two years later, however, spurning the Americans, rather than joining them, was articulated as a reinforcement of Canadian moral principles while leaving innocent Iraqi civilians to suffer under an oppressive regime was no longer an abandonment of Canada’s reputation, but a reinforcement of it. It is not that these narratives disappeared or were replaced by those “more fitting” to the circumstances from 2001 to 2003. What it takes to remain “civilized,” how best to protect innocent people in foreign countries, and what it means to be “America’s closest ally,” remained central to discussions on both wars in the House of Commons. Yet, the very meaning of these narratives changed drastically, and hence, so did the policies that were ultimately adopted. This chapter develops a novel theoretical framework to analyse the relationship between identity and foreign policy. It presents a framework to systematically analyse how and to what end elements of identity narratives of states endure across foreign policy episodes, while others fade away. The basis of the framework is its ability to simultaneously capture two primary elements of identity and foreign policy that previous examinations have failed to adequately apprehend: the dynamic and enduring

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identity rhetoric implicated in foreign policy decision-making. The framework presented in this chapter is three-pronged, drawing insights from three distinct scholarly literatures that are merged to offer innovative ways to understand, in subsequent chapters, how Canada became involved in the “Global War on Terror” in the ways that it did and the key role identity rhetoric played in the process. The chapter proceeds through an explication of each element of the framework in turn. First, poststructural approaches to foreign policy analysis in IR are elaborated as they offer an account of identity as discursive and dynamic (rather than essentialised) and deeply implicated in foreign policy-making, rather than coincidental or separate. Second, these insights are combined with those drawn from a segment of specifically discourse-sensitive theories of practices in IR, namely, insights inspired by what I call the “early practice turn scholarship” of Emanuel Adler, Vincent Pouliot, and Iver Neumann. “Practice” is a widely studied concept in IR, but this framework is based on a particular understanding of practices that lends itself to fleshing out the significance of rhetorical practices—the words and phrases that one habitually repeats in a given context—to foreign policy decisionmaking. Combining these insights produces a framework that is capable of analysing both the dynamic elements of discourses of identity prone to change and the patterned rhetorical elements of these discourses that are consistently repeated over different foreign policy episodes, even as their exact meanings shift. These rhetorical practices that feature both dynamic and static elements, the repeated uttering of similar words and phrases that often find themselves embedded in different meanings in different contexts, are what I refer to as discursive practices. But how can these insights be “captured” methodologically? How does one know a discursive practice when they see one? The third and final prong of this theoretical framework mobilizes insights from social psychologist John Shotter, specifically Shotter’s conception of rhetorical commonplaces, which I posit act as the observable incarnate of discursive practices. As a “linchpin” of discourse and practice, focusing on rhetorical commonplaces allows one to see the interplay of consistency and inconsistency that I argue has escaped previous approaches to understanding Canadian identity and foreign policy. In the chapters that follow, this framework is mobilized to offer insights on the case studies examined: Canada’s decisions to join the Afghanistan War in 2001 and abstain from the Iraq War in 2003.

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Identity and Foreign Policy as Discourse What does it mean to conceive of identity as discourse? Identity is often thought to be the core element that makes you “you,” from one’s attitudes and interests to attributes associated with conceptions of race, gender, and nationality. It is, to put it crudely, what you bring to the table. Identity language is as common in sayings like “Canadians are friendly” as it is in the more scholarly language of “China is a rising power,” “the American hegemon,” or discussions of the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. These are usually taken as identity attributes entities “bring to the table,” formulating an assumed starting point for scholarly research to begin from. Often inquiries ask: given certain attributes of a state, how will it behave relative to some event? Given America’s status as a “global hegemon,” how will it react to rising challengers? As a “middle-power,” will Canada seek to use its standing to influence international environmental policies? The notion that identity precedes interaction, or in IR terms, identity precedes foreign policy, however, has long been challenged by a segment of IR scholars, particularly those sharing the basic ontological assumptions of poststructuralist approaches in IR. “Poststructuralism” has come to signify an array of research in IR since the 1980s, united in offering significantly different ontological, epistemological, and methodological starting points for the examination of world politics from traditional rationalist approaches. The first prong of the theoretical framework offered in this chapter draws on poststructuralist insights regarding the conceptualization of identity as discursive, relational, and productive and its integral relationship to foreign policy. Identity as Discursive, Relational, and Productive To approach identity as discursive is to begin with a skepticism towards there ever being a single, objective truth that can be uncovered about the world “as it really is.” This notion stems from the key assumption of poststructuralist approaches: there is no extra-discursive realm we can escape to in order to see the “true” world. Hence, research inspired by poststructuralist approaches tends to be critical of grand theories and meta-narratives within IR, and instead problematize subjective, or more specifically, intersubjective, discourses that compete for the mantle of being declared “knowledge” in different social contexts. In this sense,

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discourse plays a constitutive role—it shapes the very ways in which we understand key concepts like “the state,” “identity,” “foreign policy,” “America,” and “Canada.” Rather than uncovering objective “facts,” those inspired by poststructuralist insights approach world politics “as an historically emergent and always contested product of multiple practices, multiple alien interpretations which struggle, clash, deconstruct, and displace one another. As such, a field of practice—be it the field of economics, say, or the field of domestic politics in the United States—is seen as ‘a field of clashes,’ a battlefield.”5 In this sense, these approaches focus on identity with an “interpretive optic;” identities do not exist in an extra-discursive realm beyond our interpretations waiting for their objective nature to be gleaned, but rather, we are only able to make sense of identity through discourses that compete to make a certain understanding hegemonic. In this light, essentialist notions of Canadian identity or that a uniquely “Canadian historical experience” grounds Canadian foreign policy, are rather the content of dominant discourses of identity. As are notions that Canadian identity is based purely in myths Canadians by and large believe in about themselves. These competing understandings of Canadian identity and foreign policy are precisely the kind of discursive “battlefield” alluded to above. Approaching identity as discursive suggests that world politics does not occur among actors whose identities preexist their interactions, nor solidify immutably because of them. Instead, world politics is the very means through which identities are articulated, debated, and rearticulated as interactions among competing discourses about “who we are” and “who they are” are brought to the forefront. This serves to highlight the second key feature of poststructural conceptions of identity as not just discursive but also relational. Discourses of identity, as assertions that an identity is something and not something else, are reliant on other identities. One knows what being Canadian is through knowing what being Canadian is not. The relationality of identity usually manifests in the relationship between Self and Other (or selves and others). According to a Campbell: Identity is constituted in relation to difference. But neither is difference fixed by nature, given by God, or planned by intentional behaviour. Difference is constituted in relation to identity. The problematic of identity / difference contains, therefore, no foundations that are prior to, or outside of, its operation…Moreover, the constitution of identity is

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achieved through the inscription of boundaries that serve to demarcate an “inside” from an “outside,” a “self” from an “other,” a “domestic” from a “foreign.”6

In other words, assertions of identity never occur in a vacuum, but rather within a network of identities. To speak of “Canadians values,” the “civilized world,” and “innocent civilians,” is to constitute their opposing identities of “non-Canadians,” “the barbaric and uncivilized,” and “guilty actors.”7 And these networks need not be limited to simple binary relations between perfectly opposing identities of a single Self and Other, a good and an evil, or a civilized and uncivilized identity. More often, identities are discursively constituted through competing notions of the Self (Selves) and varying degrees of “Otherness” of the Others, from radical opposites, to group members, and even friends.8 In this sense, identity discourses are not merely benign descriptions of subjects and objects in the world but constitute the ways we understand the world itself. In so doing, they make certain paths more realizable than others. Simply put, they do not describe reality, they produce it. The productive power of identity discourses is particularly potent when it comes to foreign policy because identity discourses fulfill two functions of a state’s identity, one outward facing and one inward facing. Outwardly, the very act of articulation, the assertion that something is how it is—form the vehicles through which we make sense of and come to know the world. That Canada is a “friend” of the United States, that Japan is a “threat” to Chinese sovereignty, or that certain behaviour represents “good will” among states or “ill intentions,” constitutes the very terms in which foreign policies are developed to respond. As David Mutimer highlights, “at issue are not ‘the facts’ but the ways in which those facts are assembled and the interpretation that is given to them…We live in a world of risks. Some of them we gather together and frame as ‘threats,’ conferring on them particular significance and making legitimate a range of responses, often including violence.”9 Such articulations, in other words, enable certain policies onto others, they make certain paths more likely while cordoning off others. When the September 11 terrorists attacks are deemed the first aggression in a “battle for civilization,” rather than an isolated incident, the grounds for a full-scale “global war on terror” become more realizable. When the United States is constituted as Canada’s “brother” and “closest friend” rather than a “reckless warmonger,” policies of cooperation with the United States can

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be more likely. Inwardly, the constitution of Others is implicated in the constitution of the Self. Given the relationality of discourses of identity, it is only through “knowing” the Other that one comes to “know” the Self, just as it is only through assertions of “who we are” that “who they are” comes into focus. David Campbell’s Writing Security 10 is perhaps the most exemplary contribution to this literature, as Campbell examines American identity as a product of the constant articulation of threats against America from abroad. “Danger is not an objective condition,” suggests Campbell, “it is not a thing that exists independently of those whom it may become a threat” rather “the constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is thus not a threat to a state’s identity or existence: it is its condition of possibility.”11 Hence, states require constant articulation and re-articulation of their identity to exist at all. To be clear, the perspective that identities, threats, and relationships are discursive, relational, and productive, is not to deny that states may behave in characteristically similar fashions, that “real” threats like nuclear proliferation or transnational terrorism exist, or that Canada and the United States have been historic allies. It is to say that “there is always an ineluctable debt to interpretation such that there is nothing outside of discourse.”12 How exactly state behaviour is interpreted (is a military exercise a “show of strength” or “routine training?”), which threats are deemed imminent and which are not (is a global pandemic considered a greater threat to Canada than North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons?), and what exactly it means to be “historic allies” (do Canada and the United States align because of shared values or out of necessity?) are not questions that the world offers objective answers, but are meditated through interpretation. Similarly, to approach identity as discursive is not to suggest that identity is not “real” or to suggest that identity is merely “imaginary.” On the contrary, whether or not Canadians actually are the world’s leading proponents of peacekeeping or multilateralism, for example, matters less than the fact that people, including governments, act as if they are; their actions are imbued with such ideas. This dovetails with another common critique of discursive approaches: that examining the discourses of world politics is somehow secondary to examining the “real” physical behaviours that make-up what we call world politics itself (deployment of military troops, the casualties of war, participation in international organizations, signing of treaties, etc.). This critique assumes, however, that a clear distinction exists between interpretations of the world and what one does in that world, a distinction

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poststructural approaches do not make. On the contrary, as Lene Hansen has addressed, “[t]his research program is based on the assumption that policies are dependent upon representations of the threat, country, security problem, or crises they seek to address.”13 Examining Canadian politicians’ “articulations of terrorists in Afghanistan” as “evil” threats to the “civilized world,” for example, a reading that represents Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan War as vital to defending “civilization,” makes neither the Canadian military’s actions in Afghanistan nor the consequences of these actions any less “real.” In fact, it is representations of identities, threats, and interests that contribute to how such policies become real-ized in the first place. As Mutimer suggests, “the imagined nature of threats does not mean that there is no real danger or that nothing need ever be done about risks. Rather, it means that the articulations of threat should not be accepted as self-evident, but must consistently be contested and put into context.”14 Taken together, these insights present a relationship between identity and foreign policy as non-essentialised, consistently contested, and under constant reconstruction and re-articulation. Poststructural approaches offer the theoretical groundwork to understand the importance of identity rhetoric to foreign policies in that such rhetoric is intricately tied up in articulations of the Self and Others and equally how the Self must act towards the Others. But these insights stop short of telling us how one discourse emerges hegemonic over others. They stop short of illuminating the dynamics among competing discourses in a given discursive environment and the specific role played by rhetorical elements of each discourse. In particular, we are not told why certain elements of identity discourses may endure across various foreign policy episodes, remaining hegemonic, while other aspects of these discourses, or the discourses themselves, fade away. For this, we turn to practice theories.

Identity and Foreign Policy as Discursive Practices Understanding how prominent narratives of Canadian identity endure across multiple foreign policy episodes requires a framework to apprehend not only the dynamic but also repeated elements of these narratives. In this section, I introduce and merge insights from theories of practices in IR to those of discourse discussed in the previous section.

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Practices have long been studied in IR. The practices of war, the practices of cooperation, presidents’ and prime ministers’ practices of diplomacy, and so forth, have been the bedrock of IR research for decades. Yet, the so-called “practice turn” in IR is a relatively new phenomenon, widely recognized as ushered into existence with the publication of Emanuel Adler and Vincent Pouliot’s seminal volume International Practices.15 The starting position of practice theories in IR is a simple one: the largescale concepts of war, peace, cooperation, and diplomacy that IR has long been concerned with, have been to the neglect of the everyday “doings” of world politics that bring these concepts into existence—the many varied acts of individuals that, when taken together, constitute what we call war, cooperation, and diplomacy.16 International Practices sought to reverse course on this pattern, and its publication brought a subsequent blossoming of practice-oriented research and debate.17 Within the “big tent” of practice scholarship,18 I draw insights from a particular strand of practice theories, in particular the work of those I refer to as “early” practice turn scholars, namely, Adler, Pouliot, and Iver Neumann. These scholars situated their theorizations within the “practice turn” as particularly amenable to insights drawn from the earlier “linguistic turn” in IR, which brought the relevance of discourse to the forefront of analysis. Adler and Pouliot define practices as: “socially meaningful patterns of action, which, in being performed more or less competently, simultaneously embody, act out, and possibly reify background knowledge and discourse in and on the material world.”19 Based on their definition, practices contain four central elements. First, practices are a type of action, one that is socially meaningful, and hence, are distinct from mere behaviour or action. As Adler and Pouliot explain, because “the concept of behaviour evokes the material dimension of doing, as a deed performed in or on the world; then the notion of action adds an ideational layer, emphasizing the meaningfulness of the deed at both the subjective and intersubjective levels; and, finally, the term ‘practice’ tacks another layer on the edifice or, better put, makes it hang together as one coherent structure, by pointing out the patterned nature of deeds in socially organized contexts.”20 Second, practices are patterned in that they “generally exhibit certain regularities over time and space.”21 Practices take place in socially organized contexts that imbue them with meaning and structure interactions. Adler and Pouliot importantly note, however, that while practices are considerably influenced by social context, they are more than just mere

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iterations, “as there is always wiggle room for agency even in repetition.”22 Thirdly, practices are performances in that they are appraisable by an audience as being performed correctly or incorrectly. In this way, practices are further structured in that individuals use similar standards in which to interpret the practice as more or less correct or appropriate.23 Lastly, there is an important distinction between specific and general practices. Adler and Pouliot embrace Lene Hansen’s particular distinction: specific practices always occur within a context that exhibits a certain level of “taken-for-granted-ness,” in that these performances locate themselves as a part of a more general practice that takes epistemic superiority as a reference point for the specific performance.24 Hansen’s example of a specific practice is expressing alliance solidarity through diplomatic meetings which reference, but also give life to, the more general practices of alliance solidarity and diplomacy. These general practices, of course, exist only through the repeated performance of specific practices that constitute them, though the specific practices only make sense as parts of a more general practice. Adler and Pouliot’s conception of practice is particularly amenable to poststructural insights surrounding discourses of identity discussed in the previous section, namely because speech acts can be powerful practices. Well before the official “practice turn” in IR, Iver Neumann argued that the greatest analytical potential in the study of practices was best realized by examining the close connection between practice and language. Neumann suggested practice-oriented scholarship take its lead from seminal theorists like Foucault who was always attuned to “language in use—on discursive practices,” though Neumann lamented at the time that Foucauldian IR scholarship had often neglected their importance.25 For Neumann, “[p]ractices are discursive, both in the sense that some practices involve speech acts (acts which in themselves gesture outside of narrative), and in the sense that practice cannot be thought ‘outside of’ discourse.”26 Speech acts themselves, by conveying meaning through the structured rules of language and within the social expectations in a given context, are themselves practices. Furthermore, speech acts are never merely linguistic but also productive, “systematically form[ing] the objects of which they speak,”27 inevitably representing the world in specific ways saying “this is how things are.”28 Given that practices, as Adler and Pouliot have defined them, are actions imbued with meaning, they are intricately intertwined with discourse that assigns meaning to subjects and objects in particular contexts.

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Moving Beyond Beliefs, Embracing Consistency and Inconsistency Approaching identity and foreign policy as discursive practices moves the analytical lens beyond the beliefs of individuals, a focal point of many examinations of Canadian foreign policy, while remaining attuned to the interplay of consistent and inconsistent elements of these discursive practices. To be clear, discourse analysis does not necessitate one dabble into the cognitive intentions of those who participate in and produce discourses. Nor does the analysis of articulatory practices necessitate one to explore what the articulating actor believes, intends, or plans to accomplish with such an articulation. Quoting Ann Swidler, Neumann notes that the merger of discourse and practice into one analytical approach can maneuver scholars beyond having to explore the fickle mental states of individuals involved: Practice theory moves the level of sociological attention “down” from conscious ideas and values to the physical and the habitual. But this move is complemented by a move “up,” from ideas located in individual consciousness to the impersonal arena of “discourse.” A focus on discourses, or on “semiotic codes” permits attention to meaning without having to focus on whether particular actors believe, think, or act on any specific ideas. Like language, discourse is conceived to be the impersonal medium through which (with which) thought occurs…A focus on discourse then reintroduces the world of language, symbols, and meanings without making them anyone-in-particular’s meaning…The old terrain of ideas and actors [is] thus split into two domains, that of practices and that of discourses.29

Accordingly, for my discursive practice approach, the task at hand is not to delve into the mental state of politicians who articulate Canadian identity as this and not that. Instead, I focus on the articulatory practices of politicians and their appeals to a supposedly preexisting and essential Canadian identity, the content they attribute to this identity, and what actions this meaning enables and precludes. In so doing, I avoid an endeavour into the mental states of politicians and their intentional content, what they think they are doing, and instead focus on what they do; the “doings” themselves. These “doings,” as we have already discussed, have produced consistent and inconsistent elements. On the one hand, a discursive approach to identity is attuned to the fact that, absent any essential character of Canadian identity to anchor the discourse in any objective feature, the

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discourse of Canadian identity is predicated on constant (re)articulation that is susceptible to adjustment. Foucault noted that the “search for origins,” the genealogist who ventures to chart the essential meaning of a concept, whether Canadian identity or otherwise, finds nothing but “the accidents, the minute deviations…the errors, the false appraisals, and the faulty calculations that gave birth to those things that continue to exist and have value for us.”30 Inconsistency is innate to discourse. Hence, this discursive outlook accounts for the diversity of discourses that become dominant representations of an identity over time. As an example, Hansen’s Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War charts the discourse of “The Balkan” identity through Western articulations which transitioned from a discourse of familiarity that emphasized “The Balkans’” Hellenic past to the more contemporary discourse of “Balkan barbarity” and otherness following World War I.31 On the other hand, practice theories are purposefully attuned to the exact opposite as discourse: that which stays the same. Adler and Pouliot, after all, define practices as “patterns of actions,” Neumann speaks of practices “remain[ing] stable not only because habit engrains standard ways of doing things, but the need to engage one another forces people to return to common structures.”32 In bringing together poststructural and practice-oriented insights into one approach to understanding identity and foreign policy as discursive practices , I argue that we can account for features of this relationship that have to date been ignored or overlooked in the long-argued debate over the relationship between Canadian identity and Canadian foreign policy. By utilizing an approach that moves us beyond individual beliefs and accounting for both the inconsistency of foreign policy decisions and the (seeming) consistency of identity-based language in legitimizing these decisions, such an approach can make sense of the peculiar case of Canada’s decisions towards Afghanistan and Iraq, and in so doing, contribute significantly to debate on Canadian identity and its relationship to Canadian foreign policy. Commonplaces as the Key A final theoretical question remains in need of answering to round out the theoretical framework developed in this chapter: what does a discursive practice of identity and foreign policy look like? If a discursive practice of identity and foreign policy is an articulation of Canadian identity and foreign policy that is also socially meaningful and patterned, how

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will one know where to find it? I suggest a useful approach to thinking about discursive practices of identity and foreign policy is as rhetorical commonplaces, a conceptualization of rhetoric and practice first offered by social psychologist John Shotter, that has received very little attention in the field of IR.33 I argue rhetorical commonplaces act as the observable “linchpin” between my reading of poststructuralism and practice theory. Rhetorical commonplaces are discursive practices in action. A general throughline within Shotter’s decades of scholarship has been the intertwining of language, the body, and social relations and the refutation that any one of these can be neatly separated and analysed apart from the other.34 One of Shotter’s prominent lines of inquiry was examining what he called “knowing of the third kind,” the “everyday ways of knowing…especially concerned with the nature of the ‘background’ upon which we draw in formulating, not only our claims in everyday conversation but also the disciplinary discourse within we discuss our claims to academic knowledge.”35 Shotter was particularly concerned with how this “background” knowledge functioned during a discussion among individuals (what he called “joint action”) that is both simultaneously structured by social expectations and open to creative adjustments. The relevance of two illuminating passages from The Cultural Politics of Everyday Life to my own theoretical framework is worth highlighting in full: The most obvious circumstance in which such joint action occurs, is in dialogue with others, when one must respond by formulating appropriate utterances in reply to their utterances. What they have already said constitutes the ‘situation on hand,’ so to speak, into which one must direct one’s own reply. It is thus clear why, in such circumstances, we as individuals do not quite know why it is that we act as we do: rather than speaking ‘out of’ an inner plan (or mental representation), we speak ‘into’ a context not of our own making, i.e., not under our own immediate control. Thus the formative influences shaping our actions are not there wholly within us, prior to our actions, available to be brought out ahead of time. Thus here, our interest is not in the structures of ‘already spoken words’ (in sentences, as in linguistics), but in ‘words in their speaking’ (in utterances, as I shall explain below)…And in that sense, in being unattributable to an individual agent and open (as mentioned above) to being specified or determined by those involved in it, it can seem to be either a creative event; an accidental, unintended consequence of the interaction; or, a just-happening, impersonal event attributable to an ‘external’ cause or agency…36

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Past human activities provide ‘organized settings’ which contain the resources necessary for the sensible continuation of these past activities; or, to put it another way, previous social activity works to create an ‘order of possibilities’ from which we must choose in deciding upon our next actions—if, that is, they are to be actions ‘appropriate to’ or ‘fitting to’ their circumstances…The future cannot be made to occur by the sheer force of one’s conviction as to its possibility; one must relate one’s actions to what at any one moment is a real possibility within it. Thus, if we are to act in such a way, we must not act solely ‘out of’ our own inner ‘scripts,’ ‘plans’ or ‘ideas,’ but must be sensitive in some way to the opportunities and barriers, the enablements and constraints, ‘afforded’ to us by our circumstances, in order to act ‘into’ them. This grasp, this sensitivity of what is ‘afforded’ us by our circumstances, is what I mean by a knowing of the third kind.37

Two elements of Shotter’s theorizing are particularly relevant to my discussion of discursive practices. The first is that Shotter approaches discussion between individuals as activating an event of creativity and continuation, of purposive decision-making and practice-following. When entering a conversation, like entering a place of worship or place of business, individuals are immediately bound by certain established (historical) social expectations that govern not only how one acts but also what one says, if they wish to behave in a fashion “appropriate to” “their circumstances.” Just as one automatically speaks softly upon entering a church, so too does one automatically engage in the “appropriate” flow of conversation, usually without knowing quite why we act as we do.38 The expectations of appropriateness exist as “background“ knowledge that formulates an “order of possibilities” from which speakers draw from, not always consciously. Within these, “order of possibilities” is room for innovation on the part of speakers. While speakers work within these orders, unable to write their own completely novel “scripts,” history provides “resources” that are “afforded to us” and can be assembled in unique ways to produce a “creative event.” Second, the appropriateness of our rhetoric is based in the deployment of these historical “resources” that can be assembled in unique ways to produce different meanings. Shotter conceptualized public rhetoric as a “living tradition,” anchored by key “historically developed” “topological resources ” or “commonplaces” that can be “expressed or formulated in different ways in different, concrete circumstances” to constitute different positions. In Shotter’s words, the “living tradition…does not give rise to a completely determined form of

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life, but to dilemmas, to different possibilities for living.”39 As Shotter concludes, “the process involved is just as Marx described it: we do indeed make our own history, but not under conditions of our own choosing. Although now, we should not think of our unchosen conditions solely in terms of enablements and constraints (Giddens, 1984)40 but also as providing us with resources and other forms of ‘psychological tools or instruments’ (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986)41 that contribute the make-up of our minds.”42 Patrick Thaddeus Jackson has been among very few in IR to apply Shotter’s insights to world politics and foreign policy in particular. In Civilizing the Enemy,43 Jackson posits that the deployment of rhetorical commonplaces is intricately tied to the legitimacy politicians’ foreign policies garner during a political debate. As historically developed resources with wide circulation in society and open to being formulated in different ways, commonplaces are the raw materials out of which particular world views and representations of Self and Others are articulated so that the representations are presented in a language that makes sense to the audience. As these general notions already have a degree of traction in society, politicians link particular policies to these notions in a way that not only constitutes their representation of identity but gives a specific meaning to the otherwise ambiguous terms.44 For Jackson, examinations of post-World War II German reconstruction and the various American political discourses surrounding Germany’s place relative to “Western Civilization” that arouse from it, are premised on the deployment of commonplaces like “American exceptionalism,” America as a “city on a hill,” and “the preservation of liberty.” Jackson’s analysis is not premised on these commonplaces referring to anything objectively “real” that could render one side of the debate an advantage over the other. Rather, the analysis is based on tracing the deployment of these commonplaces and how these vague terms are articulated in diverse ways and linked to diverse foreign policies that “make sense” to the audiences. Rhetorical Commonplaces and “Making Sense” Applying Shotter’s insights surrounding the theory and function of rhetorical commonplaces to foreign policy illuminates a key mechanism in which to understand how discourses, and their composite elements, compete with one another, with some fading away and others persisting over time. Politicians play key roles in articulating detailed discourses

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of identity during foreign policy debates, but their rhetoric is never entirely detached from the society this rhetoric takes place within. On the contrary, as Jackson highlights, politicians are bound, if their claims are to be legitimized to any degree, to speak within the network of language and meaning already in place within a given societal context. Politicians, in other words, want their articulations to “make sense.” To say that commonplaces allow politicians to formulate their articulations in a manner that “makes sense” to an audience or that they utter their articulations in a way an audience can understand, requires clarification of what exactly “making sense” and “understanding” means in this theoretical framework. The notion that rhetorical commonplaces have traction in society and that they are words an audience can actually understand does not imply that the function of rhetorical commonplaces as utilized in articulatory claims is to garner belief in a particular claim from a particular audience. Plenty of research on the legitimation claims offered by various Canadian politicians about why exactly Canada joined the war in Afghanistan has focused exclusively on these claims’ ability to “sell,” “convince,” and “persuade” the Canadian public of the legitimacy of the effort. The most comprehensive study into Canadian politicians’ legitimacy claims regarding military commitments in Afghanistan has been Boucher and Nossal’s The Politics of War 45 where the authors indict successive Canadian governments with purposefully providing the public with confused, chaotic, and ambiguous descriptions for why Canada was involved in Afghanistan at all. As Boucher and Nossal indicate, “[u]nless justifications make intuitive sense to citizens, support will simply not be forthcoming.”46 What does it mean for such claims to “make intuitive sense” to the Canadian public? The authors consult Western’s five interconnected elements that a citizenry must be convinced of when it comes to justifying an expeditionary operation like the Afghanistan mission: (1) the general rightness of the mission, (2) the rightness of the means selected, (3) the rightness of putting members of the armed forces in harm’s way, (4) the rightness of spending large sums of money on the mission, and (5) the likelihood that the mission will have “positive” effects.47 Convincing the public of these five interconnected elements is related to politicians’ ability to offer their justifications within the bounds of a preexisting experience or dominant understanding of who Canadians are on the world stage. As Western states, “[a]rguments must be plausible. An argument that flies in the face of the public’s experience

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or otherwise strains credulity is not likely to be given much weight— no matter how much the information is controlled or spun.”48 In other words, some kind of experience anchors Canadians’ conception of what counts as a justificatory claim that “makes sense” and what does not. Boucher and Nossal suggest politicians use the “Canadian security imaginary” to modulate their public justifications. They suggest, “[o]ne reason why political leaders in Canada routinely chose to avoid the word ‘war’ to describe policies that involved the use of force in Afghanistan was that war simply did not fit the dominant ‘security imaginary’ of Canadians— in other words, the way in which Canadians viewed the global security environment and their country’s role in it.”49 In short they conclude that “neither the Chrétien or Martin Liberal governments nor the Harper Conservative government—was able to offer Canadians a convincing or persuasive set of reasons why Canada was in Afghanistan or why Canadian soldiers should be dying there.”50 By focusing on how convincing or persuasive a politician’s justificatory claim is, one is limited to assessing the effectiveness of the claim based on measuring an intellectual process whereby a speaker actually convinces or fails to convince an audience through a speech act. This persuasive element between speaker and audience remains a key aspect of the analytical framework of the Copenhagen School’s conception of “securitization”51 which has met much criticism as it remains unclear how the persuasion of an audience can actually be accurately measured.52 Utilizing the theory of rhetorical commonplaces avoids the pitfalls of persuasion-based approaches that remain tied to assessing the beliefs and commitments of the populace. The function of rhetorical commonplaces is not a matter of convincing or persuading an audience but rather a speaker utilizing the appropriate language in a particular context in order to make sense of the situation. Jackson elucidates the difference through the following example: …public officials cannot prevail in a discussion about where we should go for lunch discoursing at length on the creative genius of George Lucas, any more than Slobodan Milosevic could whip up a crowd using nationalist language in Times Square or in downtown St. Louis. This is not because the audience in each case believes different things, but because each set of speakers, audience, and issues is characterized by a group of rhetorical commonplaces on which speakers can draw with any hope of having the audience follow their arguments, let alone be moved to action by them.53

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In this way, we have an alternative conception of politicians’ articulations “making sense” to the public to the common persuasion-based framework. At a more fundamental level than persuasion, an audience must first follow the terms of the articulation to a certain degree before they even decide whether or not to accept the justification. Jackson evidences as much in likening the deployment of rhetorical commonplaces in making an articulation intelligible to a blind person’s use of a cane. He suggests “blind people do not feel their sticks vibrating in the palms of their hands, they experience the terrain ahead of them directly as rough, as a result of their stick-assisted ‘way’ of investigating it in their movements through it. We see through the language we use and are unaware of its prosthetic functioning” unless one calls attention to it.54 In this sense, I do not focus on whether anyone is actually convinced by the articulations of politicians, rather, my focus is on the role that these articulations played in how the opposing decisions on Afghanistan and Iraq were realized. The utterance of these rhetorical commonplaces, I argue, was necessary for politicians to convey a representation of Canadian national identity and foreign policy that “made sense” and allowed for a level of “understanding” among the public that would not have been possible without these familiar commonplaces. Rhetorical commonplaces can then be thought of as the primary nodal points structuring a discursive practice. Rhetorical commonplaces are those “privileged signs around which other signs are ordered; the other signs acquire their meaning from their relationship to [it].”55 Using a medical discourse as an example, the commonplace of “the body” is a central sign around which concepts like “disease,” “symptom,” and “scalpel” orient their meaning. This process, whereby an authoritative “master signifier,” a rhetorical commonplace, like “the body,” strings together, even if only momentarily, a particular understanding of the meaning between itself and its secondary signifiers (“disease” and “symptom”) is referred to as quilting. Neumann summarizes the process of quilting in drawing on philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s passage: The point de capiton [nodal point] is the point through which the subject is “sewn” to the signifier, and at the same time the point which interpellates individuals into subjects by addressing it with the call of a certain mastersignifier (“Communism,” “God,” “Freedom,” “America”)—in a word, it is the point of the subjectivation of the signifier’s chain.56

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This does not, however, imply that a “master signifier” itself has a fixed meaning, or that its privileged status indicates that it somehow is any nearer to an objective meaning for itself. On the contrary, the “master signifier” can only accomplish its authoritative role because it is ambiguous and open to multiple interpretations. As Neumann describes, “When previously free-floating [secondary] signifiers are ‘quilted’ by the master signifier, the master signifier can only perform this task by being itself empty, a lack without meaning, and by imposing itself as a nonfounded founding act of violence.”57 In other words, quilting is a paradoxical process whereby a master signifier, itself without a fixed meaning, strings together (or temporarily fixes) meanings of secondary signifiers, giving them order. The master signifier’s lack of essential meaning leaves it without foundation, but the process of quilting is founded as it provides a basis for the meaning assigned to secondary signs. This is precisely the function of Jackson’s ambiguous rhetorical commonplaces in stringing together signifiers in establishing the meaning of state identities. Rhetorical commonplaces, as familiar but general terms that can be utilized to construct different and even opposing representations of identity, act as the “raw materials” out of which detailed representations of Self and Others are formed. My framework’s focus on rhetorical commonplaces, then, is due to their importance in the meaning-making process; the deployment of the “master signifier” is not identical to the deployment of all other secondary signifiers in an articulation. According to Žižek, their deployment is the moment in which the subject is produced. “Master signifiers,” in quilting together meanings of a series of signifiers, is the point at which discourse comes together to produce its subject. Jenny Edkins explains this “nonfounded founding” of the subject in reference to Jacques Lacan and Žižek: In Lacan the master signifier distorts the symbolic field in the very process of establishing it (temporarily) as a discursive field. Without this distortion, the field of meaning would disintegrate: the role of the paradoxical element is constitutive. As Žižek put its, the Master is an imposter—anyone who finds him or herself at the place of the constitutive lack in the structure will do—but the place he or she occupies cannot be abolished. It can only be rendered visible as empty.58

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Applying these insights to the cases at hand, rhetorical commonplaces related to Canadian identity, as “master signifiers,” are central components of discursive practices of Canadian identity and foreign policy in two ways. First, rhetorical commonplaces authoritatively “string together” secondary signifiers and assign relational meanings among them, like the stitching of separate fabrics together through the literal process of quilting. The commonplace is the main nodal point structuring the particular discourse of Canadian identity and foreign policy. Yet rhetorical commonplaces are also central components of discursive practices in a second way. As previously mentioned, discursive practices are more than just acts of speech given that “saying” is also “doing.” This, of course, is consistent with poststructural approaches to discourse. But when we add the insights of practice theories, what specifically is said does not just constitute practice, in the sense that utterances can be required to have performed the practice correctly, it also constrains and disciplines the overall structure and social context. I argue that rhetorical commonplaces associated with Canadian identity, the words that seem to constantly reappear during foreign policy debate and act as key structuring points of those discussions, act as the indispensable elements which must be uttered in order to be deemed to have participated in the specific practice of Canadian foreign policy debate and for such a practice to make sense. Pouliot provides a particularly illuminating example of both the centrality of commonplaces to foreign relations as well as their constraining abilities. Examining the repeated utterance of the commonplace “Cold War” in modern-day practices of Russian-NATO foreign relations, Pouliot highlights how politicians, from Dick Cheney to Vladimir Putin, as well as an assortment of media outlets, constantly reference the “Cold War” during or describing interactions between Russia and NATO, even those that were cooperative. Despite the fact that the commonplace of the “Cold War” has been associated with a range of meanings over time, this particular commonplace “constitutes a linguistic tool with which, at the level of practice, no one can apparently dispense in discussing NATO-Russia diplomacy.”59 Though politicians in power have shifted, ideologies adjusted, and the context in which these actors engage altered over decades, “the rhetorical commonplace of ‘Cold War’ keeps bringing the past back into the present by forming the commonsensical yardstick against which to assess NATO-Russia politics.”60 Reliance on this commonplace, despite lacking a consistent meaning (or any essential meaning at all), has the power to “capture evolving intersubjective dynamics and lock them into a past background of interaction.”61 This

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example elucidates both the rigidity and constraining aspects of practices alongside the agentic “wiggle room” Alder and Pouliot’s conception of practices describes. Uttering the commonplaces becomes a critical aspect of completing a particular practice and yet the meaning of that speech act is multi-vocal and open to adjustment, and these different meanings may even come to alter the rigidity of the practice itself. Hence, analyzing the play of rhetorical commonplaces is the key to investigating Canadian identity and foreign policy as discursive practices.

Discursive Practices, Canadian Parliament, and the “Global War on Terror” The empirical chapters that follow utilize the three-pronged framework developed here to explore the role of discursive practices of identity and foreign policy in Canada’s involvement in the so-called “Global War on Terror.” In examining how Canada’s “yes” to Afghanistan and “no” to Iraq became politically possible, Chapters 3, 4, and 5 focus in on key moments of early parliamentary debate within the House of Commons as the Canadian government grappled with a series of events that immediately preceded and followed the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. These key “comparative moments”62 offer the opportunity to explore how parliamentarians articulated these events and made sense of Canada’s stance towards them. Given the often argumentative nature of House of Commons sessions, including Question Period, these debates elicit diverse and vivid representations of identities of states, peoples, and institutions forming less of a mosaic of worldviews and more of a layered painting on a canvas; each politician attempting to paint their representation over top of the others, while occasionally maintaining aspects of previous painters’ work that may coincide with or enhance their own depiction. In other words, politicians do not articulate their worldview as if all are equal; they attempt to legitimize their particular representation as a “masterpiece” through a “process of drawing and establishing boundaries, ruling some courses of action acceptable and others unacceptable.”63 A key wager of this study is that this legitimation process is directly attached to politicians’ deployment of rhetorical commonplaces surrounding Canadian identity. Legitimation claims must be spoken in a language the target audience can follow, with the deployment of rhetorical commonplaces serving as a narrative scaffolding that provides familiarity to the audience. As such, competitive parliamentary debate elicits various

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representations of identities, events and policies within familiar discursive arrangements seeking to advocate their relevance while “cordon[ing] off others as falling beyond the pale.”64 Analysis of parliamentary debates, then, proceeds by investigating how discourses of identity are articulated as necessitating certain foreign policies over others. These articulations rely on a “logic of differentiation and a logic of linking” in situating various identities in spatial and temporal terms.65 Spatial attributes of identities are those that indicate boundaries and delineation of space. In spatial terms, identities are articulated by making intelligible the closeness, likeness, or difference between the Self and Others. Temporal attributes, on the other hand, indicate the place and status of identities in time. In temporal terms, identities are articulated as influx, capable of change, fixed, regressing, upholding, and so forth.66 A policy of joint intervention alongside the United States into a war, for example, may be articulated as necessary according to a reading of Canada and the United States as spatially close “brothers” or “historic partners.” It may also be articulated as necessary based on a temporal reading of Canadian identity as temporally threatened by the prospect of abandoning its historic ally in a military intervention. Temporally, the stability of Canadian identity as a “reliable ally” may be articulated as at risk of regressing if Canada does not join the intervention. In the case of Afghanistan, I examine parliamentary debate between September 17, 2001, until October 15, 2001. The September 17 sitting of Parliament marked the first parliamentary session following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in New York City. This “moment” spans sixteen separate sittings of Parliament, including those directly surrounding the official deployment of Canadian troops in the war effort on October 8. October 15 featured the passing of a motion that the House reaffirms its condemnation of the terrorist attacks against the United States and affirms support for the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) “responding to defend freedom and democracy.”67 These parliamentary sessions were dominated by discussions of the global fallout of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and what role Canada would play in the response. Despite repeated declarations by party leaders of a declared unity among members of Parliament condemning the acts of terror, these days of debate were vibrant, divisive, and combative. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien opened the September 17, 2001, session declaring Canada

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would be an active participant in the struggle for justice against perpetrators of the attacks.68 Exactly how Canada would contribute and to what end was hotly contested. In the case of Iraq, these chapters explore four parliamentary sittings from March 17, 2003, to March 20, 2003, marking a relatively brief, though discursively vivid, period of foreign policy debate in the House of Commons over Canada’s position towards an impending US-led invasion of Iraq. On March 17, US President George W. Bush delivered an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that set the scene for the impending invasion. On this same day, Chrétien stated clearly in the House of Commons that Canada would not participate alongside the United States without specific UN authorization.69 March 19 marked the official beginning of the American-led invasion of Iraq and a day later the Canadian House of Commons passed a motion affirming Canada not participate in the war.70 These four days were consumed by debate over Canada’s stance towards Iraq, the United States, and the international community.

Conclusion This chapter has presented a novel framework to understand the relationship between identity and foreign policy by combining insights from poststructuralist and practice theories in IR alongside insights inspired by the work of social psychologist John Shotter. The framework offers a fruitful avenue to understanding some of the prickly questions surrounding Canada’s involvement in the “Global War on Terror.” While there is an abundance of analyses of Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East, very few have grappled with the central role identity discourses played in these foreign policy decisions, and even less have explored how the political rhetoric of identity specifically functioned as these decisions were debated. The next three chapters explore the Canadian Parliament’s debates over Canada’s involvement in the early moments of the “Global War on Terror” and how identity discourses were implicated in the political possibility of Canada’s participation in Afghanistan and non-participation in Iraq.

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Notes 1. Marceau, R. (Charlesbourg-Jacques-Cartier, BQ). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1240h. 2. Peric, J. (Cambridge, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 2115h. 3. Moore, J. (Port Moody-Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2020h. 4. Girard-Bujold, J. (Jonquiere, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1615h. 5. Ashley, R. (1987). The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Politics. Alternatives 12(4), 410. 6. Campbell, D. (1992) Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press, 8. 7. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Routledge, 6. 8. Ibid.; See also: Benabdallah, L. (2020). Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations. University of Michigan Press, 48. 9. Mutimer, D. (2001). Good Grief! The Politics of Debating NMD: A Reply to Frank Harvey. International Journal 56(2), 330–346. 10. Campbell, D. (1992). Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press. 11. Ibid., 12. 12. Ibid., 4. 13. Hansen, L. (2006), 5. 14. Mutimer, D. (2001), 345. 15. Adler, E., & Pouliot, V. (2011). International Practices. Cambridge University Press. 16. Ringmar, E. (2014). The Search for Dialogue as a Hindrance to Understanding: Practices as Inter-Paradigmatic Research Program. International Theory 6(1), 2; Cornut, J. (2017). The Practice Turn in International Relations Theory. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. 17. Bueger, C. & Gadinger, F. (2015). The Play of International Practice. International Studies Quarterly 59(3); Kustermans, J. (2016). Parsing the Practice Turn: Practice, Practical Knowledge, Practices. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 44(2); Lechner, S. & Frost, M. (2018). Practice Theory and International Relations. Cambridge University Press; Martin-Maze, M. (2017). Returning Struggles to the Practice Turn: How Were Bourdieu and Boltanski Lost in (Some) Translations and What to

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18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

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Do About It? International Political Sociology; Pouliot, V. (2007). “Sobjectivism”: Toward a Constructivist Methodology. International Studies Quarterly 51(2); Schindler, S. & Wille, T. (2019). How Can We Criticize International Practices? International Studies Quarterly 63(4). Bueger, C. & Gadinger, F. (2015). The Play of International Practice. International Studies Quarterly 59(3). Adler, E. & Pouliot, V. (2011). International Practices: Introduction and Framework. In Adler, E. & Pouliot, V. (Eds). International Practices. Cambridge University Press, 5. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Hansen, L. (2011). Performing Practices: A Poststructuralist Analysis of the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis. In Adler, E. & Pouliot, V. (Eds). International Practices. Cambridge University Press, 293. Neumann, Iver B. (2002). Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31(3), 627 (emphasis added). Ibid., 628. Hansen, L. (2011), 292. Adler, E. & Pouliot, V. (2011), 8. Neumann, I. B. (2002), 630. Foucault, M. (2010) Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In Rabinow, P. (Ed). The Foucault Reader. Pantheon Books, 81. Hansen, L. (2006), 987–994. Neumann, Iver B. (2002), 631 (emphasis added). Among very few examples are: Jackson, P. T. (2006). Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press; Krebs, R. R. & Jackson, P. T. (2007). Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric. European Journal of International Relations 13(1); Pouliot, V. (2010). The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Rhetorical Commonplaces and Committee Meetings in Russia-Atlantic Relations. Cooperation and Conflict 45(3). Corcoran, T. & Cromby, J. (2016). Refracting Shotter. In Corcoran, T. & Cromby, J. (Eds). Joint Action: Essays in Honour of John Shotter. Routledge, 3. Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructivism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Open University Press, 1. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 6. Ibid., 3.

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39. Ibid., 170–171; Jackson, P.T. (2006), 28. 40. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Polity Press. 41. Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cole. M, John-Steiner, V., Scribner, S., & Souberman, E. (Eds). Harvard University Press; Thought and Language. Kozulin, A. (Translator), MIT Press. 42. Shotter, J. (1993), 6. 43. Jackson, P.T. (2006). 44. Ibid., 28–30. 45. Boucher, J. & Nossal, K.R. (2017). The Politics of War: Canada’s Afghanistan Mission, 2001–14. University of British Columbia Press. 46. Ibid., 56. 47. Ibid., 55–56. 48. Ibid., 56. 49. Ibid., 47. 50. Ibid., 77 (emphasis added). 51. Buzan, B., Waever, O., & De Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner. 52. Hansen, L. (2000). The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 29(2); Oren, I. & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitisation Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases. Review of International Studies 41(2); Stritzel, H. (2007). Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond. European Journal of International Relations 13(3). 53. Jackson, P.T. (2006), 28. 54. Ibid., 30. 55. Phillips, L. & Jorgensen, M.W. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage, 26. 56. Neumann, I.B. (1999). Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation. University of Minnesota Press, 221. Original in Žižek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso, 101. 57. Neumann, I.B. (1999), 221. 58. Ibid., 221 (emphasis added). Original in Edkins, J. (1996, December 16– 18). “Facing Hunger: ‘International Community,’ Desire, and the Real in Responses to Humanitarian Disaster.” Paper presented to the annual British International Studies Association Conference, Durham, England, 7. 59. Pouliot, V. (2010), 303. 60. Ibid., 299. 61. Ibid., 304. 62. Hansen, L. (2006), 69–70. 63. Jackson, P.T. (2006), 16.

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64. Ibid., 25. 65. Hansen, L. (2006), 11. Hansen also suggests a third element, ethical terms, contribute to the arrangements of identity articulations. In this book, however, ethical considerations have been subsumed under temporal considerations. 66. Hansen, L. (2006), 41–45. 67. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC/DR). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard),37th Parliament, 1st session, 1125h. 68. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 1st session, 1105h–1125h. 69. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1420h. 70. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1030h.

Bibliography Adler, E., & Pouliot, V. (Eds.). (2011). International Practices. Cambridge University Press. Ashley, R. (1987). The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Politics. Alternatives, 12(4), 403–434. Benabdallah, L. (2020). Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Production and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations. University of Michigan Press. Boucher, J., & Nossal, K. R. (2017). The Politics of War: Canada’s Afghanistan Mission, 2001–14. University of British Columbia Press. Bueger, C., & Gadinger, F. (2015). The Play of International Practice. International Studies Quarterly, 59(3), 449–460. Buzan, B., Waever, O., & De Wilde, J. (1998). Security: A New Framework for Analysis. Lynne Rienner. Campbell, D. (1992) Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press. Chretien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1105h–1125h. Chretien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1420h. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC/DR). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 1st session. Corcoran, T. & Cromby, J. (2016). Refracting Shotter. In T. Corcoran & J. Cromby (Eds.), Joint Action: Essays in Honour of John Shotter. Routledge. Cornut, J. (2017). The Practice Turn in International Relations Theory. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies.

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Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Sainte-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Edkins, J. (1996, December 16–18). Facing Hunger: ‘International Community,’ Desire, and the Real in Responses to Humanitarian Disaster. Paper presented to the annual British International Studies Association Conference, Durham, England. Foucault, M. (2010). Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), The Foucault Reader. Pantheon Books. Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. Polity Press. Girard-Bujold, J. (Jonquiere, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Hansen, L. (2000). The Little Mermaid’s Silent Security Dilemma and the Absence of Gender in the Copenhagen School. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 29(2), 285–306. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Routledge. Hansen, L. (2011). Performing Practices: A Poststructuralist Analysis of the Muhammad Cartoon Crisis. In E. Adler & V. Pouliot (Eds.), International Practices. Cambridge University Press. Jackson, P. T. (2006). Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press. Krebs, R. R., & Jackson, P. J. (2007). Twisting Tongues and Twisting Arms: The Power of Political Rhetoric. European Journal of International Relations, 13(1), 35–66. Kustermans, J. (2016). Parsing the Practice Turn: Practice, Practical Knowledge, Practices. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 44(2), 175–196. Lechner, S., & Frost, M. (2018). Practice Theory and International Relations. Cambridge University Press. Marceau, R. (Charlesbourg-Jacques-Cartier, BQ). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Martin-Maze, M. (2017). Returning Struggles to the Practice Turn: How Were Bourdieu and Boltanski Lost in (Some) Translations and What to Do About it? International Political Sociology, 203–220. Moore, J. (Port Moody-Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Mutimer, D. (2001). Good Grief! The Politics of Debating NMD: A Reply to Frank Harvey. International Journal, 56(2), 330–346. Neumann, I. B. (1999). Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation. University of Minnesota Press. Neumann, I. B. (2002). Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn: The Case of Diplomacy. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 31(3), 627–651.

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Oren, I., & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitisation Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases. Review of International Studies, 41(2), 313–336. Peric, J. (Cambridge, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Phillips, L., & Jorgensen, M. W. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. Sage, 26. Pouliot, V. (2007). “Sobjectivism”: Toward a Constructivist Methodology. International Studies Quarterly, 51(2), 359–384. Pouliot, V. (2010). The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Rhetorical Commonplaces and Committee Meetings in Russia-Atlantic Relations. Cooperation and Conflict, 45(3), 294–311. Ringmar, E. (2014). The Search for Dialogue as a Hindrance to Understanding: Practices as Inter-Paradigmatic Research Program. International Theory, 6(1), 1–27. Schindler, S., & Wille, T. (2019). How Can We Criticize International Practices? International Studies Quarterly, 63(4), 1014–1024. Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructivism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Open University Press. Stritzel, H. (2007). Towards a Theory of Securitization: Copenhagen and Beyond. European Journal of International Relations, 13(3), 357–383. Vygotsky, U. S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and Language (A. Kozulin, Trans.). MIT Press. Žižek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. Verso.

CHAPTER 3

Won’t You Be My Neighbour? Discourses of Canada’s “Neighbourly Relations” and the War on Terror

This chapter proceeds through four main sections. First, I trace the conceptual history of the commonplace “Canada as America’s neighbour.” The concept’s history both precedes and informs contemporary usage in Canadian Parliament and acts as the foundation to explore how the concept became a central, though ambiguous, rhetorical commonplace today’s politicians habitually rely on. While politicians may deploy articulations of Canada as if their representations are enduring, selfevident, and long-established, this section demonstrates that contemporary invocations emerge from complex historical contestations that contemporary usage belies. Next, the chapter then turns to focus on deployments of this commonplace surrounding Canada’s involvement in the “Global War on Terror.” A brief survey of notable examples from the early 2000s where Canada’s role as America’s neighbour was invoked in Canadian society highlights the circulation of this commonplace even before the House of Commons began formally debating Canada’s response. Turning to the debates on the “Global War on Terror,” I analyse the rhetorical dynamics of contemporary parliamentary debates within the House of Commons regarding the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively. These sections explore not only the frequency in which the basic commonplace of

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_3

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“Canada as America’s neighbour” was deployed, but also how its historical meanings were drawn on, re-imagined, and mobilized by politicians in articulating competing representations of Canadian identity to argue the merits of their preferred policy. The chapter ends with concluding remarks about the significance of this commonplace to Canada’s foreign policy decisions.

A Conceptual History of Canada–US Relations This section provides a conceptual history of the concept of “Canada as America’s neighbour,” drawing out four dominant twentieth-century representations that articulate different spatial and temporal identities. While taken today as a geographic fact, this neighbourly relationship is a product of various historical articulations of the relationship between Canada and the United States dating back to the 1920s. These four dominant representations of Canada and the United States are drawn from historical texts on the history of Canada and Canada–US relations written by Canadian and American historians and social scientists. This genre of texts offers the following advantages: first, these histories are written by many of the most prolific historians of Canada since the beginning of the twentieth century. As such, these authors and their historical texts are among the most frequently cited in contemporary scholarly writing on Canada–US relations. While never repeated exactly, contemporary scholarly writing draws on discourses intertextually linked to those appearing in the historical texts under examination. Intertextuality refers to a text’s references to arguments and elements of another text, whether explicitly through direct quotes or tacitly by deploying key concepts. The historical texts I examine provide representations and discourses of Canadian identity upon which an array of contemporary historians and social scientists draw on and adjust today. As Lene Hansen encapsulates, “[i]n making links to older texts, new texts rely upon the status of older texts, but this process of reading and linking also produces new meaning, references never reproduce the originals in a manner which is fully identical, but weave them into the present context and argument.”1 Secondly, the genre of historical texts prioritizes the accuracy of description over the sensationalization of events. To be clear, the focus of this analysis is not to glean which texts most objectively describe the literal events of Canadian history. Rather, the focus is on how early representations of the Canadian Self and American Other, articulated as true

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and accurate, formed a discursive foundation from which contemporary representations are drawn. These historical texts, which bring together a wide array of primary and secondary sources with their aim of being sound, descriptive recreations of past events, represent more widespread instantiations of Canada–US relations. The four dominant representations of “Canada and the US as neighbours” are animated by two overarching orientations presented in these historical texts: continentalism and anti-Americanism. Genesis of a Continental Experience: The Founding of “Canada–US Relations” Prior to the 1920s, there were no significant scholarly studies dedicated to investigating the ways in which Canadian society was influenced by its geographic position neighbouring the United States. By the late 1920s, an increasing number of historians and social scientists, overwhelmingly Canadian-born and American-trained and employed scholars, began to systematically explore this relationship.2 What became the field of study known as “Canada–US relations” was spearheaded by these scholars’ determination to reveal the North American dimension of the Canadian experience.3 The overarching narrative that dominated studies of Canadian history was that Canada was an extension of the British Commonwealth. The country’s birth and growth as a colony of the British Motherland were the general focus. Scholars of “Canada–US relations” would, however, provide a different focus and move beyond the characterization of Canadian history as merely the tales of a British colony to Canada’s rise to nationhood in the unique North American environment. This early study of Canada–US relations loosened the discursive ties between Canadian history and Britain in favour of a uniquely continental form of history in several key ways. For instance, historians constructed accounts of the North American experience inspired by Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis. Berger encapsulates Turner’s thesis writing “…the core of his statement was that the United States was settled by wave upon wave of European peoples, that European habits of thought and institutions were altered in adapting them to unfamiliar locations, and that this process of transformation in the continuous westward movement was a major but not the only determinant in the development of a

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distinctive American nationality.”4 Notable Canadian historians and journalists like A.R.M. Lower and John Dafoe, respectively, would, in their own work, advance the notion that the continental environment of North America uniquely shaped what Canada would become. In Canada: An American Nation,5 Dafoe argued that while European settlers brought with them ideas of freedom and self-government, after successive generations, residents of North America faced experiences and problems in which their European heritage offered no guidance solutions. European staples of aristocracy and monarchy faded away in North America as the new, untamed terrain lent itself towards a unique system of rule based on liberty and individualism.6 According to Dafoe, Canada was no longer a simple appendage of the British Motherland: Canada is a North American nation. She is also one of a family of free nations which, in their prenational stage of existence, were integral parts of that Empire…[t]hese younger British nations are not reproductions, as like as peas, of a majestic motherland. They are true national entities, the product of natural evolution and growth, with well-developed special characteristics and aptitudes.7

Canada and the United States were frequently represented in a familial sense, as “a family of free nations,” “two kindred nations [which] divided the vast area of North America north of the Rio Grande,” and formed “a brotherhood of democratic states.”8 These early writings and motivations culminated in what was the most thorough historiography on Canadian-American relations at the time: The Carnegie Series on Relations of Canada and the United States. Published with funds from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, these twenty-five volumes brought together work, in different capacities, from nearly every Canadian historian in its publications between 1936 and 1945.9 Canadian-born historian James T. Shotwell, who conceived of and managed the series, emphasized the collection’s instructive capabilities. In light of World War I, Shotwell hoped that an extensive study of the peaceful relations between two North American countries could act as an ideal for the rest of the world to strive towards. He did not represent Canada and the United States as perennially peaceful towards one another. On the contrary, Shotwell sought to expose the tension that had formerly characterized this relationship while also the peace that persevered “in spite of grievances unredressed, of threats and policies filled

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with menace and of almost constant economic strain.”10 If these two states, sharing a border, could peacefully settle their disputes for nearly one hundred years, then understanding the nature of their neighbourly relationship served a universal interest. Throughout its volumes, the Carnegie Series emphasizes the boundedness of Canada and the United States evidenced through two central themes: economic interdependence and the interchange of populations across the border. The volume on industry, spanning labour relations, railways, and more, stresses that Canada remains the United States’ main trading partner and that the United States remains Canada’s largest foreign investor. America’s increasing investment during WWI in the Canadian economy was not represented as a threat to Canadian economic sovereignty—Canadian banks remained run by Canadians—but rather a natural and beneficial outcome of two like-minded neighbours. The flow of people across the border signified no form of malice from one side to another either. The British loyalists “migrated” rather than “fled” north to Canada after the American Revolution in journeys that were “unplanned, haphazard, and prompted mainly by the search for economic opportunity.”11 Furthermore, loyalists, a segment of American colonists who are today frequently represented as pro-monarchy and anti-American, did not harbour divisive notions of a superior British North America to the Thirteen Colonies. On the contrary, as the American historian of the immigration volume in the Carnegie Series Marcus Hansen wrote, “it was not the United States and Canada. It was all America to them.”12 Their allegiance was to North America, rather than any particular part of it. Offering a sweeping explanation for the contemptuous moments that defined early interactions between Canada and the United States, Charles Tansill’s volume Canadian-American Relations: 1875–1911 offers an inevitable conclusion: “Canadian-American discord would disappear when the two countries were challenged by forces that threatened their way of life.”13 In sum, Canada’s position beside the United States was first articulated as denoting a familial relationship. The academic field of Canada–US relations began as the very study of this unique continental likeness through the work of Shotwell and other Canadian historians in the Carnegie Series. That the two states could ever oppose one another over an issue was represented as indicative of the triviality of the issue itself with the dominant representation being that truly serious issues would always bring Canada and the United States back into alignment.

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Bitter Enemies, Beleaguered Allies, Outspoken Friends: Anti-Americanism in “Canada–US Relations” Living next to you is in some ways like [a mouse] sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt. (Pierre Elliott Trudeau, speech to the Washington Press Club, March 1969)14

While the Canadian Prime Minister’s signature “off the cuff” humour was met with laughter from the American audience, Trudeau had both drawn upon and (re)articulated a particular representation of Canada–US relations, as contrasting neighbours, with a history existing long before his invitation to the capital from President Richard Nixon. By the 1940s and onwards, historical accounts of Canada–US relations as members of the same continental family were being challenged by histories articulating an adversarial relationship between the North American neighbours. These competing representations articulate Canada as a distinct political entity, geographically proximate to the United States, but politically and culturally oppositional. A review of titles of Canadian historical texts demonstrates the presence of this representation: Alfred Leroy Burt’s A Short History of Canada for Americans (1942)15 opens with a chapter entitled “Bad Neighbours,” Bruce Hutchison’s The Struggle for the Border (1955)16 detailing the history of Canada–US relations begins with “The Odd Neighbours,” Robert Bothwell’s Canada and the United States (1992),17 considers them “Distant Neighbours,” while David T. Jones and David Kilgour’s history is entitled Uneasy Neighbours (2007).18 Distinguished Canadian historian J.L. Granatstein’s Yankee Go Home (1996)19 articulates this relationship in no less adversarial terms. Out of these spatial and temporal demarcations emanates a discourse of anti-Americanism, one which constructs “America” as the historically aggressive, expansionist, mob-ruled, and self-interested Other to the Canadian Self that is defined by a rejection of the American “way of life.” Canada’s frequent partnership with America is discursively constructed as a necessity given the precarious circumstances Canada faced in the twentieth century or even a desperate last resort. These histories construct a discernible discourse of anti-Americanism in Canada based on “neighbourly” interactions between Canada and the United States over three main periods of encounters: the initial confrontation between loyalists in Upper Canada

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and patriots in the Thirteen Colonies following the American Revolutionary War, Canada and the United States’ involvement in World War I and II, and the Cold War. Loyalists Head North: New World Enemies (1775–1913) Canada’s modern statehood is rooted in the British and French voyagers that arrived from the east at the shores of Newfoundland in the fifteenth century. Yet, a distinct Canadian identity is attributable to the presence of colonies that formed Canada’s neighbour to the south. Kim Richard Nossal argues that “Canada is the only political community in the world which exists as a result of a conscious rejection of the United States of America.”20 Historians Bruce Hutchison,21 Robert Bothwell, and James Careless find this initial differencing a product of the influx of British loyalists into what would later become Canada, bringing along with them a “mythology of rejections” of life in the Thirteen Colonies.22 Finding themselves on the losing side of the American Revolutionary War, thousands of British loyalists fled to Upper Canada (present-day Ontario) and even more to Newfoundland, bringing with them a “collective experience that emphasized philosophical rejection of republican ‘mob rule,’ loyalty to the Empire, and a sense of alarm about American expansionism.”23 This early Canadian identity, one that respected the natural order of monarchism, was spatially opposite “Satan’s Kingdom” in the south, where rampant individualism and majority rule had quite literally run many loyalists out of their territory.24 In temporal terms, John MacCormac asserts these emigrants “stamped into the soul of Canada certain characteristics which time has not erased. They left a legacy of distrust of the United States.”25 Hutchison concurs that Canada, as a product of its history, remains anti-American by nature: …the sundering of the British peoples had not been accomplished…in goodwill and without spiritual scars. It had been accomplished in anger and agony. It had left a wound on every United Empire Loyalist, to be inherited by his sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons and not to be healed for a hundred years at least, not entirely healed yet. It had made the American and the Canadian not only antipathetic to each other but, in the deepest sense, incomprehensible.26

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Subsequent events following the loyalists’ exodus north would only exacerbate the discursive distancing between the two identities. The Continental Congress had pre-approved the entry of Quebec and Nova Scotia into their ranks only to be flatly rejected in 1775. Suspicion and fear of the American Other were fuelled throughout the nineteenth century as anxieties over potential annexation seemed only to be confirmed by American invasions of Quebec in 1775 and the War of 1812, the Alaskan purchase, rapid western settlement, and continued policies based on “manifest destiny.”27 The aggressiveness of the Americans was, as the Kingston Gazette articled in 1811, a product of their democracy: “[t]he characteristic evil of their democratic system is its tendency to foster uncontrollable spirit of party. Their frequent popular elections of all branches of their government…fuel and fan the flame.”28 The articulated incomprehensibility and conscious rejection of the United States in Canada, does not, however, prohibit a level of understanding on the part of Canadians of their American neighbours. In fact, this oppositional stance of Canada to America is articulated precisely because Canadians really understand their American neighbours. Granatstein explains: The Canadians were the first and the model anti-Americans because the habitants and the Loyalists both wanted to remain free of the United States. They were the ideal anti-Americans because, unlike many in Europe and the Third World, they actually understood the United States and appreciated its idealism and passion while simultaneously rejecting much of the American ethos. They were the archetypal anti-Americans because, even if the world has failed to realize it, Canadians had set the terms of the debate - virtually everything that is said of the crassness and violence of American society today, for example, was first uttered by nineteenthcentury British North Americans who looked down their noses at the mobocracy to the south.29

In short, the discursive construction of this initial encounter established the grounds for a particular spatial and temporal relationship between Canadian and American identities: two geographically close, but otherwise separate identities. A level of understanding, but not acceptance. Granatstein suggests even today Canadians perceive their American neighbours through “a sympathetic, yet dubious gaze.”30

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Desperate Decisions and World War Allies (1914–1945) Nearly one hundred years since their clash in the War of 1812, Canada and the United States found themselves as allies fighting the Central Powers in World War I and the Axis Powers in World War II. This North American partnership did not, however, result in a closing of the spatial gap between the Canadian Self and American Other, according to prominent historical texts. On the contrary, Canada’s partnership and reliance on the United States throughout these conflicts are constructed as a product of circumstance or a desperate last resort in a world where British power waned and American hegemony launched. Canada had no choice but to turn to its neighbour, leaving in tact the discourse of anti-Americanism. The devastation Britain suffered from both wars left it politically and economically weak. Britain was overstretched while the United States had become the world’s economic powerhouse. These realities produced a terrible irony: [The Great War had] left Britain much weaker and created a financial superpower in the United States…the terrible irony, however…was that Canada’s war effort literally forced the country to turn to the United States for economic, financial, and even military assistance. Canada’s imperialist nationalism, in other words, pressed it into the American embrace, and the process that culminated in 1917–18 was destined to be repeated twice more. During the Second World War and again in the early years of the Cold War, British economic and military weakness would again make Canada look to the United States for assistance.31

Rather than cultural or ideational likeness, it is Canada’s immense sacrifice in the Great War, motivated as much by a deep desire to defend the British Motherland32 as a legal obligation under the British North American Act of 1867 (when Britain is at war, the empire is at war), that pushed it towards the United States. Support could not be expected from Britain, so out of necessity, Canada was left with few options. “In the perilous days after Dunkirk,” writes Granatstein, “Canada has recognized that Britain might be defeated and could no longer guarantee Canada’s safety against hostile empires. In the circumstances, Canada had no choice other than to look to the United States.”33 Canada has “no choice” but to seek loans to fund its war effort from the United States.34 Seeking loans and increased trade with the United States prior to 1941 was Canada’s duty

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to alleviate some of the financial burdens on the British Motherland, but after the war, American partnership was a matter of survival. Hutchison summarizes Canada’s dire predicament: …Canada faced imminent bankruptcy. Only the United States could rescue it…Canada had usually bought more goods in the United States than sold there. The resulting deficit was made up by Canada’s dollar surplus in the world market, mainly in Britain. Now Britain could not pay in dollars for many of its Canadian imports. Yet Canada must continue to buy hugely in the United States to fuel its war industries with American coal, oil, steel and other essentials.35

Quoting Canadian economist W.A. Mackintosh’s comment to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, Bothwell, Drummond, and English state “only by promoting and participating in a collaboration between the United States and the United Kingdom, with the threefold objective of developing co-ordinated policies for maintaining employment, ensuring relative freedom of trade, and contributing to productive international investment, [could] Canada…find after the war the larger world economy necessary to her tolerable existence.”36 Canadian and American partnership was out of geographical necessity rather than ideational homogeneity. As James M.S. Careless and Michael Hart summarized: But Canada’s ties with the [United States] grew especially strong because of their common need to defend North America. An attack on one was a threat to the other…They were an expression of the closely entangled interests of the two neighbouring North American nations in a dangerous new world. Canada had to seek the fullest co-operation with the United States, while trying still to preserve the Canadian identity in North American that she had struggled so long to establish.37 The reality that stared Canadians in the face in the years immediately after the war was stark. Britain, although it still ruled an empire on which the sun never set, could neither afford that empire nor keep it intact…By contrast, in the United States, the economic might that had been the key to the Allied victory was everyday on display…Canada had little choice. Its destiny lay with the rising power next door rather than with the waning power across the ocean…the facts were clear.38

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Over nearly one hundred years, Canada and the United States had shifted from enemies to allies, yet historical texts indicate that their partnership signified, for Canada, necessary economic and military adjustments in the face of despair rather than an internal shift in identity. Cold War Friends (1945–2000) The onset of the Cold War marks a significant shift in Canada’s spatial representation as the United States’ neighbour. For much of the country’s existence, Canada was merely an appendage of the British Motherland, whose foreign relations were dictated from London or subject to the will of Washington given Canada’s more recent dependence on the American economy and defence. Political and economic necessity had pushed Canada to the United States, not any form of kinship or ideational likeness. According to the histories of Canada-US relations, the Cold War era would adjust this relationship in several significant ways. Canada is articulated less as a mere pawn in a larger political game and more as taking on the characteristics of a middle power: though a significantly weaker political actor than the United States, Canada maintains an ability to exert influence on the international stage and act relatively independent of the superpower’s policies. Cooper, Higgott, and Nossal define Canada’s role as a middle power as acting as a catalyst of action on problems; a facilitator of issue-specific coalition building; and a manger of work programmes to operationalize or institutionalize initiatives.39 Canada’s so-called “golden age of diplomacy” (approximately 1945 into the 1960s) saw it formulating alliances, establishing international organizations, and diffusing tense political situations around the world garnering a respected international reputation. Leadership in the newly formed NATO, devotion to peacekeeping operations and mediation of conflicts in Korea and over the Suez Canal, demonstrated Canada’s multilateral focus, contrasting the perceived American unilateral approach.40 The American military campaign in Vietnam, the first major Cold War conflict where the United States effectively functioned outside any international institution, seemed to confirm long-held suspicions of America’s underlying desire for reckless expansion.41 More importantly, this increasingly independent outlook granted Canada two unique abilities: to counsel the Americans and interpret the superpower’s point of view for the rest of the world. Furthermore, the

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Cold War era brings about the frequent deployment of a new signifier of this relationship: Canada and the United States as friends. A widely respected bridge-building international player, Canada could now point out the error of America’s ways and advise its neighbour from a friendly standpoint. Hutchison articulates Canada’s unique situation: In practical terms it came down to this: Canada would argue with the United States on world policy where it thought the United States [was] mistaken; it would insist on a friend’s right to argue, it would seek to modify American policy when necessary; but it would accept the United States’ great decisions if they did not threaten Canada’s vital interests.42

This is not to say that Canada was now articulated as unabashedly blunt with its American neighbour. Garnering more international respect did not change the lopsided power differential between the two, nor the representation that the United States remained quick-triggered and aggressive. “Canadians had no desire,” writes Bothwell, “to make the position of their friends [the Americans] more difficult, and some fear of provoking the wrath of less amiable elements of nationalist and isolationist right.”43 The latter half of the twentieth century was not without serious disagreement and clash of interests and values between Canada and the United States. Disagreements over Vietnam and trade with communist China and Cuba44 were just several of many clashes between Canada and the United States during this era.45 In taking on an advisory role to the United States, as a friend rather than an enemy, Canada’s spatial and temporal distance from the United States is shortened as the Americans, formerly articulated as fundamentally at odds with Canada, could now, with careful advising, be coaxed out of its usual character. If Canada’s leadership in multilateral institutions garnered it a new level of respect from the international community, including the United States, it was Canada’s location next to the United States that ordained it the ability to truly understand what their neighbour wanted out of the world. Canada even becomes an “interpreter” of America: Unlike the United States, it was too weak to be feared. As the close friend of the United States and Britain, as an American nation which threatened no one, Canada occupied a unique status, in theory at least. The practical question was whether, after its long effort to interpret the United States to Britain and vice versa, Canada should now attempt to interpret the United States to Asia.46

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Citing Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent’s visit to India to meet with Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru over discussions of America’s involvement in the Indochina War in 1954 and Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson’s subsequent discussion at the Geneva conference, Hutchison articulates Canada as an authoritative voice on the imperial nature of America’s aims: …they were a projection across the Atlantic and Pacific, in modern terms, of Canada’s experience as a conciliator on the American boundary. They were the acts of a good neighbour. They did not mean that Canada agreed with everything the United States was doing…[t]hey meant only that if Canada, living in weakness beside the American giant, could trust its real intentions - as often distinguished from some of its statesmen’s utterances - those intentions were trustworthy. It was pre-eminently on the North American boundary that they had earned the right to be trusted.47

Residing alongside the “American giant” and withstanding all the challenges that come along with being positioned so close to the superpower (withstanding every “twitch and grunt” of the elephant) ordained onto Canada a form of expert status on the American mentality. Who could understand the United States better than those closest to it? Who better than to interpret the true meaning behind America’s often heavy-handed demands than Canadians? A spatial shortening of distance does not, however, mean Canada is articulated as suddenly pro-American. On the contrary, a reigniting of anti-Americanism in Canadian society stormed back as a plethora of social issues in the United States seemed to signal the hypocrisy of America as a free and democratic state for its people. Granatstein and Hillmer conclude: The assassination of Kennedy (and later Martin Luther King and JFK’s brother Robert), guns in the street, the appalling ghettos of the big cities, the unbridled greed of corporations, the dreadful, never-ending war in Vietnam, and the absence of American social services all gave Canadians pause. [Canadians] were led to think that their country was a far better place to be, slower paced though it was, unencumbered with compulsory military service, and protected with unemployment insurance, family allowances, and, soon, national medicare. Anti-Americanism had become the Canadian national sport.48

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Table 3.1 Historical discourses of “Canada as America’s neighbour”50 Discourse

Spatial degree of Otherness to the United States

Temporal identity of Canada compared to the United States

Continental Family

Similar

New World Enemies World War Allies

Radically different and threatening Different but dependent

Cold War Friends

Different but understood

Fundamentally similar (incapable of change) Fundamentally opposed (incapable of change) Fundamentally opposed (incapable of change) Transformable through advising

Considerably different from the articulations of the eighteenth century though not entirely novel either, Cold War articulations of this neighbourly relationship represent Canada as a friend and advisor to the United States and an interpreter of America to the rest of the world given Canada’s experiences as a geographic neighbour. Perhaps still a mouse in bed with an elephant, Canada no longer kept quiet. As Careless articulates “[w]hen one shares close quarters with a giant however wellintentioned, one is wise to keep pointing out that one is there - to avoid being stepped on.”49 This relationship, however, continued to be articulated in a discourse of difference: the United States remained unilateral, aggressive, and plagued internally by discontent while Canada became an internally harmonious leader of multilateralism. The main spatial and temporal characteristics of these four dominant historical discourses are summarized in Table 3.1.

Brotherly Love or Trouble Next Door: Parliamentary Discourses of Canada as America’s Neighbour in the War on Terror An October 24, 2001 letter to the editor at the The Globe and Mail juxtaposed “bombastic extravaganza concerts” held in the United States in honour of American victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to a concert held in Canada for Afghans “who have been enduring unspeakable horror for much longer.” “When people in Europe ask me about the differences between Canadians and Americans,” wrote the author, “this is one case to which I can refer with quiet pride.”51 Two days later, a response letter

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retorted “It must be nice to take ‘quiet pride’ in being so much better than your neighbours, all the while ignoring the fact that the United States has for years been the major contributor of aid to Afghanistan. If the only way you can identify yourself is by what you are not, then you really aren’t anything at all.”52 This exchange in one of Canada’s leading newspapers is striking for two reasons. First, the respondent cogently (though likely unintentionally) synthesizes what I have previously described as a core tenet of the theoretical approach developed in this study: that identity, and Canadian identity in particular, is invariably defined in relation to others. If identities are not located within a network of other identities, then they “really aren’t anything at all.” Second, the exchange exemplifies what became an enduring pattern in early Canadian foreign policy debates within the House of Commons regarding Canada’s position on military engagements in Afghanistan and later in Iraq: Canada’s role in these conflicts was habitually articulated in terms of navigating Canada’s identity as “America’s neighbour.” Whether Canada would join the United States and its other NATO allies in the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and whether Canada would join the “coalition of the willing” in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was ineluctably discussed in terms of what it meant to be “America’s neighbour.” At first glance, little may be surprising about Canadian parliamentarians’ fixation with Canada’s relations to the United States in response to these two conflicts. Canada is, after all, America’s geographic northern neighbour, and America was spearheading military operations in the Middle East. This chapter’s focus, however, is not on the geography of North America, but how that geography was interpreted by Canadian parliamentarians in debating how Canada would act towards Afghanistan and Iraq. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien met President George W. Bush at the White House with the aim of demonstrating Canada’s support of the United States. Bush shared with the media in the Rose Garden that Chrétien had been one of the first to call him and offer support and condolences. “It was like getting a phone call from a brother,” said Bush. “We’ve got a great partner in our neighbourhood,” he added.53 The fact that Bush neglected to mention Canada among its close allies during a televised address to Congress spawned abundant speculation in Canada as the omission seemed particularly odd given Canada’s position as America’s neighbour. “I didn’t necessarily think it was important to praise a brother; after all, we’re talking about family,”54 Bush would later clarify during

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Chrétien’s visit to Washington. The Prime Minister responded, “we’re your neighbour, friends, and family…you have the support of Canadians, when you need us, we will be there.”55 The exchanges between the two leaders suggest that Canada’s neighbourly relationship with the United States is one of not only geographic closeness, but also of close companionship. Despite how self-evident these leaders have made this relationship sound (“I didn’t necessarily think it was important to praise a brother”), this familial reading of Canada–US relations is the product of multifaceted historical articulations that are neither objective nor as well-established as such statements indicate. In fact, a careful examination of parliamentary debate regarding Canada’s involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars reveals how a range of discourses offered different representations of Canada’s neighbourly relations with the United States, each drawing on different elements of historical instantiations of “Canadian neighbourliness” in articulating contemporary representations. Far from being an objective truth from which all viewpoints could begin from, what exactly it meant for Canada to be “America’s neighbour” was the central lightning rod of contestation animating debate among competing viewpoints on Canada’s involvement in these wars. Canadian Foreign Policy Discourses on Afghanistan In the first parliamentary sitting following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien began the day by introducing a motion to the floor. He moved that the House express its heartfelt condolences to the American people and called for the House to “reaffirm its commitment to the humane values of free and democratic society and its determination to bring to justice the perpetrators of this attack on these values and to defend civilization from any further attack.”56 Many have highlighted the rupture of common sense expectations produced by the previously unfathomable events of 9/11.57 If these unimaginable events did produce a void in meaning, the Canadian Prime Minister took this moment to fill this void: the events of 9/11 represented not only an attack on the bedrock values of Canadian society, but the values of the entire civilized world. Such an attack constituted an existential threat to civilization that required a proactive response. But what would that response be? What does an attack on the civilized world,

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of which Canada considers itself a part, necessitate? In the days immediately following the events of September 11, the Canadian House of Commons was primarily occupied with discussions regarding what to do “at home,” with heavy emphasis on passing anti-terrorist legislation and ensuring the free flow of goods and people across the Canada–US border could continue unimpeded.58 On October 8, the day Secretary-General of NATO George Robertson formally invoked Article 5 of the treaty declaring the attack on the United States would be treated as an attack on all NATO members, Canada was now formally obligated to respond. Significant focus shifted to determining Canada’s “away game.” Canadian parliamentarians and the Canadian public more generally, expressed widespread support of Canada’s military involvement alongside the US and other allies in fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. Still, there were various competing perspectives on exactly how Canada should be involved in a foreign military campaign within the House of Commons. At the centre of these debates was a simple question: what did it mean to be “America’s neighbour?” Competing views on Canada’s obligations, why and how it should or should not commit troops were channelled through articulations of Canada’s neighbourly relationship to the United States. Two distinct neighbourly discourses emerged during these debates, what I refer to as the Family discourse and the Voice of Reason discourse. The Family Discourse The Family discourse exhibits broad similarities with predominant “Global War on Terror” foreign policy discourses that emerged elsewhere in the “Anglosphere” immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.59 Canada found itself on the side of the “good,” as a member of the “civilized world” along with its historic allies, like the US and UK, whose dedication to freedom, democracy, and the rule of law pitted them against “evil” terrorists and those who supported them. While the United States had been directly attacked, it was the values that all civilized countries shared that were the target. Unity among democratic countries to defeat those who threaten these fundamental values would be required for “good” to prevail over “evil.” While the basics of this broad international discourse were widely echoed within the Canadian House of Commons, adaptations made during foreign policy debates tailored it to the Canadian context. Unlike the UK or Australia, Canada was not just an ally or fellow member of

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the “civilized world” along with the United States. Canada was America’s neighbour, and this proximity was read as further strengthening the need to actively support the other, as if the two were not only members of the same club, but seated right next to one another. It was not enough to simply “be there” for the Americans, but Canada must be prepared to do “whatever it takes” to support its brother. This familial discourse, which broadly reads the identities of Canada and the United States as culturally homogenous family members, has striking continuity with the historical continentalist discourse that articulated this neighbourly relationship as “uniquely bound” and “kindred spirits.” The Family discourse was most prominently articulated by key figures in the governing Liberal Party but would find itself being echoed by members from other parties as well. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien began the first parliamentary sitting following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City on September 17, 2001 by stating unequivocally “[w]e have never been a bystander in the struggle for justice in the world. We will stand with the Americans as neighbours, as friends, as family. We will stand with our allies. We will do what we must to defeat terrorism.”60 With striking frequency, Canadian identity was linked and likened to American identity based on an articulated membership within the same cultural family, a familial connection that necessitated joining alongside the United States to defend their shared values. Richard Marceau of the Bloc Québécois comments that “[w]hen a close friend, a neighbour, a fellow member of the great family of western civilization is affected in this way, we cannot remain indifferent. No one here in this House is indifferent.”61 Moreover, Canada and America’s shared cultural values, and their civilizational membership, more so than their geopolitical strategy and military alliances, are what necessitates Canadian participation. Minister of Foreign Affairs John Manley declared “our security, in its broadest possible political, economic and military senses, is inextricably linked to the United States. This is not just because of NATO or NORAD and not just because we shared a common border or the world’s most important trading relationship. Our common values and political ideals bind us. It is our willingness to defend these very ideals, indeed our very societies, that unites us…whatever it takes.”62 The spatial likeness of Canada and the United States is further emphasized through articulations of these shared values and ideals, namely, freedom and democracy. Susan Whelan (LP) declares “America, a beacon of freedom and hope to the world, was built by the courage and determination of all those who sought democracy and opportunity on her shores.

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Canadians share those values and are prepared to stand side by side with our friends to defend our way of life.”63 Importantly, despite repeated articulations of Canada–US homogeneity, the familial discourse did not construct Canada as a silent partner, destined to blindly follow the United States into any foreign conflict. On the contrary, just as historians involved in the Carnegie Series had articulated approximately seventy years prior, Canadian politicians constructed Canada and the United States as capable of disagreement. But just as historical accounts concluded that all major disputes would “disappear when the two countries were challenged by forces that threatened their way of life,” a similar conclusion was reached by parliamentarians in contemporary debates: members of a family are prone to disagree but when threatened, family members stand together as one. Two examples are particularly noteworthy. Geoff Regan (LP) states: Sure, we have had our quibbles with the US policies from time to time, just as there are differences within families, but the Americans are fundamentally good people and they are resilient…make no mistake: We will stand beside our southern neighbours, our greatest friends, shoulder to shoulder in this long struggle…64

Bill Graham (LP) offers a similar articulation: We are a family. As members of a family, we have a right to speak frankly to the other members of the family and tell them what we believe and how we want them to behave…I call upon all members to be loyal and to stand shoulder to shoulder and support the United States at this time. If we do not support the United States, we are not supporting ourselves because we are all under attack.65

Both Regan and Graham articulate Canadian disagreements with the United States in familial terms, though Regan’s articulation closely echoes the continentalist discourse, whereas Graham’s articulation echoes a relationship similar to the Cold War articulations of Canada as an independent actor capable of standing up and advising the United States, prominent in the historical anti-American discourse. Graham’s articulation however, does not purely read this relationship in an anti-American discourse but rather adjusts this relationship as further constructing the familial, continentalist representation: Canada’s right to stand up to the

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United States is not based on spatial difference, but spatial likeness since this advising of the Americans is equivalent to “supporting ourselves.” In terms of temporality, the Family discourse articulates Canada’s longstanding supportive relationship with its American “partner in the world” as well as its historic championing and defence of the values of freedom and democracy as the very fundamental features of Canadian identity that the nation would fail to live up to should Canada not participate in the Afghanistan mission. Canada’s consistency as a “beacon of hope” in its own right, and “historic ally” to the Americans is at stake as a failure to live up to this Canadian identity, by failing to participate in these missions, would signal a regression away from Canada’s “proud” identity. Standing with America is synonymous with standing up for Canadian values: ...this is a time of great sorrow but also a time where we have to act in concert with our American allies, and that we will do. I think the last couple of days have shown that again and again in terms of the bilateral meetings that took place between our Prime Minister and President Bush. It also was underscored when our foreign affairs minister met with the secretary of state to again forge the links that have existed so historically and traditionally between Canada and the United States, to again reassert the great values that we hold in common and that we share as sovereign nations, to say that we will stand by our American brothers and sisters as they would by us and that we will do so in the best interests of Canada and in the best interests of the people of Canada. By extension when we do that, when we stand shoulder to shoulder with our American friends and allies in support, we will provide them with the kinds of requirements necessary to ensure that in fact we underscore our commitment to them.66

The leader of the Official Opposition to Chrétien’s Liberal Party, Stockwell Day (CA), offers a particularly emphatic articulation in saying “[w]e have heard warnings against freedom loving nations not to assist the United States in any military action. Our government must be clear. It is not the time to give any signal to the barbaric enemies of freedom and democracy that we will do anything less than stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends, the Americans…”67 In sum, the Family discourse draws on and (re)articulates historical continentalist discourses of Canada and the United States as members of a family, founded by and committed to fundamental values of freedom and democracy. To deviate in foreign policy position from Canada’s “brother”

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would be to risk Canada’s historic identity as a member of Western civilization. The Voice of Reason Discourse While the Family discourse was widely articulated throughout the House of Commons, it was not unchallenged. In the House of Commons and in Canadian society more generally, support for America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was high, yet calls to unwaveringly stand shoulder to shoulder with Canada’s neighbour, did not go uncontested. This is not to say that some Canadian parliamentarians vehemently argued to keep Canada out of Afghanistan. Certainly, dissenting voices were not nearly as forceful as many would be just two years later in response to the American-led invasion of Iraq. It is to say, however, that the loud calls within the House to stand lockstep with America and “defend the civilized world” were challenged by calls for a more measured and patient approach to Canada’s involvement in the “Global War on Terror” in its earliest days. Spearheaded by NDP leader Alexa McDonough, with supportive voices emerging from other parties, these counter-arguments centred on an alternative reading of Canada’s neighbourly relationship to the United States. These dissenting voices linked a more reluctant approach to Canada’s involvement in a military campaign in Afghanistan to a representation of Canada and the United States as characteristically opposite. Far from being members of a homogenous family, this discourse reads Canada as a clam, rational, voice of reason to a temperamentally opposite hot-headed, irrational American Other, drawing on and (re)articulating a combination of elements of historical anti-American discourses. In this discourse, Canadian and American partnership is defined not by likeness or homogeneity but rather by difference in a symbiotic relationship. The United States is not Canada’s brother living under the same roof but instead a temperamental neighbour whose aggressive actions, if ignored, could be detrimental to the entire neighbourhood. Parliamentarians articulated the Canadian Self as a calm, rational, voice of reason to the radicalized American Other that is emotional, vengeful, and grief-stricken. Francine Lalonde (BQ) articulates this distinction saying “one cannot help but think that the dangerous and daring bright mind who devised the September 11 plan may have wanted to provoke the American giant…[t]he United States needs allies like Canada, allies that keep a cool head while remaining unwavering in their determination.”68 The power imbalance and difference in characteristics articulated

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in Lalonde’s statement are continuous with the anti-American discourse of the Cold War that represented Canada as a respected multilateral leader on the world stage juxtaposed to an aggressive, unilateralist American Other. The “American giant” is susceptible to provocation, whereas a wiser Canadian Self can talk sense into its powerful neighbour. Canada’s “special relationship” to the United States, is not defined by a shared cultural upbringing, but is instead defined by their relationship as neighbours with opposing, though not incommensurable, personalities. Alexa McDonough suggests that such a relationship bestows an immense responsibility on Canada to provide wise counsel to the hot-headed friend it shares the continent with: Canadians know that we have a very special relationship with the United States of America and we value that relationship with our neighbour to the south but we also have a special role internationally. If there were ever a time that both our neighbours to the south and the world needed to hear the voice of Canada, it is now…As America’s closest neighbour and friend, we owe it to them to listen and to support but we must also give them the benefit of our understanding of events…a true friend lends a guiding hand when someone is blinded by grief and rage.69

This articulation echoes Hutchison’s historical representation of Canada as the “interpreter” of and “advisor” to the “American giant.” Just as the concerned neighbour or caring friend offers another advice from a distanced position from the situation at hand, Canada is articulated as a rational, thoughtful, and most importantly, spatially removed, identity relative to the hot-headed United States. Furthermore, this spatial distance not only warrants a responsibility on Canada to offer wise counsel to the United States but the ability to wholly disagree with the United States’ perceived plans and approach. As McDonough continues “…our neighbours were thrown into a state of shock last week…the cry for vengeance from many quarters will surely grow louder…but if we pursue the path of blind vengeance, the path of the clenched fist, we are guaranteeing that this will happen again.”70 Once more, the United States is articulated as a neighbourly figure, but one characteristically different than its Canadian counsellor. Yvon Charbonneau (LP) and Svend Robinson (NDP) similarly articulate:

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…our government, as an ally of the United States, uses all its influence in order to persuade our giant neighbour to join forces with the international community in order to do something about situations at the root of terrorism, rather than limit its action to reprisals which will result in other innocent victims and do nothing to improve security. Canadian support must not be a carte blanche for military adventurism without a lasting positive outcome. Instead, it should encourage action characterized by wisdom and patience, as the Prime Minister suggested today.71 We also owe it to our friends in the United States to speak the truth about the implications of the course upon which they are now embarking. I believe from the bottom of my heart that the United States is embarking upon a course which is profoundly dangerous…72

In terms of temporality, this discourse articulates Canadian identity as under threat from those who would encourage Canada to fall in line with its American ally and abandon historical Canadian beliefs in democracy and freedom to endorse unilateralism and retribution. Once more, the consistency of Canadian identity is being threatened, but under this discourse, the threat is realized if Canada leaves its neighbour’s predispositions unchecked. Gilles Duceppe (BQ leader) surmises as much in saying “[d]emocracy and freedom have nothing in common with ignorance, obscurantism and violence…we must remind the U.S. president that…we cannot give carte blanche to the United States, no more than any other country.”73 While Canada has this neighbourly obligation to listen and advise, Canada is also limited in just how supportive of its neighbour it needs to be. Commenting on the declaration of Article 5 of the NATO charter following 9/11, Pierette Venne (BQ) comments “…of course, we already had a moral obligation to support our neighbours to the south in our anti-terrorist crusade. Now, NATO’s political initiative has made this a legal obligation as well. Our support of the United States should not be unswerving and unconditional; we should not grovel before the Americans and accept measures imposed on us unilaterally which are contrary to the system of values on which our society is built.”74 Unlike the Family discourse, standing shoulder to shoulder with the Americans risks, at a certain point, Canada’s own identity if the United States pushes its adventurist policies too far. In sum, the Voice of Reason discourse draws on and (re)articulates historical discourses of anti-Americanism to represent Canada and the

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United States: America as the aggressive, quick-triggered neighbour read similarly in the New World Enemies historical discourse and Canada as the characteristically oppositional advisor and interpreter of the American neighbour similarly to the historical Cold War Friends discourse. Elements of each combine into an innovative, though familiar, contemporary discourse of the Canadian Self as the voice of reason to the United States. Canadian Foreign Policy Discourses on Iraq On the eve of March 17, 2003, President George W. Bush delivered a globally televised address where he issued an ultimatum to Saddam Hussein. Hussein was given forty-eight hours to leave Iraq or face an impending “military conflict, commenced at a time of [America’s] choosing.”75 The world would soon learn that the time would be just a few days later. According to Bush, Hussein had failed to comply with the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441 that demanded disarmament and so a US-led “coalition of the willing” was prepared to remove him from power. While much of the world’s focus may have been on the words of the American President, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien had made an emphatic statement of his own within the Canadian House of Commons just hours earlier. Chrétien declared that Canada would not join the US coalition in the invasion of Iraq without a new United Nations authorization of military force.76 An authorization that was not going to come. While the Prime Minister lamented Canada’s inability to work out an alternative to avoid the Bush administration’s decision to pursue military intervention in Iraq, nevertheless, Canada would not be joining without a new Security Council resolution. Chrétien’s proclamation shocked many. Canada had supported every US intervention in the post-Cold War era to that point,77 not to mention the depth of economic and strategic interdependence among the two countries that would incentivize the Canadian government to ensure the continuation of a friendly relationship. Yet, within the House of Commons, Chrétien’s words were met with rousing applause and a standing ovation as the majority of parliamentarians from almost every party showed support, to varying degrees, for Canada’s non-intervention. The Canadian Alliance Party, which formed the official opposition to Chrétien’s Liberal party, however, adamantly disagreed with the stance. Spearheaded by their now party leader Stephen Harper and former

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party leader Stockwell Day, members of the official opposition decried Canada’s non-participation among the “coalition of the willing,” seeing it as jeopardizing key interests of the Canadian people. Concerns abounded regarding potential retaliatory measures from the United States, damage to Canada–US trade relations, the United States leaving Canada “out of the loop” in future discussions of continental security, and fears that Hussein posed a much greater threat to Canada than the government assumed.78 Members of the Canadian Alliance argued that Canada must join the Americans in the invasion. The opposition’s vehement disagreement with the government’s stance is not particularly surprising or revelatory per se. That opposing parties launch counter-arguments challenging what was in Canada’s best interest is expected in most debates, not just those surrounding the “Global War on Terror.” This chapter, however, is not concerned with the merit of these arguments and concerns, but how they were made an issue of identity. What is surprising about these debates is that in just two years, it was the Canadian Alliance Party, not Chrétien’s Liberal Party, that deployed an identity narrative of Canada as needing to stand alongside America because of their homogenous values and interests. The opposition’s counter-arguments were strung together within a cohesive narrative scaffolding that arranged these arguments within a familiar identity discourse that predicated the fulfilment of Canada’s fundamental values only through adopting a policy of intervention in Iraq with its brotherly allies. On the other side, it was now the Liberal Party spearheading a policy of abstention from the intervention articulated through a representation of Canada as needing to stand up to its giant and vengeful neighbour. The Family Discourse George W. Bush’s prime-time “ultimatum” speech on March 17, 2003 ran concurrently with the emergency debate on the situation in Iraq within the Canadian House of Commons. Following Jean Chrétien’s declaration that “If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate,”79 leading figures within the Canadian Alliance utilized this debate period to introduce a series of pro-intervention counter-arguments articulated through vivid representations of the Canadian Self as needing to participate alongside the United States and other allies; a representation that would be echoed by Canadian Alliance MPs throughout the four days of debate.

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Stockwell Day launched the Canadian Alliance’s challenge to the Prime Minister’s stance by placing Canada within a vivid and stark network of identities: Today we witness an historic divide, an historic realignment of geopolitical forces in the early part of this 21st century. We are witnessing this divide right in front of our eyes….Today, our Prime Minister put us on the side of Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq and China. The government has put us on that side, not on the side of Great Britain, Australia, Spain and the great emerging nations of the new Europe that experienced communism, and have only recently broken free from it. Are we with those freedom loving nations? No, we are not. This is a sad day, a sad moment for us as Canadians.80

With Canada’s spatial proximity to its allies at its centre, the basic scaffolding of the Canadian Alliance discourse contained two distinct features. First, Canada was, for one of the first times in history, failing to stand with its “historic,” “traditional,” and “closest” allies, placing the Canadian Self spatially distant from its “neighbour” and “friends” and spatially proximate to those identities standing against freedom and democracy. Canadian Alliance leaders articulated Canada as “estranged from its most important allies [regarding] the most important matter facing the world today”81 and having “abandon[ed] our closest friends and allies at this critical time.”82 Second, this spatial distance was read as particularly egregious for two reasons related to Canada’s temporal standing. First, because it represented an abandonment of the values at the foundation of Canadian identity, this abandon risked a temporal regression from Canada’s status as a civilized democracy and defender of freedom. Harper and Day continually articulated this temporal regression of identity in various terms surrounding Canada’s loss of its defining values: We will not be with our government, for this government, in taking the position it has taken, has betrayed Canada’s history and its values.83 The Liberal government has seriously injured the interests and reputation of Canada by refusing to support the effort of the United States, the United Kingdom and thirty-two other countries…84

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…to have the future once again of a great country, we must do more than stand with our friends in the United States. We must rediscover our own values…85 …our prayers and our hopes will be with those 32 brave nations who are willing to fulfill the UN resolution, disarm Saddam Hussein and eventually see peace and freedom come to Iraq. Sadly, Canada will not be a part of that this time. Though we were there in the past, we will not be this time.86

And second, this distance was particularly egregious because of who Canada was abandoning. Working with Canada’s closest allies was articulated as both a means to an end and an end in and of itself. To fight alongside Canada’s closest allies not only allows Canada the opportunity to spread democracy and combat those who are against freedom, but cooperation with Canadian allies also allows Canada to fulfill its sense of self. Teaming with Canada’s closest allies is itself a fulfillment of this sense of self and a resistance of a regressive temporal slide. Consider the discursive linkages articulated by Harper that bind together Canada’s very act of being aligned with reification of its own selfhood. Harper articulated that Chrétien’s government had “…for the first time in our history, left us outside our British and American allies in their time of need. However, it has done worse. It has left us standing for nothing…it has left us standing with no one.”87 He argued that “[a] country that does not embrace its own friends and allies in a dangerous world but thinks it can use them and reject them at will. Such a country will in time endanger its own existence.”88 Partnership with America and other Canadian allies, in other words, is both a vessel to pursue Canadian values in the world, and a value in its own right. On March 20, 2003, as the House of Commons would vote on a motion proposed by the leader of the Bloc Québécois Gilles Duceppe that Canada not participate in the military coalition, with Duceppe being an outspoken supporter of Chrétien’s non-intervention stance, Harper would offer a particularly stirring representation of the connection between Canadian alliances and Canadian values: It is also fitting that this historic motion, which calls on us to abandon our closest friends and allies at this critical time, comes from the Bloc Québécois, a party that does have values and visions but whose values are different than the traditions that built this country and whose vision is a country where our country as we know it would not exist.

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In the great wars of the last century, against authoritarianism, against racism and against communism, Canada did not merely stand with the Americans, we, more often than not, led the way. We did so for freedom, we did so for democracy, we did so for values of civilization itself, values which continue to be embodied in our allies…and are represented in their polar opposites, embodied and personified by Saddam Hussein and the perpetrators of 9/11…I believe most Canadians will quietly stand, for these higher values, which shaped our past and which we will need in an uncertain future.89

The motion would pass with significant support from the House for Chrétien’s non-interventionist stance. The Voice of Reason Discourse As Chrétien announced that Canada would not join the US-led coalition against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, he acknowledged that his country had earnestly tried to mediate against an international fracturing. “Over the last few weeks the Security Council has been unable to agree on a new resolution authorizing military action,” the Prime Minister remarked. “Canada worked very hard to find a compromise to bridge the gap in the Security Council. Unfortunately, we were not successful.”90 Chrétien’s stance in keeping Canada out of the invasion was popular among parliamentarians outside those in the Canadian Alliance, but the fact that Canada was now going one way and its American neighbour another, especially after attempted conciliation, proved to be a thorny reality few in the House of Commons could overlook. In fact, negotiating Canadian identity in relation to remaining outside the “coalition of the willing” would be the primary discursive vehicle through which the merits of a policy of non-intervention were articulated. As previously discussed, the Canadian Alliance made discord between Canada and the United States a central element of their arguments in favour of Canada’s participation in the invasion of Iraq—articulating Canada’s interests not only in material terms of its trade and strategic relations with the United States, but also ideationally as a matter of maintaining the Canadian Self. How did supporters of Canada’s non-intervention in Iraq counter the arguments presented by the Canadian Alliance members in the House of Commons? How did they make sense of Canada pursuing an opposite path from

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the “coalition of the willing?” As this section demonstrates, members of the governing Liberal Party, Bloc Québécois, NDP, and to a lesser extent Progressive Conservative Party, advanced a series of arguments that hinged on the illegitimacy of Bush’s use of military force in Iraq which had not explicitly been authorized by the UN Security Council and the argument that positive Canada–US relations could be maintained despite the current disagreement. These arguments were, once again, structured within a familiar narrative of Canada’s neighbourly relationship to the United States, but the meaning of this relationship was re-imagined in a manner that articulated Canada and the United States as close allies but with limitations to their support for one another. In particular, this neighbourly relationship was articulated as positioning Canada and the United States not as wholly homogenous entities, but rather as very close, though characteristically different, best friends, brothers, or dedicated neighbours. Canada’s spatial closeness to the United States was read not as these two identities being “cut from the same cloth” as before, but more as confidants whose closeness and familiarity ordained one to be a voice of reason onto the other. “Does the Prime Minister intend to use Canada’s status as a neighbour, to now condemn an illegitimate and illegal intervention that is tantamount to an aggression? Will Canada take steps to condemn such a thing?”91 asked Michel Gauthier, Member of the Bloc Québécois. Chrétien shrugged off the question and referred back to his opening statement. “I clearly stated our position when I set out the government’s policy, in response to the first question in oral question period today,”92 responded the Prime Minister. While Chrétien used this specific interaction to refer to his foreign policy stance, Gauthier’s question signalled a trend that would dominate discussion over Canada’s involvement in Iraq in the House of Commons. Parliamentary debate would indeed centre squarely not just on which foreign policy Canada should adopt, but also on how “Canada’s status” allowed the country to pursue a path opposing its close friend the United States while still maintaining its fundamental values. Members from Liberal, BQ, NDP, and PC parties would frequently situate who Canada is, in articulating a vision for what Canada should do. Gauthier’s articulation of Canada holding some kind of special “status” in relation to the United States ordained through its position as America’s “neighbour” would prove to be a popular articulation and central element of arguments for non-intervention among parliamentarians. It would also be a central element in a discursive arrangement that made sense of

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the tension between Canada and the United States without casting the United States as a distant Other or revoking Canada’s “civilizational membership.” Rather than an egregious abandonment of Canada’s kin in a time of need, Canada was merely having a disagreement with an old friend that would appreciate being told hard truths. George Bush’s intentions to invade Iraq without the UN Security Council’s specific approval for military intervention was deemed by many within the House of Commons an illegitimate and illegal act (a point we will return to in Chapter 5). And while the unjustness of the action was articulated as necessitating Canada not participate in the invasion, the predominant identity discourse linked by non-interventionists to this policy was in fact one that coincided with historical discourses of Canadian closeness to the United States. Non-interventionist arguments centred on a reading of Canadian identity as spatially proximate to the United States in sharing many core values. But rather than reading this proximity as meaning homogeneity, like identical twins as Harper’s Canadian Alliance had, non-interventionist parliamentarians read Canada’s relationship to the United States more as brothers or long-time friends: exhibiting similarities from growing up in a similar environment but also characteristic nuances that obligate one to advise the other when they have “lost their way.” This discursive scaffolding was anchored by two specific elements pertaining to Canada’s spatial position in relation to the United States. First, that Canada’s geographic proximity to the United States, their long history as neighbours, as well as their shared values of freedom and democracy made the two spatially close and similar, but not identical. Instead, this closeness was articulated as situating Canada in a special position responsible for mediating between America and the world. In brotherly fashion, Canada was articulated as the one who truly understood its American neighbour and the trauma it has experienced: We should have been trying to influence the US. We are its closest neighbour. We are its biggest trading partner. We are the country that understand the United States better than anyone.93 …we must recognize that we are the closest friends of the people of the United States…Our neighbours have gone through a very traumatic experience with the attacks of September 11.94

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…we have strong connections with the Americans. They are our friends, our neighbours and our trading partners. We have many family ties…If we must differ over Iraq…let us do so with respect…It is difficult for us, I think, to comprehend how profoundly changed the US population was by 9/11. We know they feel deeply vulnerable…let us keep in mind that they must feel they are walking around with bulls’ eyes on their foreheads…95 As friends and allies of the US, we have an opportunity to influence the Americans and offer insights that may differ, and will differ sometimes, from their own insights…we make sure that at the same time we nurture the influence we have and do not squander it.96

Second, this closeness that produced a unique level of understanding was read as placing a special responsibility at the feet of the Canadian Self: an obligation to speak truth to power. Canada could pursue a separate path from the United States without the spatial distance between itself and the American Other being too great because disagreement and counselling were in fact a special feature of Canadian identity related to the United States. Canada, it could be said, had an obligation to offer tough love to its American friend.97 Francine Lalonde articulated that the United States would “be needing friends it respects and will need to accept that those friends can be totally opposed to their strategy,”98 while Bill Blaikie (NDP) implored the Canadian government to continue “urging the United States to change its mind” because “…it is never too late for a friend, however damaged our relationship with the United States might be…”99 If a key aspect of the Canadian Self was its ability to counsel and guide the United States towards a more just path, then the fact that the United States pursued a path widely considered unjust would appear to be a threat to the stability of Canada’s role as America’s voice of reason. Was the Liberal Party prepared to admit that Canada had failed in its duty in what would appear to be a challenge to the discursive stability of the narrative they had been articulating? Unlike the representation articulated by the Canadian Alliance, the anti-interventionists articulated limits to Canada’s neighbourly relationship to the United States. In temporal terms, Canada risks degrading its own sense of self if it does not hold firm when America’s preferences contradict its own. While Canada has a special role to advise the United States, being America’s voice of reason is superseded by Canada’s need to defend its own values. In this sense, Canada’s role as the voice of reason is articulated as having its limits,

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beyond which Canada jeopardizes its own values. Consider Liberal MP Janko Peric’s direct response to the articulations offered by the Canadian Alliance: There are some in the House [of Commons] who believe we should support efforts of our American neighbours just because they are our neighbours and because we share a common border. I am afraid I do not buy this argument. If my friend was about to commit a crime or do something that was morally wrong, I could not stand by that friend no matter how much he or she meant to me personally. In fact, I would not support a family member if that person’s actions were illegal or immoral…100

Echoing Peric’s sentiment, Liberal Party members consistently demarcated this figurative line between the Canadian Self and American Other across which Canada could not step without sacrificing its own values. “I appreciate the argument that we need to stand by our friends, the Americans,” stated John Maloney (LP), “[b]ut I do not agree that we should do so at any cost.”101 Paul Bonwick (LP) similarly acknowledged the important relationship between Canada and the United States but concluded “I am here to help them whenever they need that help, but it is not unconditional.”102 The anti-interventionist Voice of Reason discourse contained a final element countering the discourse of the Canadian Alliance regrading the fears of American retaliation against Canada for its choice of an alternate path. Namely, Canada–US relations could endure a relatively rocky dispute because the bind between the two countries is tried and true. Any perceived tension among the two would not significantly shake the “robust and profound” relationship that will survive due to the “constellation of values”103 shared between the two “steadfast friends.”104 “Just because at times friends diverge and disagree with one another,” stated Maloney, “does not mean that they will not continue to be friends.”105 In sum, anti-interventionist parliamentarians, spearheaded by members of the governing Liberal Party, argued for their preferred policy of non-intervention in Iraq through discursive articulations of Canada’s relationship to the United States. That Canada and the United States were pursuing opposing paths, a reality that the Canadian Alliance had articulated as a threat to Canadian identity, was read within a counterdiscourse that downplayed the spatial distancing between Canada and the

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United States the Canadian Alliance had articulated while representing disagreement between the two identities as part of their normal relationship—even allowing for the further actualization of Canadian identity as disagreement with the United States allowed Canada to fulfill its duty as America’s conciliator. Importantly, members of the Progressive Conservative Party, who occupied somewhat of a middle ground between the pro-interventionist Canadian Alliance and non-interventionist Liberal, BQ, and NDP parties, found their leading members, nevertheless, channelling their policy preferences through the same discursive vehicles. Considerably less enthralled with Chrétien’s stance than members of other parties, PC MPs in fact expressed tepid approval of the government’s stance towards Iraq— at least at the moment of Bush’s ultimatum—while also condemning the Chrétien government’s inability to dissuade the United States from its impending invasion—invoking rhetoric consistent with the Voice of Reason discourse. Criticizing Chrétien for the impasse among the UN Security Council, PC leader Joe Clark lamented Canada shirking its responsibility to counsel the United States under the current government. “Canada has not participated in building a relationship with the United States that would have allowed us to counsel prudence on the president,” lamented the MP. “We have abandoned that role and left it to Britain” Clark concluded.106 Bill Casey (PC) echoed his party leader’s representation, claiming Canada’s true power not to be in its military might, but its reputation for bridge-building. “We have such power around the world…We will never be a superpower from a military point of view, but we can be a superpower from a diplomatic point of view…We earned that reputation. We have wasted it in this case…We could have been in there in the first place trying to influence the US policy, trying to help it make a decision to do this a little different…” Casey delves further into articulating the central importance of Canada’s ability to counsel the US not only to reify Canadian identity, but for the safety of the world. Citing conversations with representatives from various countries at a recent Organization of American States meeting regarding Canada’s unique relationship with the United States, Casey remarked: I am amazed at the respect people have for Canada and how they respect our opinion…They said ‘We know that you have problems dealing with the giant next door, but imagine the problems we have, our little countries, with out little economies, with different languages. We have a much bigger

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problem dealing with the giant than you do. We want you, Canada, to be there to help counterbalance the difference between us.’ They look to Canada…People were counting on us to be that counterbalance and we did not do it.107

Presenting a discursive variation of the Canada as America’s Voice of Reason discourse, the PC nevertheless channelled their stance on Iraq through a reading of the neighbourly relationship between Canada and the United States.

Conclusion The invasion of Iraq situated Canada and the United States on opposing sides of a foreign intervention for the first time since the end of the Cold War. While Canada’s decision to abstain from the intervention could have been discussed by Canadian politicians in any number of ways, in actuality, the House of Commons made this decision a matter of Canadian and American identities. Once more, “Canada as America’s neighbour” became the leading discourse through which parliamentarians both for and against intervention articulated their points of view. As Harper’s Canadian Alliance Party constructed abandoning the United States in its time of need as a threat to longstanding principles of Canadian identity, his detractors countered with a more nuanced representation of Canadian identity that could not only withstand a disagreement with its neighbour, but in fact, was best actualized by disagreeing and speaking truth to its powerful neighbour. A clear reversal is apparent from debates on the invasion of Afghanistan just two years prior. There, Chrétien’s Liberal Party had been advancing a policy of intervention linked to a familial discourse of Canada–US relations. Despite the adjustments in arguments and policy positions, what remained central to debates regarding both conflicts in the Middle East was the discursive raw materials out of which these competing perspectives were built and mobilized. The familiar notion of Canada’s role as America’s neighbour served as the basic narrative structure from which parliamentarians built their opposing arguments, functioning as the discursive vehicle in which they mobilized their differing perspectives. Imbued with different meanings that brought certain policy paths to light over others, the seemingly selfevident “reality” of Canada’s geographic proximity to the United States

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made Canada’s eventual role in the “Global War on Terror” possible. This rhetorical commonplace was not, however, alone. Repeated alongside “Canada as America’s neighbour” was another familiar narrative that also served as a main structure of parliamentary debate over these two wars. We turn to this second commonplace in the next chapter.

Notes 1. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Routledge, 7. 2. By the mid-1930s “Canadian History” was offered as a course in more US universities than Canadian universities. See Berger, C. (1972). Internationalism, Continentalism, and the Writing of History: Comments on the Carnegie Series on the Relations of Canada and the United States. In Preston, R.A. (Ed). The Influence of the United States on Canadian Development: Eleven Case Studies. Duke University Press. 3. Berger, C. (1972), 37. 4. Ibid., 38. 5. Dafoe, J.W. (1935). Canada, An American Nation. Columbia University Press. 6. Berger, C. (1972), 39. 7. Dafoe, J.W. (1935), 6. 8. Ibid., 35 (emphasis added). 9. Berger, C. (1972), 44. 10. Stuart, G.T. (1992). The American Response to Canada Since 1776. Michigan State University Press, 6. 11. Berger, C. (1972), 47. 12. Hansen, M.L. (1940). The Mingling of the Canadian and American peoples: Volume I: Historical. The Ryerson Press, x. 13. Tansill, C.C. (1943). Canadian-American Relations, 1875–1911. The Ryerson Press, 462–466. 14. Trudeau, P.E. (1969, March). Speech to Washington Press Club. 15. Burt, A.L. (1942). A Short History of Canada for Americans. The University of Minnesota Press. 16. Hutchison, B. (1955). The Struggle for the Border. Longmans, Green. 17. Bothwell, R. (1992). Canada and the United States. University of Toronto Press. 18. Jones, D.T., & Kilgour, D. (2007). Uneasy Neighbo(u)rs: Canada, the USA and the Dynamics of State, Industry and Culture. Wiley & Sons Canada. 19. Granatstein, J.L. (1996). Yankee Go Home: Canadians and AntiAmericanism. HarperCollins Canada.

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20. Nossal, K.R. (2005). Anti-Americanism in Canada. Working paper. Centre for Policy Studies, Budapest, Hungary, 9. 21. Hutchison claims the representations of the Thirteen Colonies as aggressive and traitors to the Motherland of Britain that the loyalists brought with them “compelled the new Canadians to create a community of some sort if they were to be safe from American pursuit and annexation.” See Hutchison, B. (1955), 174–175. 22. Bow, B. (2008). Anti-Americanism in Canada, Before and After Iraq. American Review of Canadian Studies 38(3), 334. 23. Bow, B. (2008), 344. This influx saw the populations of Upper Canadian settlements increase by the thousands, yet many more loyalists chose to return to Britain, settle in the West Indies, or continue living in the United States. See Burt, A.L. (1942), 88. 24. Granatstein, J.L. (1996), 16. 25. MacCormac, J.P. (1940). Canada: America’s Problem. The Viking Press, 130. 26. Hutchison, B. (1955), 174 (emphasis added). 27. Bow, B. (2008), 344. 28. Granatstein, J.L. (1996), 21. 29. Ibid., 8. 30. Ibid., 10. 31. Ibid., 68. 32. Kim Richard Nossal suggests “the connection to the British Empire was not just simply a matter of formal allegiance to a legal order. More importantly, the connection was an emotional attachment to the patria, the land of their (or their parents’) birth,” the “Mother Country.” (2004) Defending the “Realm”: Canadian Strategic Culture Revisited. International Journal 59(3), 5. 33. Granatstein, J.L. (1985). Cooperation and Conflict: The course of Canadian-American Relations Since 1945. In Doran, C.F. & Sigler, J.H. (Eds), Canada and the United States: Enduring Friendship, Persistent Stress. Prentice-Hall, 46. 34. Bothwell, R., Drummond, I., & English, J. (1989). Canada Since 1945: Power, Politics and Provincialism, 2nd edition. University of Toronto Press, 61. 35. Hutchison, B. (1955), 468. 36. Bothwell, R., Drummond, I., & English, J. (1989), 62. 37. Careless, J.M.S. (1963). Canada: A Story of Challenge. Macmillan Company, 382–383. 38. Hart, M. (2002). A Trading Nation: Canadian Trade Policy from Colonialism to Globalization. University of British Columbia Press, 145. 39. Cooper, A.F., Higgott, R.A., & Nossal, K.R. (1993). Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order. University of British Columbia Press.

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40. McNaught, K. (1988). The Penguin History of Canada. Penguin Books, 298; Careless, J.M.S. (1963), 421–422. 41. Bow, B. (2008), 349. 42. Hutchison, B. (1955), 480. 43. Bothwell, R. (1992), 48. 44. Canada maintained trade with both throughout this era. 45. Careless, J.M.S. (1963), 425. 46. Hutchison, B. (1955), 483. 47. Ibid., 484. 48. Granatstein, J.L., & Hillmer, N. (1991). For Better Or For Worse: Canada and the United States to the 1990s. Copp Clark Publishing, 236. 49. Careless, J.M.S. (1963), 425. 50. Throughout this book, visual representations of historical discourses are inspired by the visual structures introduced by Lene Hansen (2006, 94). 51. Torrens, D. (2001, October 24). Why We’re Different. The Globe and Mail. A.18. 52. LeClair, A. (2001, October 26). Holier than Thou. The Globe and Mail. A.18. 53. Bush, G.W. (2001, September 24). Remarks Following Discussions with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien of Canada. 54. Ibid. 55. Chrétien, J. (2001, September 24). Remarks by the President and Prime Minister Chrétien of Canada. 56. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1105. 57. Holland, J. (2009). From September 11th, 2001 to 9–11: From Void to Crisis. International Political Sociology 3, 275–292; Nabers, D. (2009). Filling the Void of Meaning: Identity Construction in US Foreign Policy after September 11, 2001. Foreign Policy Analysis 21(5), 191–524. 58. Gross Stein, J., & Lang, E. (2007). The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Penguin, 2. 59. For an exploration of foreign policy discourses in the US, UK, and Australia, see Holland, J. (2013). Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11. Routledge. 60. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1120H . 61. Marceau, R. (Charlesbourg-Jacques-Cartier, BQ). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1240h. 62. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session,1240–1255h, (emphasis added).

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63. Whelan, S. (Essex, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1410h. 64. Regan, G. (Halifax West, Lib). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 2130h. 65. Graham, B. (Toronto Centre-Rosedale, Lib). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 2325–2335h. 66. Myers, L. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada, Lib). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1710h. 67. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1150h. 68. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1535–1545h. 69. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1205– 1210h. 70. Ibid., 1205h. 71. Charbonneau, Y. (Anjou-Riviere-des-Prairies, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1850h. 72. Robinson, S. (Burnaby-Douglas, NDP). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 2215h. 73. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 2050h. 74. Venne, P. (Saint-Bruno-Saint-Hubert, BQ). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, 1800h. 75. Bush, G.W. (2003, March 17). President Bush Addresses the Nation on Iraq. 76. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1430h. 77. Vucetic, S. (2006). Why did Canada Sit Out the Iraq War? One Constructivist Analysis. Canadian Foreign Policy 13(1), 133. 78. See Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1435h; Jaffer, R. (Edmonton-Strathcona, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1440h. 79. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1415h. 80. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquilhalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1905h. 81. Ibid., 1850h (emphasis added).

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82. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1130h (emphasis added). 83. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1140h (emphasis added). 84. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquilhalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1850h (emphasis added). 85. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1140h. 86. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquilhalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1850h (emphasis added). 87. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1140h. 88. Ibid., 1140h. 89. Ibid., 1130–1145h. 90. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1415h. 91. Gauthier, M. (Roberval, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1420h. 92. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1425h. 93. Casey, B. (Cumberland-Colchester, PC). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1940h. 94. Eggleton, A. (York Centre, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 2105h. 95. Regan, G. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 2150–2200. 96. Ibid. 97. Janko Peric (Cambridge, Lib) says as much: “As far as I can see the only parties being unreasonable in this entire situation are President Bush and Prime Minister Blair. They are the ones who have appeared unwilling to compromise. They are the ones who are showing absolute disregard for the concerns of their friends and neighbors around the globe. I am sorry if our neighbours to the south do not like what has been said here tonight, but if we are true friends, we must not be afraid to tell it like it is” (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 2115h. 98. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1830h.

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99. Blaikie, B. (Winnipeg-Transcona, NDP). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1925h. 100. Peric, J. (Cambridge, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 2120h. 101. Maloney, J. (Erie-Lincoln). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1110h. 102. Bonwick, P. (Simcoe-Grey, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1350h; Similarly, Gilles Duceppe stated that “Canada should take an active approach to diplomacy. It should not lapse into fatalism and make the American position its own, as if nothing more could be done, but rather continue its diplomatic efforts…” (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1040h. 103. McKay, J. (Scarborough East, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1615h. 104. Harvard, J. (Charleswood-St.James-Assiniboia, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1625h. 105. Maloney, J. (Erie-Lincoln). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1330h. 106. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1930h. 107. Casey, B. (Cumberland-Colchester, PC) (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, 1940–1945h.

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Bush, G. W. (2003, March 17). President Bush Addresses the Nation on Iraq. Careless, J. M. S. (1963). Canada: A Story of Challenge. Macmillan Company. Casey, B. (Cumberland-Colchester, PC). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Charbonneau, Y. (Anjou-Riviere-des-Prairies, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Chrétien, J. (2001, September 24). Remarks by the President and prime Minister Chrétien of Canada. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Cooper, A. F., Higgott, R. A., & Nossal, K. R. (1993). Relocating Middle Powers: Australia and Canada in a Changing World Order. University of British Columbia Press. Dafoe, J. W. (1935). Canada, An American Nation. Columbia University Press. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquilhalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Eggleton, A. (York Centre, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Gauthier, M. (Roberval, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Graham, B. (Toronto Centre-Rosedale, Lib). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session Graham, B. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session, Granatstein, J. L. (1985). Cooperation and Conflict: The Course of CanadianAmerican Relations Since 1945. In: C. F. Doran & J. H. Sigler (Eds.), Canada and the United States: Enduring Friendship, Persistent Stress. PrenticeHall. Granatstein, J. L. (1996). Yankee Go Home: Canadians and Anti-Americanism. HarperCollins. Granatstein, J. L., & Hillmer, N. (1991). For Better Or For Worse: Canada and the United States to the 1990s. Copp Clark Publishing,

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Gross Stein, J., & Lang, E. (2007). The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Penguin. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. Routledge. Hansen, M.L. (1940). The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples: Volume I: Historical. The Ryerson Press. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Hart, M. (2002). A Trading Nation: Canadian Trade Policy from Colonialism to Globalization. University of British Columbia Press. Harvard, J. (Charleswood-St.James-Assiniboia, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Holland, J. (2009). From September 11th, 2001 to 9–11: From Void to Crisis. International Political Sociology, 3, 275–292. Holland, J. (2013). Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11. Routledge. Hutchison, B. (1955). The Struggle for the Border. Longmans, Green. Jaffer, R. (Edmonton-Strathcona, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Jones, D. T., & Kilgour, D. (2007). Uneasy Neighbo(u)rs: Canada, the USA and the Dynamics of State, Industry and Culture. Wiley & Sons. Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. LeClair, A. (2001, October 26). Holier than Thou. In: The Globe and Mail. MacCormac, J. P. (1940). Canada: America’s Problem. The Viking Press. Maloney, J. (Erie-Lincoln) (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Marceau, R. (Charlesbourg-Jacques-Cartier, BQ). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session, McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. McKay, J. (Scarborough East, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. McNaught, K. (1988). The Penguin History of Canada. Penguin Books.

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Myers, L. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada, Lib). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Nabers, D. (2009). Filling the Void of Meaning: Identity Construction in US Foreign Policy after September 11, 2001. Foreign Policy Analysis, 21(5), 191– 524. Nossal, K. R. (2005) Anti-Americanism in Canada (Working Paper). Centre for Policy Studies. Nossal, K. R. (2004). Defending the “Realm”: Canadian Strategic Culture Revisited. International Journal, 59(3), 5. Peric, J. (Cambridge, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session. Regan, G. (Halifax West, Lib). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session Regan, G. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd Session Robinson, S. (Burnaby-Douglas, NDP) (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Stuart, G. T. (1992). The American Response to Canada Since 1776. Michigan State University Press. Tansill, C. C. (1943). Canadian-American Relations, 1875–1911. The Ryerson Press. Torrens, D. (2001, October 24). Why We’re Different. In: The Globe and Mail. Trudeau, P. E. (1969, March). Speech to Washington Press Club. Venne, P. (Saint-Bruno-Saint-Hubert, BQ). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session. Vucetic, S. (2006). Why Did Canada Sit Out the Iraq War? One Constructivist Analysis. Canadian Foreign Policy, 13(1), 133–153. Whelan, S. (Essex, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st Session.

CHAPTER 4

Crusading Saviour and Condemning Onlooker: Discourses of Canada the Protector and the War on Terror

This chapter provides a fresh analysis of the Canadian government’s decisions to participate in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and abstain from the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As with Chapter 3, this chapter breaks with conventional approaches to examining these decisions that prioritize the role of alliance diplomacy, security threats, and material constraints to instead examine how these considerations were articulated in terms of Canadian identity by Canadian parliamentarians. In particular, this chapter analyses how the second rhetorical commonplace, “Canada as protector of foreign civilians,” became a central feature of both pro-participation and non-participation arguments within the House of Commons. Parliamentarians consistently channelled their opposing foreign policies through competing representations of Canada as a protector of foreign civilians and how their preferred policy best upheld this articulated Canadian tradition. In so doing, Canadian humanitarianism was articulated and re-imagined in unique ways as part of different discursive arrangements mobilized to advance competing foreign policies. The chapter proceeds through two main sections. I begin by tracing the conceptual history of the rhetorical commonplace “Canada as protector of foreign civilians.” As with “Canada as America’s neighbour,” this concept’s history precedes contemporary usage in the Canadian

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_4

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Parliament and serves as a foundation from which these contemporary invocations are drawn. Second, the chapter shifts to focus on the deployment of this commonplace surrounding Canada’s prospective involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and 2003, respectively. Events surrounding these two early “episodes” of the “Global War on Terror” were widely articulated in terms of their relationship to humanitarianism: that 9/11 represented “an attack on humanity” and Saddam Hussein was a threat to the “human rights” of Iraqi civilians. Discussions within the House of Common echoed this sentiment yet careful analysis of the pro and anti-interventionist debates surrounding these wars reveals that parliamentarians habitually relied on the same commonplace of “Canada as protector of foreign civilians” to advance opposing ends. Here, I examine not only the central role “Canada as protector of foreign civilians” played in these debates, but also how arguments in favour of these foreign policies relied on incorporating and adjusting historical discourses of Canadian humanitarianism to realize Canadian foreign policy towards Afghanistan and Iraq.

Canada as Protector of Foreign Civilians: A Conceptual History of Canada’s Approach to Human Security This section provides a conceptual history of the concept of “Canada as protector of foreign civilians,” drawing out four dominant twentieth-century representations that articulate different spatial and temporal identities. Today, Canada’s government frequently cites the duty to defend the human rights of civilians around the world as an obligation long entrenched in Canadian values and history. Yet, this relationship, which situates Canada as a protector of helpless civilians in foreign countries, often specified as women and children harmed by “evil” foreign governments and international entities, is a product of various historical articulations of this duty to defend the innocent dating back decades. Whereas representations of the previous discourses of “Canada as America’s neighbour” relied primarily upon binary spatial relationships between articulations of the Canadian Self and American Other, these four dominant historical representations rely upon ternary spatial relationships: (1) a Canadian Self fulfilling a protective role; (2) a spatially distant Other that requires Canada’s protection; (3) a radically

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distant Other that causes the suffering necessitating Canada’s response. The four dominant historical representations presented in this section are drawn from the Canadian government’s foreign policy white papers. Since the 1940s, incoming Canadian governments have sought to define Canada’s national and international interests alongside a clear statement of how these interests were to be realized under the new government. Commonly known as a “foreign policy review,” the earliest recognized reviews of the mid-twentieth century took the form of formal speeches from the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs (SSEA),1 but since the 1970s, these reviews have taken the form of foreign policy white papers. In Canadian government, white papers are “statements of policy [that] often set out proposals for legislative changes which may be debated before a Bill is introduced.”2 Much like a report, “a white paper provides information on what the government is doing or intends to do on a policy matter.”3 In short, white papers fulfill “informative, accessibility, and anticipatory roles…[t]he white paper process brings together cabinet, parliament and the public in the policy-making process.”4 Between 1947 and 2002, nearly every new government conducted a foreign policy review and published a white paper when the incoming party unseated an opposing party as leaders of the government. Between 1947 and 2002, leadership of the Canadian government changed hands between the Liberal and Progressive Conservative parties on six occasions5 (1957, 1963, 1979, 1980, 1984, 1993). During this time period, six foreign policy white papers (or their speech-based equivalent) were published. With the frequency with which they were produced, these white papers offer an opportunity to chart the shifts in how Canada’s role as a protector of foreign civilians was articulated by subsequent governments. Foreign policy white papers also offer a snapshot into the wider discursive environments Canadian foreign policy-makers simultaneously find themselves within and work to produce. These white papers took months and even years to produce as those tasked with conducting the review drew input from a range of sources including departmental officers, policy experts, and even samples of public opinion.6 Whether or not each white paper was widely read in Canadian society is less important than that which they encapsulate: they articulate characteristics of the international arena of the time, state Canada’s national interests and priorities, and offer strategies on how these interests can be achieved and what is at stake if they are not. The goal of examining the content of these white papers is not to assess how accurately each government described

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the international environment they were within or whether each administration did in fact carry out the proposed policy goals outlined in the white paper. Rather, the aim is to examine how early representations of Canada’s relationship to foreign civilians and those who threaten them, formed a discursive foundation from which contemporary representations are drawn. A Moralistic Approach to International Human Betterment (1947–1970) Following World War II, Canada took on a more active role in charting its own foreign policies separate from the British Commonwealth. The international arena itself had undergone significant changes, now structured by its two most powerful members, the United States and the Soviet Union, and there was an increasing push for Canada’s own approach to foreign relations to be reviewed. The Liberal administration of William Lyon Mackenzie King produced what is considered the earliest form of foreign policy review in 1947. King’s SSEA, Louis St. Laurent, who would succeed King as leader of the Liberal Party and become the next Prime Minister a year later, issued a speech entitled “The Foundations of Canadian Policy in World Affairs” at the University of Toronto on January 13, 1947.7 Characterizing the speech as “an enquiry into the foundations of Canadian policy in world affairs” at its outset, St. Laurent provided the first comprehensive review of Canadian values and international aspirations. While elements of the speech focused on concerns with national unity among English and French-speaking Canadians and the desire for Canada to chart a complimentary though distinct international course from the British Commonwealth, the core of the speech was St. Laurent’s statement of five basic principles that “have had to be and have become generally acceptable throughout this country in the conduct of our relations abroad. When we have defined these principles, we may examine the manner in which we have habitually embodied them in our relations with other states…”8 The first two principles, that “external policies shall not destroy our [national] unity” and “political liberty…which we ourselves have enlarged by working out on our own soil the transition from colony to free community”9 give way to the remaining three, which contain distinctly humanitarian obligations. St. Laurent’s third principle is “respect for the rule of law [which] has become an integral part of our external as of our

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domestic policy.”10 In stating that this principle is “a necessary antecedent to self-government,” he then articulates the terms of those who deprive and are deprived of this basic principle: Within the past decade we have been reminded by the hideous example of the Fascist states of the evil which befalls a nation when the government sets itself above the law. Beneath the spurious efficiency of such a state, we have perceived the helpless plight of individuals who have been deprived of the primary right of an impartial administration of the law.11

With similar sentiment, St. Laurent’s fourth principle is that foreign policy must be “based upon some conception of human values.”12 St. Laurent juxtaposes fashionable Cold War thinking of “hard realism in the conduct of international affairs” with a Canadian moralistic approach: I know that we live in an age when it is fashionable to speak in terms only of hard realism in the conduct of international affairs…I am sure, however, that in our national life we are continually influenced by the conceptions of good and evil which emerged from Hebrew and Greek civilization and which have been transformed and transmitted through the Christian traditions of the Western World. These are values which lay emphasis on the importance of the individual, on the place of moral principles in the conduct of human relations, on standards of judgment which transcend mere material well-being…I am equally convinced that on the basis of this common experience we shall discern the same values in world affairs, and that we shall seek to protect and nurture them.13

In moving to the practical application of these basic principles of Canadian foreign policy, St. Laurent names the fifth and final principle the “willingness to accept international responsibilities.” If Canada’s interests are in upholding morality based on the conduct of human relations and the rule of law and the state seeks to protect and nurture these values, then it must be prepared to actively defend them. In the context of St. Laurent’s speech in 1947, this defence is centred on the strengthening of international organizations. As St. Laurent concludes: “[i]f there is one conclusion that our common experience has led us to accept, it is that security for this country lies in the development of a firm structure of international organization.”14

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In short, in the immediate aftermath of World War II, St. Laurent’s speech established initial grounds for a particular spatial and temporal relationship that articulated Canada as a protector of humans, be they human relations or human values, beyond its own territory. The protection of “helpless individuals” is not only a moral imperative, but a signifier of Canada’s membership in “the Christian traditions of the Western World,” which stands juxtaposed to the evil ways of Fascist Others. Exporting Canadian Values: International Development as Canada’s Tool to Strengthen National Identity at Home (1970–1985) Following St. Laurent’s speech, few attempts were made to formally review Canadian foreign policy on the part of the Canadian governments for nearly two decades.15 The review process was resurrected and formalized under Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government following his election in April 1968. For Trudeau, Canada’s foreign policies had long been stationary and grown stagnant in an increasingly complicated international environment. He called for a complete overhaul and constructed several task forces assigned to examine every aspect of Canada’s approach to the world outside its borders.16 This review process culminated in the 1970 foreign policy white paper titled Foreign Policy for Canadians. The white paper spans six volumes, the first dealing specifically with Canada’s role in an ever-changing world, separate volumes dedicated to Canada’s relationship with three regions of importance: Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific, a volume addressing Canada’s involvement with international development, and a concluding volume on Canada and the United Nations. Throughout the six volumes of Foreign Policy for Canadians, a key aspect of Canada’s identity and interests is repeatedly articulated: the legitimacy of Canada’s claims to being a nation of values can only be maintained by exporting those values abroad. The opening chapter “Why Review Foreign Policy?” begins by describing the order of events following World War II that produced a relatively stable international environment according to its bipolar structure, with Canada’s foreign policy “largely concern[ed] with objectives and obligations arising out of active membership in multilateral organizations, Canada’s international role, its influence, its self-expression were seen in the context of those intergovernmental bodies.”17 Yet, according to Foreign Policy for Canadians, at the time of publishing the review, the stability of this structure was already in doubt. According to the white

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paper, the international environment of the 1970s was characterized by a series of political changes defined by three emerging trends. First, internal divergences within once stable international institutions had weakened their effectiveness. Second, scientific and technological innovations had outpaced international law to regulate them and now posed new threats unthinkable only a few years prior. Third, and most important for the purposes of this study, social and economic concerns at the local level of states, at one time considered issues of “low politics” and therefore not particularly pressing to Canadian foreign policymakers, now threatened the well-being of Canada and the world at large. Foreign Policy for Canadians states that “from the outset of this policy review it was apparent that some of the safe assumptions of the post-war decades were crumbling away as the world changes,” and in addition to listing the trending issues of fracturing in international institutions and unparalleled advancement in technological innovation, the white paper adds two very different kinds of threats to the list of Canada’s most pressing concerns: 1. Longstanding human problems in the Third World—which in the post-war euphoria seemed manageable in due course—had crystallized into irresistible demands and expectations for international action to deal with development needs and to put an end to race discrimination. 2. Social attitudes had changed. Civil disobedience and the use of violence became the commonplace of the new confrontation politics. The basic values of most societies were called into question— perhaps nowhere more harshly than in North America.18 Correspondingly, in the following section that outlines Canada’s three “national aims,” the two more traditional goals of (1) “Canada maintain its independence as a political entity,” and (2) Canadians enjoy “enlarging prosperity in the widest possible sense,” are joined by a third aim addressing the more humanitarian concerns listed above: (3) “that all Canadians will see in the life they have and the contribution they make to humanity something worthwhile preserving in identity and purpose.”19 What exactly does a “contribution to humanity” mean in the context of Foreign Policy for Canadians ? Without assigning blame to any state in particular, Foreign Policy for Canadians articulates “donor countries” and

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“industrialized countries” as having caused “longstanding human problems in the Third World,” primarily attributing the challenges the “Third World” is facing to a declining will to contribute by major donor countries20 and the outcome of a widening “rich-poor nation imbalance.”21 The divide is articulated as follows: The frustration of developing countries during the next decade will increase as they feel more acutely the limitations of their own technological and material progress, compared with that of industrialized countries. Their sense of impotence to gain quickly and effectively a more equitable distribution of needed resources will become more bitter if the signs of flagging interest and disillusionment on the part of more-developed countries are not reversed…[i]f these efforts fail, or do not succeed as quickly as the developing countries hope, recriminations, racial tension and, in some cases, political and economic reprisals against the governments, private investors and nationals of the more-developed countries are likely to increase in magnitude.22

Canada is incentivized to provide assistance to developing nations, both for the good of their own people, and Canadian nationals who may face political and economic reprisals. However, the representation of Canada as a protector that dominates Foreign Policy for Canadians is one that articulates Canadian foreign assistance less in terms of economics and security, and more about identity. More than stamping out potential security concerns or enhancing economic benefits, Canada protects those in other countries because failing to do so would threaten Canada’s commitment to the values that define Canadian identity: There is still the question of why the eradication of poverty in developing countries should be given priority by Canada. One basic value of Canadian society is the importance of the individual person, and of his rights and welfare. This value has a long heritage in our culture; it can be traced from one of the central tenets of the Greco-Judeo-Christian ethic. During medieval and early modern times, this ethic was adopted and translated into the legal and political systems which Canada has inherited. Those systems, imperfect though they may be in practice, are based on the tenet that all individuals in a society have both rights and obligations toward other citizens in that society, because the potential of that society cannot be realized unless the potential of each of its members is also realized. It is the basic assumption on which a democratic system rests.23

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In other words, failing to defend the rights of those abroad is a challenge to Canada’s longstanding commitment to these rights at home. Who Canada is, and the values it maintains for Canadians, can only be realized if they are extended beyond its borders. In terms of temporality, should Canada refuse to apply the ethics it maintains within its own borders abroad, it risks regressing into some form of lesser developed society: The increasing awareness of poverty in the developing countries will thus be imposed upon a Canadian society in which concern for the welfare of others is one of the central values. To ignore that awareness would therefore be tantamount to a regression to a form of society in which the values of that society are inverted at its boundary. On the other hand, to recognize and act on the awareness would, in a real sense, reflect, extend and reinforce those values which are central to the creation of the kind of comity which Canadians wish for themselves.24

In short, a specific representation of Canada’s relationship to foreign individuals abroad is articulated in the pages of Foreign Policy for Canadians. While Canada’s membership in the wider “Greco-Judeo-Christian tradition” as well as its membership among responsible states compels international development assistance, it is the extension of Canadian values abroad, to which development assistance is the conduit, that cements their full realization at home. Not just because promotion of such values abroad ameliorate potential threats on Canadian territory, but because to acknowledge the fact that such values are not realized around the world, and to do nothing, is “tantamount to a regression to a form of society in which the values of that society are inverted at its boundary.”25 Selective Engagement: The Limits of Canada’s Obligations to Defending Human Rights (1985–1995) Following Foreign Policy for Canadians, fifteen years passed before the publication of the next foreign policy white paper, this time under Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party. Published in 1985, Competitiveness and Security: Directions for Canada’s International Relations 26 was to be a significant reassessment of Canada’s aims in the international arena of the 1980s, without promising the radical overhaul Trudeau’s Foreign Policy for Canadians had claimed years earlier. The Canadian

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Self articulated in this white paper does, however, provide the most explicit deviation from those articulated in all other white papers during the time period examined. Previous foreign policy reviews had emphasized Canada’s duties and motives to improve the lives of people abroad. Competitiveness and Security, on the other hand, specifically articulated a Canadian Self that emphasized the limits of these obligations. The foreword of Competitiveness and Security, written by Mulroney’s SSEA Joe Clark, tasked with leading the construction of the white paper, begins with a stark statement: It is fifteen years since the last review of Canada’s international relations. Since then the landscape at home and abroad has changed dramatically…[t]he Government hopes that the Parliamentary review will examine thoroughly those areas of Canada’s international relations where important decisions for Canada are ahead. Not everything, however, is open to question.27

Beyond reproach are Canadian commitments to supporting democratic values, membership in international organizations like the UN and NATO, bringing nuclear arms under control and one final goal Clark ensures Canadians are committed to pursuing: We are determined, as well, to help alleviate the poverty and hunger of those less fortunate than we and to help eradicate human rights abuses that deny our fellow human beings the freedom and dignity to which all are entitled.28

Canada’s humanitarian values remain a priority, yet, Clark closes this foreword by articulating a representation of Canada that becomes a recurrent theme throughout the white paper: one of endless selflessness, but finite resources: The world respects our capacity for dispassionate judgement and our vocation for constructive involvement…but not everything is possible. We do not have the resources to do all we would like in international affairs. In fact, reduction of the budget deficit may require further retrenchment in some of our international activities.29

Following this foreword, the bulk of Competitiveness and Security focuses on assessing Canada’s economic and military standings alongside its

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humanitarian goals, with the third being de-prioritized compared to the first two. The representation of Canada that emerges in the pages of this white paper is one that recognizes the political reality of life as a smaller state in an international environment plagued by problems: selective engagement is the only avenue. The more abstract language of defending “human values,” “human betterment,” and “human aspirations” from previous white papers shifts towards the language of “human rights” and “humanitarian assistance” in this white paper. As such, the white paper is far more explicit in detailing the types of abuses and human suffering to which Canada should potentially respond, including pressuring the government in South Africa to end racial discrimination, providing emergency relief from famine in Ethiopia, and pushing for Namibian independence.30 Those occupying the position of needing Canada’s protection and assistance (spatially distant Other) as well as those occupying the position of perpetrator of suffering (radical Other) fall into two categories: first, “developing nations” and “Third World” countries are articulated as requiring Canada’s assistance due to issues of mass poverty, famine, and abusive governments. While the governments of certain African countries are scolded for their repressive actions, few mentions of specific governments are made while a radical Other is not articulated as having caused poverty-related suffering, rather, such realities are stated as unfortunately coinciding with “high population growth rates, frequently a characteristic of underdevelopment, make it practically impossible to plan for adequate nutrition, health care, education or jobs.”31 A second relationship is articulated in the white paper that situates the Canadian Self as needing to protect those suffering under the Soviet sphere of influence, with the USSR articulated as showing little regard for human rights. In addition to articulating the USSR as continuing to “flout fundamental human rights at home,”32 Competitiveness and Security represents the entire Communist bloc as maintaining a backward understanding of what human rights are, juxtaposed to the Canadian Self that values them deeply: The communist world maintains that the rights of the state take precedence over the rights of the individual. In too many countries government power is used arbitrarily. Such repression is repugnant to our sense of values and inimical to our national interests.33

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While lofty international aims of curing global poverty and disciplining the USSR for its conduct are discussed, they are frequently tempered by reminding readers that while Canada is a nation of unrelenting dedication to its core values, it is a nation of limited resources. Indeed, Competitiveness and Security casts a sobering reality over the language of “do-goodism” that had dominated previous foreign policy white papers. A particularly illuminating example occurs during a discussion of Canada’s monetary contributions to “Third World” countries and restrictions surrounding just how influential Canada’s international contributions can be: It is important to Canada, on economic and security as well as humanitarian grounds, that the indebted countries of the Third World grow again economically…[b]ut the undeniable progress that has been made has not resolved the desperate plight of a large group of low-income and leastdeveloped countries. More than 700 million people are living in conditions of inhuman poverty; of these, more than 450 million are seriously undernourished and some 15 million children die each year for want of food or basic care.34

Perhaps the most significant shift from the representation of Canada as a protector in the 1970s to that of the 1980s stems from repeated instantiations that a moralistic imperative to contribute to human rights may not be enough to move Canada to action. Whereas Foreign Policy for Canadians stated that Canada ought to involve itself in humanitarian issues because failing to do so would result in Canada’s dissolution as a nation of values, Competitiveness and Security offers a starkly different representation of Canada’s priorities when it comes to humanitarian crises: A final set of questions concerns conflicts in the Third World. Almost all engage Canadian humanitarian interests. Some adversely affect our economic interests, but relatively few currently involve our strategic interests, in the sense of posing a wider threat to their regions, to relations among our allies or to world peace. Indeed, only those which attract Western television reporters seem really to penetrate our national consciousness...[t]he underlying reality is that we cannot afford to make everything a priority.35

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Furthermore, the final page of Competitiveness and Security concludes by offering a sweeping assessment that rather than committing to upholding Canada’s values at home and abroad, Canada is not in a position to make any lofty promises: The messages are clear. Our economic interests require us to be competitive; we must trade if we are to prosper. Our security interests demand that we play our part in western defence and in arms control and disarmament. Our values dictate that we help the poor, the hungry, and the politically abused. At the same time, reality establishes the limits, including the financial limits, of our ability to act.36

In short, Canada is articulated as a protector of those suffering human rights violations under Soviet influence and in the “Third World.” Yet, the representation of the Canadian Self offered in this white paper is one of reservation when it comes to actually acting to bring about an end to this suffering. While Canada may be selfless in its desire to aid others, constraints of resources hinder its ability to take up all pursuits. Protecting Women and Children: Canada as the Leader of Human Security (1995–2002) After the Liberal Party formed the government once again in 1993, with Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister, they launched a number of efforts to review Canada’s foreign policy throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s. During this period, two major foreign policy white papers contributed to painting a very different picture of Canada: Canada in the World (1995)37 and Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign Policy for Human Security (2002).38 Following Competitiveness and Security, Canada’s relationship to those in need of protection made two major shifts in the publication of Canada in the World. The first shift applies to the temporality of Canada’s duties to protect foreign individuals. Prior to Canada in the World, Canada’s actions towards those in need were primarily articulated as, first a moral imperative (St. Laurent’s speech), second an issue of strengthening national identity (Foreign Policy for Canadians ), and third, considerably sensitive to resource limitations (Competitiveness and Security). Articulated as a reality of the post-Cold War international system, Canada in the World articulates the equal

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standing and intertwinement of moral, ideational, economic, and security factors in a new conception of Canadian security: human security.39 Canada in the World opens by proclaiming “[t]he dangerous but predictable post-war system is gone…many of the old certainties that guided foreign policy through the Cold War have collapsed, but now, more than five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, construction on a new order is only at its beginning.”40 This “new order” is characterized by two major global developments that define Canada and its approach to foreign policy throughout Canada in the World. The first is an alteration to what constitutes a threat to Canada: Security [now] means freedom from a wide array of challenges…the new international context also imposes “non-traditional” threats, in particular, threats that transcend political borders and affect whole regions of even the globe…we now recognize the danger posed to this and future generations by environmental degradation, social inequity, lack of economic opportunity and overpopulation.41

The second is an alteration to the most effective means to address these new threats: Success increasingly derives from economic wealth rather than from military might…the collapse of the former Soviet bloc resulted not just from its inability to compete with the West militarily, but also from the inability of the Soviet economic system to generate an acceptable standard of living for its people…while military capacities and might will remain important factors in the international system of the future, international affairs will be rooted increasingly in economic and trade relations between countries and regions.42

As such, international assistance efforts, part of the government’s new Official Development Assistance Program (ODA), stand as the most effective tool to address Canada’s main interests and values in this environment. Chapter 6 of the white paper, designated to discussing ODA, articulates this efficiency: International assistance is a vital instrument for the achievement of the three key objectives being pursued by the Government. It is an investment in prosperity and employment. It connects the Canadian economy

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to some of the world’s fastest growing markets - the markets of the developing world. And, in the long-run, development cooperation can help lift developing countries out of poverty. This means that it contributes to a stronger global economy in which Canadians, and other peoples, can grow and prosper. International assistance also contributes to global security by tackling many key threats to human security, such as the abuse of human rights, disease, environmental degradation, population growth and the widening gap between rich and poor. Finally, it is one of the clearest international expressions of Canadian values and culture - of Canadians’ desire to help the less fortunate and of their strong sense of social justice and an effective means of sharing these values with the rest of the world.43

International assistance is articulated as contributing to all of Canada’s major interests, which include not just good-will aims of lifting developing countries out of poverty and eliminating disease, but also selfinterested economic aims that improve the global economy to Canada’s benefit. All the while Canada continues to fulfill its interests in exporting Canadian values and culture abroad. In terms of temporality, participating in international assistance becomes the main path for Canada to maintain its core sense of values, with ill effects on the horizon if such actions are neglected: Canadians hold deeply that we must pursue our values internationally. They want to promote them for their own sake, but they also understand that our values and rights will not be safeguarded if they are not enshrined throughout the international environment. Canada is not an island: if the rights of people abroad are not protected, Canadians will ultimately feel the effects at home.44

Here, the moral imperative, promoting values for its own sake, stands right alongside the traditional security imperatives, that if the human rights of others are not defended, the rights of Canadians may also be threatened. The second major shift from the representation of Canada in Competitiveness and Security to Canada in the World pertains to who or what entities are in need of Canada’s protection. Prior to the 1995 white paper, those which Canada had a duty to protect and assist were mostly articulated in the general terms of “individuals,” “developing countries,” and “the Third World.” While those terms do appear in Canada in the

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World, the white paper is the first to introduce a new dominant articulation of those in need of protection: “women and children.” “Chapter Five: Projecting Canadian Values and Culture” details the importance for Canadians to “pursue our values internationally” given that Canadian values will not be “safeguarded if they are not enshrined throughout the international environment.”45 The highest priority is given to the value of projecting “[u]niversal respect for human rights,”46 with the justification for this priority being not just the fact that it simultaneously meets Canada’s moralistic and security interests, but also tends to those most often neglected: The Government regards respect for human rights not only as a fundamental value, but also as a crucial element in the development of stable, democratic and prosperous societies at peace with each other. From the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to that of the recently concluded Convention on the Rights of the Child, we have been in the vanguard of those fighting for international consensus to uphold human freedoms and dignity. We are rightly associated internationally with the promotion of the rights of women and children, and with attention to their role in the economy.47

“Chapter Six: International Assistance,” repeatedly articulates just how crucial specific attention to the protections of women and children is to successful policies of international development assistance through which Canada’s interests and values are realized. An effective development assistance program begins with the recognition that development is a complex process and that many conditions must be met before it takes permanent root. Individuals must have equitable access to basic social services, to productive assets and to employment opportunities. Women must be able to participate fully and equally in development. Respect for human rights is essential, as are a healthy civil society and political systems that inspire confidence and trust. The basic infrastructure that underpins society must be in place, along with policies that promote sustainable economic growth with equity.48 A sound development program must be people-centred, with a focus on human development - on building capacity, which means helping women, men and children in developing countries, their communities and institutions, to acquire the skills and resources needed to sustain their own social and economic progress.49

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In detailing the goals of Canada’s ODA, “to support the full participation of women as equal partners in the sustainable development of their societies” appears right alongside the goal of enhancing “[h]uman rights, democracy, good governance” which now includes “children’s rights” as a crucial means to “strengthen both civil society and the security of the individual.”50 This representation of Canada as a protector that sees its humanitarian aims intertwined with economic and security concerns, primarily expressed through the defence of foreign women and children, was reinforced and extended in the Chrétien administration’s follow-up white paper to Canada in the World, published in 2000 and updated in 2002, entitled Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign Policy for Human Security. A brief document, the English language version spanning only sixteen pages, completely departs from the foreign policy white papers preceding it as the document almost entirely ignores security concerns related to traditional security threats like nuclear proliferation and war among “great powers,” in favour of a complete human security agenda. The table of contents includes sections addressing “protection of civilians,” “women, peace and security,” “terrorism,” and “small arms and light weapons.” In his foreword, Bill Graham, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, echoes the representation of Canada and its interests as bound up with humanitarian initiatives from Canada in the World: The human security agenda incorporates long-standing Canadian objectives, including promoting human rights, alleviating humanitarian crises, supporting international peacekeeping and encouraging disarmament…[e]vents in recent years have reconfirmed that, in an increasingly interdependent world, the safety and security of Canadians at home are inextricably linked to the safety of those living beyond our borders. In this context, our work to advance Canadian values abroad - human rights, democracy, conflict prevention and humanitarianism - at the same time enhances the safety and security of Canadians.51

As with previous foreign policy white papers, Freedom from Fear begins by articulating the new challenges facing Canada at the time of publication. This “new era” of the 2000s is primarily defined by the fact that the “nature of armed conflict has changed in recent decades…civilians are often the targets…children are forcibly recruited by insurgent forces, sexual violence is a deliberate weapon of war…trafficking in small arms,

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drugs, women and children increase the risks to us all.”52 “Terrorists,” “international criminals,” “insurgent forces,” and “rebel groups” now stand as leaders in causing human suffering: The lines between war and crime are blurring, with rebel groups engaging in organized banditry, and economic predation becoming the rationale for continued fighting…[t]ransnational phenomena, including terrorism, international crime and trafficking in small arms, drugs, women and children increase the risk to us all.53

Addressing these new challenges primarily centres around Canada’s concern for women, children, and civilians. Listing “protection of civilians” as the second of five “foreign policy priorities for advancing human security,” Freedom from Fear articulates Canada’s main objectives as concerned with non-combatants in “reduc[ing] the human costs of armed conflict, with particular attention to the threat posed by landmines, the plight of war-affected children and the internally displaced, the strengthening of human rights field operations, and the deployment of military forces in extreme situations to stop atrocities and war crimes.”54 Likewise, the white paper links concerns for women and gender equity with Canada’s international security goals. Freedom from Fear frequently articulates the necessity of incorporating women’s rights into development and conflict assistance in order to establish a greater realization of peace and security for all. The following statement opens the section addressing “Women, peace and security:” Improving the effectiveness of modern multi-disciplinary peace support operations requires ensuring that the human rights of women and girls are not compromised. Ignoring gender dynamics and excluding women from peace negotiations inhibits the implementation of the resulting agreements. Similarly, understanding the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, and developing effective responses to guarantee their protection and full participation in peace processes, directly contributes to maintaining international peace and security.55

Furthermore, Canada’s longstanding commitment to “the full and equal participation of women in all aspects of peace building…” is evidenced by a series of accomplishments Freedom from Fear cites to demonstrate this firm obligation. Among these examples are Canada’s time on the UN Security Council which saw the Council adopt Resolution 1325

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on Women, Peace and Security specifying “a clear role for women in peace processes [and] the need for gender sensitive training for personal involved in peace support operations.”56 Freedom from Fear is also the first foreign policy white paper to feature imagery beyond the cover page. Every page features an image corresponding to the main topic covered on that page. Including the title image, ten out of sixteen pages feature women, children, or both. The cover image features dozens of children sitting atop a disheveled tank-like armoured vehicle under the heading “Freedom from Fear.” The photo credit reads: “Children in Nawabad refugee camp, Northern Afghanistan, with a piece of abandoned military hardware.” The section “Protection of Civilians” features an image of a young girl smiling as she clutches a barbed wire fence with the photo caption reading “An internally displaced child at Vavuniya, Sri Lanka (1999).” The section “Partnerships for Human Security” features an image of two women wearing headscarves hugging and crying as the caption reads “Two sisters are reunited after exile. The gender aspects of conflict are a key area of focus for the human security agenda and its partners.”57 In short, the Chrétien government’s foreign policy white papers articulate a unique representation of Canada as a protector, both in who it protects and why. No longer focusing strictly on “individuals,” but now the most vulnerable and neglected (yet crucial to success in terms of humanitarian assistance) women and children. Canada is represented as contributing to an even greater degree by aiding those most vulnerable. Furthermore, Canada’s efforts in defending others are no longer a question of balancing moralistic interests with economic and military interests, rather, international development assistance is cast as a realization of all three at the same time. The main spatial and temporal characteristics of these four dominant historical discourses are summarized in Table 4.1.

Crusading Saviour or Condemning Onlooker: Parliamentary Discourses of Canada as Protector of Foreign Civilians in the War on Terror The events of 9/11 were widely constituted as an attack on humanity. The terrorists committed “crimes against humanity,” an affront to “basic human decency,” and created a “human crisis.” The perpetrators were cast as the antithesis of humanity. They violated human rights, represented the

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Table 4.1 Historical discourses of “Canada as protector of foreign civilians” Discourse

Distant Other (needing protection)

Radical Other/Degree of otherness

Temporal status of Canada’s duty to protect civilians

Moralistic approach

“Individuals”

“Fascist states”/Fundamentally different

Strengthening national identity

“Developing countries,” “Third World” “Third World”

“Rich-poor imbalance”/Different but understood “Communist world,” underdevelopment”/Different but understood “Terrorist groups”/Radically different

Mandatory to remain part of “civilized world” Mandatory to remain “society of values” Not mandatory due to resource limitations Mandatory to remain secure in all facets

Selective engagement Human security

“Women,” “Children,” “Civilians”

worst of the human condition, and proselytized a way of life devoid of human decency. Concerns for humanity were also a central talking point surrounding Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq by 2003. While discussion over the existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) infamously occupied much of the bandwidth in how a potential invasion of Iraq was discussed,58 concern over such weapons was in part a concern for the well-being of Iraqi citizens under an authoritarian leader. Reports of Hussein’s grisly history of human rights violations had long been documented,59 from mass torture and rape to genocide and the use of chemical weapons against Iraqi citizens under his regime.60 George W. Bush’s January 29, 2002 State of the Union address, where he coined the term “axis of evil” referring to Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, specifically referred to the Hussein regime as having “used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children.”61 Nearly six months before the US-led invasion of Iraq, Jean Chrétien stood in the House of Commons and proclaimed Hussein “a terrible leader for his country,” given that “he has used instruments of mass destruction against his own people.”62 If events surrounding the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were articulated as grave threats to basic human rights of innocent civilians and humanity itself, what did this mean for Canada’s involvement? Narratives

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surrounding Canada’s dedicated defence of humanity would be activated in justifying Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan,63 but how does one account for the Canadian government’s decision to abstain from the invasion of Iraq? Is Canada only sometimes a devoted defender of humanity? While polling showed Canadians overwhelmingly supported abstaining from military involvement in Iraq,64 making sense of Canada’s supposed historic role as a defender of human rights around the world seemingly misaligns with a policy of non-intervention, especially when a primary reason for intervention in Iraq was to remove an oppressive dictator. How does one protect innocent civilians from those threatening their human rights by not taking action to eliminate those threats? How does a discourse of Canada as a protector of innocent civilians endure if Canada chooses not to protect innocent civilians? An exchange published in the ‘letters to the editor’ section of the Globe and Mail just weeks before the “coalition of the willing’s” invasion of Iraq provides an illustrative example of how this paradox would be discursively resolved. A March 10, 2003 letter implored the Canadian Prime Minister to consult his wife when weighing whether or not to join America’s “coalition of the willing.” “Mr. Prime Minister, ask her right away. She will tell you not to go to war or help anyone to kill the children of Iraq” implored the letter.65 Highlighting the gendered overtones of the initial letter, a citizen’s response letter was published the next day that stated “Silly me, I forgot that being a woman meant that you must obviously value home and family over all else…I forgot that the fact that I might feel my ethic of care is best applied to encouraging military action so as to help the children of Iraq to live in a world free of a brutal dictator…is not the choice someone of my gender should make.”66 This exchange highlights not only how concern about the invasion of Iraq was articulated through a need to protect foreign citizens, but also how a discursive rupture over Canadian identity was avoided. Those for and those against the invasion of Iraq articulated their preferred policy as continuing Canada’s values as a protector of the innocent—even by not participating. Canada’s role as a protector could be discursively articulated as consistent with intervention and non-intervention. The exchange in the Globe and Mail anticipates precisely how Canadian parliamentarians in the House of Commons would seek to represent Canadian involvement in or abstention from the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. As this section demonstrates, “Canada as protector of foreign civilians” was a key rhetorical commonplace through which competing

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representations of Canadian identity were channelled to argue for specific foreign policies on all sides of debate. That Canada must choose the path that best protects innocent civilians because of Canada’s supposed dedication to their defence was a starting point of debate. What it actually means to best protect these civilians, however, became a lighting rod of contestation. Canadian Foreign Policy Discourses on Afghanistan The House of Commons (and indeed, much of the country) was overwhelmingly in favour of supporting the United States immediately following the events of September 11, 2001. Members of the Liberal, Progressive Conservative, Canadian Alliance, and Bloc Québécois would broadly argue in favour of Canada’s participation in a military effort in Afghanistan animated by their articulation of a crusader-style discourse. Canada would valiantly venture into Afghanistan, along with its allies, to defend humanity from those who wish to destroy it. This discourse and the pro-intervention stance it was linked to would, however, be opposed by a minority of MPs in the House. The NDP, led by Alexa McDonough, resisted the Crusader discourse, not by arguing against the representation of Canada as a humanitarian defender, but by re-imagining it. The Crusader Discourse Jean Chrétien’s Liberal Party led the House in advancing a policy of active participation in the invasion of Afghanistan predicated on a representation of Canada as a crusading force for “good” that would vanquish the “evil” threats in Afghanistan. This representation was structured by an articulated relationship among three unique identities: (1) the Canadian Self as deeply dedicated to ending injustice and human suffering of (2) innocent and powerless civilians in Afghanistan caused by (3) Osama bin Laden and evil terrorists. The Crusader discourse, which broadly reads the Canadian Self as empowered by its own dedication to defending human rights in the Middle East at any cost, has striking continuity with historical discourses of Morality, Strengthening national identity, and Human security as ending these humanitarian injustices is articulated as a moral and civilizational imperative, extension of Canadian values, and situates the protection of women and children at the centre of realizing these aims.

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This spatial ternary relationship between Canada, innocent civilians of Afghanistan, and the perpetrators of human suffering, relies upon two discursive moves articulated by politicians throughout parliamentary debate. The first is a spatial distancing that, echoing Louis St. Laurent’s historical representations of Canada’s protection of foreign individuals as an extension of its membership in “Christian civilization,” situates the Canadian Self as a member of the “civilized world,” juxtaposed against the radical Other, “evil” terrorists. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien opened parliamentary debate regarding Canada’s role in Afghanistan on September 17, 2001 by representing terrorists as antithetical to everything Canada and “civilized people” stand for: These cold-blooded killers struck a blow at the values and beliefs of free and civilized people everywhere. The world has been attacked. The world must respond. Because we are at war against terrorism and Canada, a nation founded on a belief in freedom, justice and tolerance, will be part of that response…the evil perpetrators of this horror represent no community or religion. They stand for evil, nothing else.67

The “civilized world” stood opposite these “evil-minded, malicious killers who were motivated by hate” that had brought “a boldfaced attack on all that we stand for as a western civilization.”68 This first spatial discursive move was not, however, solely based on juxtaposing the Canadian Self from the Other through the latter’s challenges to civilized peoples’ general “values and beliefs,” though such statements were frequently made. The spatial distancing between the Canadian Self along with “the civilized world” and radical Other relied upon an interpretation of “human rights.” Namely, that “terrorists” stand outside “the civilized world,” for one key reason: they represent an affront to “human rights.” Minister of Foreign Affairs John Manley articulates Canada’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as squarely a humanitarian issue: Words alone in support of a world in which the rule of law prevails will not be enough. There must be consequences for those who violate the most basic standards of human behaviour…This is at its heart a human crisis…It is time to act to ensure that the guilty are brought to account and that the world emerges a safer, more secure and more peaceful place.69

The spatial distance between the Canadian Self and radical Other is further established by discursively sharpening the egregiousness of

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human rights violations through repeated articulations of the suffering of those subject to the abuse, primarily described as “innocent civilians,” “women,” and “children.” Opposition Leader Stockwell Day (CA) articulates Osama bin Laden’s spatial distance from the Canadian Self, defined by the suffering he inflicts on innocent civilians: Osama bin Laden has been publicly identified as the prime suspect behind these murderous acts. He has been sheltered, if not aided and abetted, and time will tell on that question, by the Taliban regime of Afghanistan. The free world must tell all states that no matter what their ideology, supporting or condoning terror against civilians will never, ever be tolerated.70

While “terrorists” revel in the suffering of the innocent, Canada is motivated not just by its values of defending human rights, but of creating a stable future for the world’s children. As James Moore (CA) articulates in the House’s first sitting following the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Any reasonable student of history or of freedom, and any reasonable analyst of how the world truly works would come to only one conclusion: that the free world has an obligation to our children and all the children of the world to insist on civilization, to purge the world of its murderers and to restore stability so that they may all in the end live in peace.71

This initial spatial discursive move, however, faces a potential challenge to its discursive stability. The distancing of the Canadian Self from the radical Other is premised on the former’s dedication to protecting innocent civilians and the latter’s disregard for their safety. How can such a spatial distancing be maintained when this relationship is linked to a policy of intervention? Should Canada join in the invasion of Afghanistan in pursuit of terrorists, civilians are very likely to be caught in the crossfire. Will Canada not be causing more suffering to the innocent by being involved? This friction between Canada’s identity as a civilian protector and yet a supporter of a military intervention was a central topic of discussion in the House of Commons. The second spatial discursive move stabilizes this potential discursive contradiction. The articulation of Canada as a protector of innocent civilians was merged with a representation that articulates the Canadian Self as a self-sacrificing nation and, therefore, in a morally elevated position to decide that the ends justify the means. In reference to the

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impending Afghanistan War, Larry Bagnell (LP) articulates this move in particularly clear terms following the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Do we enter this war on terrorism when it is said that Canada loves peace? That peace has been shattered by this act of carnage. I believe it is our responsibility to fight to get that peace back for those children and for their children…this will be a difficult and courageous decision for Canadians, because courage has a cost. In retaliation it could be the cost of Canadian blood at home and abroad.72

It is the very fact that Canada is willing to sacrifice its own soldiers in an effort to protect future generations of innocent civilians and Afghan children that bestows the Canadian Self the ability to make the decision to join a war that likely will cause more human suffering to the very people Canada strives to protect. Should civilian casualties mount, politicians frequently remind the House that the self-sacrificing nature of Canada and its allies, as opposed to the evil intentions of the radical Others, ensures that one causes unfortunate but justified death while the other does not. Val Meredith’s (CA) statement is particularly illuminating in response to the Afghanistan War: What is the difference between the hijackers murdering innocent civilians and children and the American military killing innocent civilians and children? It is intent. The terrorists intended to kill innocent children and civilians and they tried to kill as many of them as possible. On the other hand, the Americans have gone out of their way to avoid killing civilians and children…unfortunately, while this type of munitions may be accurate 99% of the time, it means that one bomb in a hundred will go astray…However, the reality is that allied personnel place themselves in greater danger by this means of attack, by using this type of munitions in an effort to avoid civilian casualties. This is the difference. While the terrorists intend to kill as many civilians and innocent children as possible, allied military personnel do their utmost to avoid these types of casualties.73

Facing criticism from those against intervention, Prime Minister Chrétien reinforces this discursive move once more, that Canada is in a position to decide that the lives of some are worth long-term peace for others:

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…no one can guarantee to anyone that there will be no civilians who unfortunately might lose their lives in any operation. It would be naive to think so. When we are in a war we have to make sure that those who are guilty face the consequences of their acts. We cannot promise that not a single life will be lost. Some soldiers and some civilians might be affected, but sometimes that is the price we pay to have peace and destroy the evil of terrorism.74

In terms of temporality, the Crusader discourse demonstrates continuity with the historical discourses of Canada’s Moralistic approach and Strengthening national identity. Canada’s identity as a nation of high moral standing as well as a nation of fundamental values, fully realized at home when exported abroad, is threatened by those who would have Canada avoid participating in these wars. As Joe Clark (PC) articulates, should Canada fail to take action against an enemy as sinister as the Taliban regime, even if civilians casualties occur, Canada would forfeit its “moral authority:” Let us be clear about our obligations. It is to find, fight and stop the September 11 terrorists. The country of Afghanistan is not the target. The ravaged people of Afghanistan are not the target. That is why military strikes and humanitarian aid are being sent simultaneously. The target is the terrorists whom the Taliban regime cultivates and protects…I have always argued that one of the distinguishing assets of Canada in the world is a moral authority. If we have a moral authority we must use it or risk losing it…[t]here is no moral justification for the statements and actions of the al-Qaeda network and Osama bin Laden.75

Likewise, the consistency of Canadian identity as a nation dedicated to fundamental values and beliefs like freedom and democracy is directly reliant on Canada’s willingness to spread and defend those values abroad, as explicitly stated in Foreign Policy for Canadians. Once more, in debates over involvement in Afghanistan, the threat that this international action may pose to civilians is noted, but acceptable to achieve a greater end: What good can possibly come from this war or any war? Certainly, we pray for the safety of our men and women overseas and for the safety of our allies. We desire the apprehension of the guilty. We pray for the safety of innocent civilians. Let us understand that this is a conflict of beliefs. It is our willingness to defend our beliefs that gives the greatest proof

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to them as our beliefs. Canadians believe in freedom. Canadians believe in equality. Canadians believe in standing up. Our heritage as a people is that we defend what we believe in…[w]e will not stand idly by as peace is destroyed here at home or as peace is destroyed next door. That would be un-Canadian. We will do our part. That is truly the Canadian way.76

In sum, the Crusader discourse draws on and (re)articulates historical discourses of Canada as a protector of civilians and their human rights abroad. Historical instantiations of the Canadian Self as linked to a moralistic standing, civilizational membership, a national identity dependent on exporting values abroad, and the centrality of protecting children to realizing these instantiations, each draws on historical discourses emerging long before “The Global War on Terror” commenced. To refuse to rid the innocent civilians of Afghanistan of their “evil” oppressors would not only risk Canada’s identity as a member of “civilized people,” but betray Canada’s own historical identity that is manifest in a high moral standing and extending the values of Canadians to those overseas. The Condemner Discourse Despite the Canadian population’s significant support for the United States and its efforts to “hold responsible” those who committed the attacks on 9/11,77 the Canadian government’s pro-intervention stance towards Afghanistan was not unanimous in the House of Commons. This division was no more apparent than on October 15, 2001, as Progressive Conservative MP Joe Clark put forth a motion to support Canada’s participation in the US-led coalition against terrorism. While Liberal, Progressive Conservative, Canadian Alliance, and Bloc Québécois MPs mostly unified in their support, ten members voted against the motion: all 10 were members of the NDP.78 NDP leader Alexa McDonough made clear that while her party did not counsel “turning the other cheek or advocating a policy of appeasement,” the motion of support was deemed inadequate.79 Among the NDP’s reasoning for their opposing stance was the government’s commitment of troops to the coalition without further parliamentary debate and the failure to allow the United Nations further time to seek a “diplomatic resolution.” Therefore, McDonough called for “an immediate end to the US led military action in Afghanistan and an end to Canadian participation in this action.”80 McDonough’s October 15 statement opposing the motion of support was a culmination of what had been a series of counter-arguments against

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Canada’s participation in the US-led coalition in Afghanistan articulated by NDP members within the House since the first sitting following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. These arguments were “packaged” together in a cohesive discourse that centred on Canada’s role as a protector of foreign civilians. Rather than displace this familiar narrative, the NDP re-imagined it. Countering the Crusader discourse, McDonough and fellow NDP members articulated an alternative reading of what it meant for Canada to be such a protector. Whereas the Crusader discourse linked the Canadian Self as a protector of innocent civilians to a policy for participation, the Condemner discourse, on the other hand, articulates Canada’s potential involvement in these war efforts as an abandonment of its duty to protect foreign civilians and hence, is linked to a policy of non-participation and condemnation of those involved in the invasions. The Condemner discourse relies upon the familiar ternary spatial relationship between (1) the Canadian Self, (2) foreign civilians suffering, and (3) those perpetrating the suffering of civilians as the Crusader discourse had, with Canada continuing to be articulated as a nation dedicated to defending the values of human rights around the world, and the radical Others devaluing these rights. However, the conditions that divide the Self from the Other, surrounding the protection of innocent civilians, as well as those who occupy the radical Other position, have been significantly altered. Central to this alternative discourse, is the question of how a Canadian identity, defined by dedication to protecting civilians, can be maintained when the state chooses to join a war that will inevitably increase civilian suffering. As NDP MPs rheotrically-grappled with this question on the House floor, the Condemner discourse was produced through two major discursive moves. First, whereas the stability of the Crusader discourse hinges on the discursive linkage of a pro-participation policy with a self-sacrificing attribute of Canadian identity to stabilize the Canadian Self as a dedicated protector who, unfortunately but justifiably, still harms and kills foreign civilians, this linkage is rejected in the Condemner discourse. On the contrary, the Condemner discourse articulates a representation of Canadian identity that hinges on non-participation. In this discourse, Canada is cast as so dedicated to defending human rights, that to bring harm to even a single innocent civilian at the hands of a Canadian solider would collapse the spatial distance between the Canadian Self and the radical Others and resign Canada to the same identity as that which it fundamentally opposes. A noticeable difference from the Crusader discourse,

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the Condemner discourse does not articulate Canada’s potential temporal slide from a position of being a member of the “civilized world” to an “uncivilized” identity based on participating in these wars. The very fact that many of Canada’s key allies, including the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia, were in fact leading members of the invasion of Afghanistan suggests that this civilized–uncivilized juxtaposition would be difficult to stabilize since there is not a rich history of casting Canada’s anglosphere allies81 as “uncivilized” relative to the Canadian Self. Rather, the Condemner discourse, consistent with the Strengthening national identity historical discourse of the 1970s, articulates this temporal slide as a matter, not of losing membership in a wider community of states, but of losing Canada’s own sense of self. Alexa McDonough counters Prime Minister Chrétien’s discourse of Canada as dutifully defending human rights by joining the Afghanistan War by linking such an action with the terrorist Other: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Prime Minister said in the House that the death of innocent civilians was a price he was willing to pay to fight terrorism. Where is the injustice? Where is the logic in avenging the death of innocent civilians in the United States by killing innocent civilians in another part of the world? Does the Prime Minister not understand that adding to the body count plays directly into the hands of terrorists?82

The potential spatial collapse between the Canadian Self and Other is expressed primarily in terms of Canada failing to uphold its own defining values: Supporting foreign invasions, assassinations and the abandonment of our values will raise the level of violence, lessen our security and diminish our capacity to advise our closest friends at a time when they are most in need of wise counsel.83

The second discursive move involves widening the identities of those who are considered perpetrators of foreign civilian suffering and, therefore, act as the spatially situated Others to the Canadian Self. The United States, not just “terrorists,” are cast as perpetrating human suffering and, therefore, occupying a spatial position antithetical to the Canadian Self. Along with “the Taliban,” the United States is articulated as abusive to human rights, though one will notice in the examples below, that this distinction is not premised on a civilized–uncivilized distinction but rather the

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value assigned to human life and human suffering. Articulations of these two discursive moves occur simultaneously in the statements from NDP MPs advocating policies of non-participation when the topic of “civilian casualties” and “victims of the attack” are discussed during foreign policy debate. At once, Canada’s spatial distance from the radical Other based on a concern for human suffering is articulated alongside a representation of the United States occupying this radical Other position because of its actions against innocent civilians: To seek indiscriminate revenge is merely to react in the same primitive and deadly way as the perpetrators of the acts of September 11. We are at an incredible point where the entire world at the moment stands behind the United States…but if we risk the slaughter of innocent people in the hunt for revenge, it will guarantee that episodes of international terrorism will become the legacy of this new century.84 It is easy to strike out in retaliation. The United States has all the weapons it needs and these weapons are already on their way. However we must be very cautious that in doing so we are not creating more innocent victims. By what perverted logic can it be suggested that killing thousands of Afghanis who are fleeing from the terror of the Taliban will save any lives anywhere else in the world? How can anyone argue that? How can anyone recognize that we will create more martyrs and more people who are absolutely determined to avenge these deaths? That is a threat to all of us…I say to the Prime Minister, on behalf of the people of Canada, please plead with the president of the United States not to take us down this destructive, disastrous course to war and death of many innocent lives.85

In sum, the Condemner discourse provides a significantly different spatial and temporal relationship between the Canadian Self, innocent civilians of Afghanistan, and the radial Others who threaten those civilians. Drawing on and (re)articulating historical discourses of Canada as a protector of civilians, namely the Strengthening national identity discourse of the 1970s and the Selective engagement discourse of the 1980s, the Condemner discourse reads maintaining Canada’s own identity as consistent with a policy of non-participation in wars that will inevitably increase human suffering, an opposite articulation of the Crusader discourse. Like the Crusader discourse, the historical discourse of Human security, whereby the well-being of foreign children is intricately bound

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to Canada’s response to war, continues to loom large, but ultimately Canada’s role as protector is best realized by staying out of the fight. Canadian Foreign Policy Discourses on Iraq “I think the dilemma we face is in evaluating whether the loss of life in a short mission to stop this very evil person will result in fewer lives lost than if we were to allow him to continue with the kinds of things he has been doing for many years,” contemplated Ken Epp, a Canadian Alliance MP, as he spoke to the House of Commons on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq.86 The representative of Elk Island had succinctly articulated the next battleground of discursive competition in the House over Canada’s potential participation in the “coalition of the willing’s” advance to topple the Hussein regime.87 Canada’s responsibility to protect innocent civilians in Iraq was assumed, as was its authority to make the call on how best to do so. But a difficult choice remained: how will Canada best protect the innocent? Participate in the military intervention to ensure a quickly resolved and hopefully less bloody conflict? Or abstain and risk a protracted war that could have otherwise been avoided? The decision was in the hands of Canadians.88 Following Chrétien’s declaration that Canada would not be involved in the invasion, the House fractured along predictable lines. The Liberal Party’s stance found support from most MPs except those of the Official Opposition Canadian Alliance, whose leading members favoured a policy of intervention. What is surprising, however, is that those advancing these opposing foreign policies did so by articulating opposing representations of Canada as a protector of foreign civilians. Like debates over the Afghanistan War two years earlier, how Canada would best realize its (self-ordained) responsibility to protect innocent Iraqi civilians was adapted into two competing discourses of Canadian humanitarianism: one as an active crusader and a second as a passive condemning onlooker. The Crusader Discourse Epp contemplated the dilemma facing Canada, but quickly made his stance on the matter clear. “As unsavoury as it is, we will stand between him [Saddam Hussein] and his victims. Unfortunately, in every war there are innocent victims” he concluded.89 The Canadian Alliance member’s words were not dissimilar from the Liberal Prime Minister’s two years earlier in justifying Canada’s participation in Afghanistan despite the

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anticipated human cost.90 In March of 2003, however, it would be the Official Opposition party articulating a Canadian Self obliged to storm in, save innocent Iraqi civilians from the oppression of their despotic leader, and ultimately uphold Canada’s long-cherished role as a defender of human rights. Canada risked betraying this identity if it resorted to inaction while innocent people suffered. This crusading discourse was articulated primarily through two spatial and one temporal arrangements surrounding Canadian identity. First, Saddam Hussein and the Hussein regime were articulated as a spatially opposite radical Other to the Canadian Self. Leading figures in the Canadian Alliance constituted this spatial distancing by repeatedly articulating the boundless and sustained cruelty Hussein had demonstrated towards the people of Iraq. It was not just that Hussein was acting evil in 2003, but that he had long been that way: Saddam is as evil as he ever was…he still oppresses his people. He still supports terror.91 In 1991, after the invasion of Kuwait, the world judged the Iraqi regime to be a dangerous aggressor.92 Since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, more than one million have died as a consequence. They have died through killing and torture as individual opponents, real and imagined. They have died from acts of civil war and mass genocide…93 We are on the verge of trying to remove a dictator out of a country, a dictator who is tremendously sadistic and kills his own people. Of course I am talking about Saddam Hussein.94

Second, Hussein’s radical otherness was further structured by juxtaposing his cruelty with the “innocence” of the Iraqi people who continued to suffer under his rule.95 In the Crusader discourse, Iraqi civilians occupy a spatial middle-ground of sorts between the “good” Canadian Self and the “evil” Hussein regime; sharing certain values and aspirations with Canada but lacking the agency of the Canadian Self or Hussein to realize those aspirations on their own. Responding directly to Chrétien’s noninterventionist stance, Canadian Alliance MP Jason Kenney asked “[i]s the Prime Minister telling us that Saddam’s regime is not a humanitarian

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disaster, does not pose an immediate threat to the Kurd and Shiite population and that they would face imminent disaster were it not for the US and UK military action today?”96 Likewise, Stockwell Day simultaneously articulates the enduring cruelty of Hussein while casting non-intervention as yet another failure to protect innocent civilians by citing Hussein’s historical atrocities. “Tragically, the Prime Minister’s abandonment of the Iraqi people comes the day after the 15th anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal chemical attack on the Kurds in Halabja,” said Day. “[W]hen Saddam Hussein carried out one of a long list of atrocities in his attempt to rid the world of an entire people. Children, women and men were brutally gassed to death.”97 Thirdly, in temporal terms, the Canadian Alliance articulated a path of non-intervention as not only an abandonment of the Iraqi people, but of Canada’s historic role as a defender of human rights around the world. Only through actively participating in the removal of the Hussein regime could Canada live up to its long-held humanitarian values. Hence, prointerventionist parliamentarians linked notions of Canadian legacy and reputation to a history of self-sacrifice not for material profit but for the betterment of others. Ken Epp provides a particularly illustrative example in drawing together Canadian participation in World War II in combating Hitler’s armies to participation in the “coalition of the willing” to topple the Hussein regime: How many of us in this place have fathers, uncles and grandfathers who lie in graves in a foreign land because they were fighting not for Canada’s immediate interests but for peace, democracy and lack of tyranny, for stopping people like Hitler and others? That is why we die. We do not do it only for what is immediately good for Canada…When attacked I will do everything I can to stop it, but if that person is attacking others I believe I have an obligation to stand between them.98

According to the Crusader discourse, generations of Canadian soldiers have perished in foreign lands, but what remained was a legacy of Canadian self-sacrifice partnered with the courage to act. That legacy and Canadian identity itself, is at stake if Canada fails to intervene in Iraq. The Condemner Discourse Proponents of non-intervention equally grappled with the dilemma of how best to protect the Iraqi population, and equally articulated that

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it was up to Canada to determine which course of action was just. “[T]his is a choice between quick death or slow death…We have a very unhappy equation here. Would it be better to kill a lot of people quickly or a few less people more slowly?,” wondered Liberal MP John McKay in the House.99 Ultimately, a coalition of non-interventionist MPs, primarily spanning the Liberal, Bloc Québécois, and NDP parties would reach a very different conclusion and articulate a very different representation of the Canadian Self than their counterparts in the Canadian Alliance. Rather than Canada’s dedication to defending human rights compelling active intervention as a crusading force, instead, Canada’s devotion to humanitarianism was read more passively—Canada could better defend the Iraqi population from the sidelines, condemning those who did participate in what would surely be a protracted conflict with immense human suffering without intensifying the suffering by further contributing to the military intervention. This Condemner discourse situated the identities of Canada, Hussein, the Iraqi people, and the United States in a discursive arrangement that centred around the rhetorical commonplace of “Canada as a protector of foreign civilians.” Spatially, the United States and George W. Bush (often used interchangeably), rather than Saddam Hussein, were positioned as the primary Other to the Canadian Self. While the Canadian Alliance repeatedly articulated the egregiousness of Hussein’s cruelty in advancing a policy of intervention, here, non-interventionists emphasized the unjustness of America’s impending invasion of Iraq. The US-led coalition to topple the Hussein regime was continually articulated as “illegitimate,” “illegal,” and “unjustified,”100 versus Canada’s respect for international law and the United Nations, which had not yet produced a new authorization sanctifying military intervention, represented Canada’s justness.101 But what of the Hussein regime? While non-interventionists acknowledged the cruelty of Hussein, they countered the arguments of the Canadian Alliance by reading the dilemma of how best to save innocent Iraqi civilians in reverse: an impeding US-led military invasion is more threatening to Iraqi civilians than if Hussein remained in power. Unpacking this discursive arrangement makes clear that this reversed reading of the humanitarian “dilemma” is reliant upon not only articulations of the United States as more objectionable than Hussein, but the Iraqi population as static actors, devoid of agency, objects only to be saved or killed based on the decisions of others. Consider the statements of those weighing this “dilemma:”

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There is no comparison between the danger posed by Saddam Hussein and the war to be waged on Iraq. We are told that this super powerful army [of the US] would launch 3,000 bombs against the palaces over a 48-hour period. These bombs may be very precisely guided, but the fact remains that these palaces are located in urban areas...It should be pointed out that following the 1991 attacks, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi, including a large number of children, died because water could no longer be treated for lack of electricity…102 We must think first and foremost about the Iraqi people...these people will have to suffer through a war that may go on longer than expected and will inevitably see thousands injured, killed, widowed, orphaned, left homeless and traumatized. Inflicting such harsh punishment on these people is an odd way of liberating them.103 Right now, the victims are the women, children and men of Baghdad, the Iraqi people. They are the victims of the attack by the Americans...[u]nfortunately, killing Saddam Hussein also means killing thousands of innocent civilians in Baghdad. This is why we are saying that we will remain committed to peace and that one more day of war is one day too many...104

These articulations paint the calculations within the Canadian Alliance’s Crusader discourse as a bizarre approach to humanitarianism. One cannot protect the innocent if that protection requires bringing harm to that same population. To think further destruction can bring about further protection for people “is an odd way of liberating them.”105 The Iraqi population, the key actors whose identity allows Canada to be a protector in the first place, are cast as having already suffered enough so that military intervention is further rendered an improper response. The Iraqi population is said to already be in a “weakened state,” “malnourished and fac[ing] starvation,”106 they “do not deserve what is happening to them,”107 and their “already beleaguered lives have just taken a sharp turn for the worse.”108 Temporally, within the Condemner discourse, Canadian intervention represents a regression of Canadian identity in failing to best protect innocent civilians in that Canada misuses its role as not only a defender but a decider. The Condemner discourse is articulated through weighing various “measures” as to how “just” and “warranted” intervention is. The suffering of the Iraqi people is one measure already discussed above, but

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so is the precedent of intervention for the sake of regime change. As such, non-interventionists frequently spoke of the Canadian Self as needing to properly assess the costs and benefits and necessary circumstances to warrant intervention. Gilles Duceppe (BQ) assesses the conditions surrounding Canada’s intervention in previous conflicts to the situation in Iraq. “We were right to intervene in Kosovo. There was a risk of genocide. We should have intervened in Rwanda…in some situations like in Rwanda or during the Second World War, we have to take the terrible step of resorting to war.” Yet the BQ leader concludes in his assessment, “[h]owever, none of the three conditions I just mentioned apply to the situation in Iraq.”109 Echoing the Bloc’s party leader, Jocelyne GirardBujold (BQ) emphatically declared that Hussein “has made his people suffer” and “whom we must condemn,” and yet mere suffering “is not a good enough reason to make war when the international order is not threatened.”110 In sum, the pro-interventionist Crusader discourse was countered by a more passive Condemner discourse that articulated Canada’s devotion to protecting innocent civilians as expressed through abstention. While non-interventionists could have launched a range of counter-arguments against the Canadian Alliance, they, in fact, relied upon the same rhetorical commonplace of “Canada as a defender of foreign civilians” but re-imagined its meaning.

Conclusion Events surrounding the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq were read differently by different people. While this remained true in the Canadian House of Commons where Canadian parliamentarians debated Canada’s military involvement in the Middle East, a particular narrative of Canadian identity endured regardless of one’s political party across these debates: Canada was a protector of foreign civilians and needed to act accordingly. What exactly it meant for Canada to live up to this supposed tradition as a humanitarian protector, however, became a hotbed of contestation as parliamentarians not only argued over foreign policy but how those policies realize Canada’s identity as a protector. As in Chapter 3, here too, the endurance of a rhetorical commonplace is on display alongside the slipperiness of the meanings attached to it. While Chrétien’s Liberal Party led in articulating an active crusading discourse of Canada defending humanity

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in Afghanistan in 2001, just two years later, the Liberals found themselves siding with non-interventionists, articulating Canada as a passive protector, condemning from the sidelines to best protect the innocent in Iraq in 2003. The familiar notion of Canada as a protector of foreign civilians remained a central point of debate regarding both conflicts, yet the meaning of this commonplace was articulated and re-articulated in diverse ways.

Notes 1. A position analogous to the Secretary of State in the US context, and later renamed “Minister of Foreign Affairs” in 1993. 2. Hogg, W. (2004). Plus ca Change: Continuity, Change, and Culture in Foreign Policy White Papers. International Journal 59(3), 523; Doer, A. (1971). The Role of White Papers. In Doern, B. & Aucoin, P. (Eds). The Structures of Policy Making in Canada. Macmillan. 3. Hogg, W. (2004), 523. 4. Ibid., 523. 5. Though seventeen federal elections took place throughout this time period. 6. Malone, D. (2001). Foreign Policy Reviews Reconsidered. International Journal 56(4), 555–578; On some occasions, a green paper precedes a foreign policy white paper, with the former serving as “a statement by the government, not of policy already determined, but of proposals put before the nation for discussion…Many white papers in Canada have been, in effect, green papers.” See Franks, C.E.S. (2006). Green Paper. The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/ en/article/green-paper. 7. This speech is widely referred to as the “Gray Lecture” by Canadian historians and political scientists. St. Laurent had been invited to provide the inaugural speech at the University of Toronto’s John Gray Memorial Lectureship, a lecture series that continues today. See Chapnick, A. (2007). The Gray Lecture and Canadian Citizenship in History. American Review of Canadian Studies 37(4), 443–457. 8. St. Laurent, L. (1947). Foundations of Canadian Policy in World Affairs: Duncan & John Gray memorial Lecture. Department of External Affairs, 4. https://gac.canadiana.ca/view/ooe.sas_19460113ES/1?r=0&s=1. 9. Ibid., 4. 10. Ibid., 5. 11. Ibid., 5 (my emphasis). 12. Ibid., 6 (my emphasis). 13. Ibid., 6 (my emphasis).

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14. Ibid., 6. 15. In 1951, Lester B. Pearson, then SSEA to Prime Minister St. Laurent’s governing Liberal Party, did issue a speech at the Empire Club of Canada in Toronto, one of Canada’s premier political speakers forums, entitled “Canadian Foreign Policy in a Two Power World.” In this speech he elucidated several themes emerging from minor foreign policy reviews that took place under his leadership but whose results went unpublished. Following St. Laurent, most subsequent governments remained hesitant to conduct any reviews. See Malone, D. (2001), 557. 16. Malone, D. (2001), 558. 17. Department of External Affairs. (1970). Foreign Policy for Canadians. Government of Canada, 5. 18. Ibid., 6–7. 19. Ibid., 10 (my emphasis). 20. Ibid., 8. 21. Ibid., 25. 22. Ibid., 25. 23. Ibid., 8 (my emphasis). 24. Ibid., 9 (my emphasis). 25. Ibid., 9. 26. Minister of Supply and Services Canada. (1985). Competitiveness and Security. Ottawa: Government of Canada. 27. Ibid., 1. 28. Ibid., 1. 29. Ibid., 1 (my emphasis). 30. Ibid., 8. 31. Ibid., 10. 32. Ibid., 12. 33. Ibid., 16. 34. Ibid., 10. 35. Ibid., 42. 36. Ibid., 43 (my emphasis). 37. Government of Canada. (1995). Canada and the World. Ottawa: Government of Canada. 38. Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. (2002). Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign Policy for Human Security. Ottawa: Government of Canada. 39. Lloyd Axworthy, who served as Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1996 to 2000 under Chrétien, spearheaded one of these efforts and produced an influential re-conceptualization of Canada’s approach to foreign policy. Axworthy is widely considered “the author of the Canadian human security agenda.” See Jockel, J., & Sokolsky, J. (2000).

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40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

59.

60. 61. 62. 63.

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Lloyd Axworthy’s Legacy: Human Security and the Rescue of Canadian Defence Policy. International Journal 56(1), 1; Smith, H., & Ajadi, T. (2020). Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy and Human Security Compared. International Journal 75(3), 367–382; Axworthy produced a Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) concept paper in 1999 that advanced a new notion of security as “safety for people from both violent and non-violent threats.” His efforts loom large in the content of the white papers produced under the Chrétien government. Government of Canada. (1995), 1. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 34. Which is ranked above other values including the promotion of democracy and rule of law. Ibid., 35–36. Ibid., 34. Ibid., 40. Ibid., 41. Ibid., 42. Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. (2002), foreword. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 2. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 14. Oren, I. & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitization Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases. Review of International Studies 41(2), 313–336. Human Rights Watch. (1995). Iraq’s Brutal Decrees: Amputation, Branding and the Death Penalty. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/ IRAQ955.htm. Russell, L.R. (2005). Iraq’s Chemical Weapons Legacy: What Others Might Learn from Saddam. Middle East Journal 59(2), 187–208. Bush, G.W. (2002, January 29). State of the Union Address. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, October 2). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1415h. Howell, A. (2005). Peaceful, Tolerant, and Orderly? A Feminist Analysis of Discourses of “Canadian Values”. Canadian Foreign Policy 12(1), 49– 69; Jiwani, Y. (2009). Helpless Maidens and Chivalrous Knights: Afghan

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64.

65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72. 73.

74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81.

Women in the Canadian Press. University of Toronto Quarterly 78(2), 728–744; Hunt, K. (2002). The Strategic Co-optation of Women’s Rights: Discourse in the “War on Terrorism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 4(1), 116–121. Galloway, G. (2008, June 29). Canadians Oppose Iraq War: Poll. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ canadians-oppose-iraq-war-poll/article22501989/. Garner, M.E. (2003, March 10). The Dogs of War. The Globe and Mail, A.12. Gardner, A. (2003, March 11). Gender Wars. The Globe and Mail, A.14. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1115h. Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1250h. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1250h. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1130h. Moore, J. (Port Moody-Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2020h. Bagnell, L. (Yukon, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1655h. Meredith, V. (South Surrey-White Rock-Langley, PC). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1600-1610h. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1140h. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1130h. Pallister, B. (Portage-Lisgar, CA). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2225h. For a sample of sources, see notes: Whitaker, R. (2003). Keeping Up with the Neighbours: Canadian Responses to 9/11 in Historical and Comparative Context. Osgoode Hall Law Journal 41(2/3), 253. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1125h. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1320h. Ibid., 1335h. According to Srdjan Vucetic, the anglosphere refers to english-speaking states of the same socially constructed ‘racialized identity’, namely

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82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87.

88.

89. 90. 91.

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Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. (2011). The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations. Stanford University Press. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1425h. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1210h (emphasis added). Importantly, NDP members were not the only MPs who expressed such views, even if the words of MPs from other parties were mostly overshadowed by their leadership. For example: see Scott, A. (Fredericton, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1800-1805h; Karygiannis, J. (Scarborough-Agincourt, Lib). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1530h. Proctor, D. (Palliser, NDP). (2001, October 2). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1235h. Robinson, S. (Burnaby-Douglas, NDP). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2220h. Epp, K. (Elk Island, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1220h. This “dilemma” was openly discussed by members of multiple parties. Some concluding that intervention was warranted, and some that it was not. Rahim Jaffer (Edmonton-Strathcona, CA), for example, articulated the former: “If we treasure the lives of people, how can we support a war?…is it not incumbent on us, the privileged few in Canada and other countries, to stand up for Iraqi civilians and say enough is enough?” (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 2010h. Canadian Alliance MP John Duncan (Vancouver Island, CA) emphatically responded to claims that the coalition of the willing’s intervention in Iraq would only create more innocent victims. Said Duncan: “They are the victims of the tyrants who are in control, whether it is the Taliban or Saddam Hussein. I think the million plus people, who are no longer alive because they were living under the that regime, might have something different to say than with what the member has been coming forward” (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1650h. Epp, K. (Elk Island, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1220h. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1440h. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1850h.

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92. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1130h. 93. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1850h. 94. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1130h. 95. Lamenting the Chrétien governments’ inaction, Stephen Harper (Leader of the Opposition, CA) declared that “We will of course pray for the innocent people of Iraq and hope that they may have a better future than the one they have had under this tyrannical regime…” (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1145h (emphasis added). 96. Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2003, March 19). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1435h. 97. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1850h. Howard Hilstrom (Selkirk-Interlake, CA) makes a similar articulation “The world has always had to stand up to cold-blooded killers and people who attack the innocent, the unarmed and the people who cannot defend themselves” (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1155h. 98. Epp, K. (Elk Island, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1220h; Stockwell Day (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA) uses particularly colourful language to articulate Hussein as “evil:” The Liberal government has seriously injured “the interests and reputation of Canada by refusing to support the effort of the United States, United Kingdom and 32 other countries…This is a coalition of some 32 allied nations that have committed to this task of disarming Saddam Hussein from his weapons of horror” (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. 99. McKay, J. (Scarborough East, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1610h. 100. For example, see Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1035h; Bachand, C. (Saint-Jean, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1300h; Lincoln, C. (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib). 2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1655h. 101. For a sample, see: Blaikie, B. (Winnipeg-Transcona, NDP) (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1920h; Knutsen, G. (Secretary of State: Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session 1835h; McDonough,

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103.

104. 105.

106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

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A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session 1440h. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1815h (emphasis added). Gagnon, S. (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1540h (emphasis added). Bachand, C. (Saint-Jean, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1310h. McDonough countered the Canadian Alliance’s arguments by invoking a story of an Iraqi-Canadian couple who, during a rally in Halifax, said that their family in Baghdad was going to remain there “and face death together.” “What would those members of the [Canadian] Alliance say to that family, which is suffering the most horrifying threat of their family being wiped out in Bagdad by bombs being dropped in the name of liberating the Iraqi people?” (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1215h. Sloan, K. (York North, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 2025h. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1030h. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1210h. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Girard-Bujold, J. (Jonquiere, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1615h.

Bibliography Bachand, C. (Saint-Jean, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Bagnell, L. (Yukon, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Bush, G. W. (2002, January 29). State of the Union Address. Chapnick, A. (2007). The Gray Lecture and Canadian Citizenship in History. American Review of Canadian Studies, 37 (4), 443–457. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1115h. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, October 2). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session.

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Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1130h. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1130h. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Department of External Affairs. (1970). Foreign Policy for Canadians. Government of Canada. Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. (2002). Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign Policy for Human Security. Government of Canada. Doer, A. (1971). The Role of White Papers. In B. Doern & P. Aucoin (Eds.), The Structures of Policy Making in Canada. MacMillan. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Duncan, J. (Vancouver Island, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Epp, K. (Elk Island, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Franks, C. E. S. (2006). Green Paper. The Canadian Encyclopedia. https://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/green-paper Gagnon, S. (Lac-Saint-Jean, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Galloway, G. (2008, June 29). Canadians Oppose Iraq War: Poll. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadians-opp ose-iraq-war-poll/article22501989/ Garner, M. A. (2003, March 11). Gender Wars. The Globe and Mail, A.14. Girard-Bujold, J. (Jonquiere, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Government of Canada. (1995). Canada and the World. Government of Canada. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Hilstrom, H. (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Hogg, W. (2004). Plus ca Change: Continuity, Change and Culture in Foreign Policy White Papers. International Journal, 59(3), 521–536. Howell, A. (2005). Peaceful, Tolerant and Orderly? A Feminist Analysis of Discourses of ‘Canadian Values.’ Canadian Foreign Policy, 12(1), 49–69. Human Rights Watch. (1995). Iraq’s Brutal Decrees: Amputation, Branding and the Death Penalty. https://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/IRAQ955.htm Hunt, K. (2002). The Strategic Co-optation of Women’s Rights: Discourse in the “War on Terrorism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics, 4(1), 116– 121.

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Jaffer, R. (Edmonton-Strathcona, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Jiwani, Y. (2009). Helpless Maidens and Chivalrous Knights: Afghan Women in the Canadian Press. University of Toronto Quarterly, 78(2), 728–744. Jockel, J., & Sokolsky, J. (2000). Lloyd Axworthy’s Legacy: Human Security and the Rescue of Canadian Defence Policy. International Journal, 56(1), 1–18. Karygiannis, J. (Scarborough-Agincourt, Lib). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1530h. Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2003, March 19). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Lincoln, C. (Lac-Saint-Louis, Lib). 2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1655h. Malone, D. (2001). Foreign Policy Reviews Reconsidered. International Journal, 56(4), 555–578. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. McKay, J. (Scarborough East, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1320h. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Meredith, V. (South Surrey-White Rock-Langley, PC). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Minister of Supply and Services Canada. (1985). Competitiveness and Security. Government of Canada. Moore, J. (Port Moody-Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2020h. Oren, I., & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD: Securitisation Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases. Review of International Studies, 41(2), 313–336.

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Pallister, B. (Portage-Lisgar, CA). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Proctor, D. (Palliser, NDP). (2001, October 2). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Robinson, S. (Burnaby-Douglas, NDP) (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Russell, L. R. (2005). Iraq’s Chemical Weapons Legacy: What Others Might Learn from Saddam. Middle East Journal, 59(2), 187–208. Scott, A. (Fredericton, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Sloan, K. (York North, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Smith, H., & Ajadi, T. (2020). Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy and Human Security Compared. International Journal, 75(3), 367–382. St. Laurent, L. (1947). Foundations of Canadian Policy in World Affairs: Duncan & John Gray Memorial Lecture. Department of External Affairs, 4. https://gac.canadiana.ca/view/ooe.sas_19460113ES/1?r=0&s=1 Vucetic, S. (2011). The Anglosphere: A Genealogy of a Racialized Identity in International Relations. Stanford University Press. Whitaker, R. (2003). Keeping Up with the Neighbours: Canadian Responses to 9/11 in Historical and Comparative Context. Osgoode Hall Law Journal, 41(2/3), 241–265. https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1411&context=ohlj

CHAPTER 5

All for One, One for All: Discourses of Canadian Multilateralism and the War on Terror

This chapter examines the Canadian government’s decisions to participate in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and abstain from the 2003 invasion of Iraq through the invocation of identity discourses in parliamentary debate. In particular, the chapter analyses how the third rhetorical commonplace under study in this book, “Canada as a champion of multilateralism,” became a central feature of both pro-interventionist and non-interventionist arguments within the House of Commons in the lead up to these two wars. Careful analysis of these debates reveals that parliamentarians channelled their opposing foreign policies through competing representations of Canadian multilateralism, differing in content and meaning, but unified in articulating multilateralism as a foundational Canadian tradition. In so doing, Canadian multilateralism was re-imagined in both familiar and novel ways and incorporated into different discursive arrangements to advance competing foreign policies. The chapter begins by tracing the conceptual history of the rhetorical commonplace “Canada as a champion of multilateralism.” Canada’s role as a multilateral actor has occupied significant space in accounts of the history of Canadian foreign policy formulating a conceptual history that precedes and informs contemporary deployments of the concept in parliamentary debate. Having discussed historical discourses of Canadian

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_5

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multilateralism, the chapter then turns to the deployments of “Canada as a champion of multilateralism” in House of Commons debates over Canada’s participation or non-participation in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. While the previous two chapters have demonstrated the frequency with which parliamentarians discussed Canada’s involvement in these foreign policy episodes in relation to its alliance with the United States (neighbourly discourses) and defending the rights of innocent civilians (protector discourses), multilateral concerns like the legitimacy of the United Nations and international law loomed large. In discussing the coalitions of states intending to intervene in Afghanistan and Iraq, the “facts” surrounding their legality, who was involved, and how collective the decision-making was, were centrally filtered through four discourses of identity.

Internationalism, Status, and Subordination: A Conceptual History of Canadian Multilateralism “Multilateralism has been an article of faith in the practice of Canadian foreign policy for decades,” states Professor Tom Keating in the opening of his monograph charting the multilateralist tradition in Canadian foreign policy.1 Indeed, the Canadian infatuation with multilateralism, namely the encouragement of diplomacy through international institutions, formal associations, and ad hoc coalitions, has occupied considerable real estate in explorations of the history of Canadian foreign policy. As much as historical discourses of Canada–United States relations and Canada’s approach to human security (explored in the two previous chapters) may be intertwined with those of Canadian multilateralism, there are key elements of these discourses which the previous chapters’ analyses have not yet captured. Central to historical discourses of “Canada as a champion of multilateralism” is the play of dichotomous themes in representing Canadian identities: multilateralism as both a tool to realize Canadian independence and influence on the world stage and a threat to Canadian sovereignty when subject to the rules of the collective; as a means of asserting a level of control over large powers in the international system including the United States and as a weapon of control that “great powers” use to wield over others. This section surveys leading texts on Canadian foreign policy in general and Canadian multilateralism

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in particular to analyse identity discourses surrounding multilateralism. Two basic discourses emerge from this analysis, each offering an opposing representation of Canada as a multilateralist. The first we will call the prominent “internationalist” discourse which broadly reads Canada as an active and important player in the international system with a long history of contributing to peace-building efforts through participation in international institutions; efforts that both serve Canadian self-interest and the collective good of all states. Within this basic discourse are two discursive variations that, while overlapping in several key ways, nevertheless articulate unique spatial and temporal features of a Canadian Self; namely, a discursive variation of Canada as peace-keeper focused on halting future wars for the safety of all states and a variation of Canada as “middle power” seeking international status through multilateral efforts. The second basic discourse offers an opposing reading to “internationalist” discourses. What I call the “Coxian” discourse, in reference to Robert W. Cox’s 1992 article Multilateralism and World Order 2 that succinctly establishes the foundational elements of the discourse, this discourse reads Canada’s participation in multilateral institutions as a loss of influence and independence as Canada is subject to the will of more powerful states that dominate such international institutions. Canadian Internationalism The predominant image of Canadian multilateralism is that of a nation that rose from a position dependent on the British Motherland with a limited perspective on world politics during the inter-war period to that of a global leader in international consensus-building efforts following World War II and beyond. Prior to World War II, Canadian society was caught between two competing impulses: an “imperialist” leaning that stressed the country’s emotional (in addition to legal and economic) attachments to the British Empire, a sentiment that dominated in the lead-up to World War I, and a subsequent “isolationist” leaning of recoiling from international engagements after Canada’s experiences of the horrors of the “War to End All Wars.”3 The onset of World War II would mostly replace these prior impulses with that of a novel overarching sentiment: an internationalist leaning driven by the idea that the devastation brought by the world wars could only be avoided through active attempts to preemptively quell international disputes before hostilities could spark another major military conflict.4 Importantly, the basic discourse of Canadian internationalism

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features two discursive variations that, while closely related, diverge in their representations of the Canadian Self and Others primarily over the driving force behind Canada’s internationalist impulse: for peace or for status. Canada the Peace-Keeper Canada’s early post-World War II venture into multilateralism is articulated as a direct product of the country’s desire to avoid a third World War. “The fact that what happened in 1939 seemed to be happening for the second time strengthened the inclination to set up institutions to prevent the same kind of wars,” wrote Canadian diplomat and professor John Holmes in 1979.5 The “overriding fear” of another devastating conflict saw Canada adopt a particular form of statecraft aimed to ameliorate this concern.6 “Canada’s foreign policy was marked by active diplomacy to this end in a variety of fora,” states Kim Richard Nossal, including Canada’s “general attempts to mitigate tensions between the two blocs of the right bipolar postwar world; and specific mediatory missions to defuse intra-bloc disputes.”7 Having proved the country’s capability to contribute significantly to international politics with Canada’s contributions to Britain and the Triple Entente in World War I and now embracing the need to avoid another outbreak of war after World War II, Canada would see itself as holding a responsibility to facilitate international peace. Establishing a lasting peace required an effort on all states in the international system, situating Canada along with all other states in a spatial proximity in their obligation to collectively seek out peaceful resolutions. For the world wars had demonstrated that hostilities in a remote area of the world had the potential to plunge the entire system into full-scale war.8 Temporally, Canada’s dedication to the maintenance of peace requires the country to participate in and facilitate collective agreements, usually through international institutions, that hopefully quell unilateral impulses of other states. Failing to pursue multilateral avenues is a shirking of the obligation to be a contributor to peace. Nossal, for example, invokes Louis St. Laurent’s words debating the UN Charter in 1945 in demonstrating the sense of urgency for Canadian multilateralism so as to avoid a more dangerous regression of the international system. “Canada is prepared to take whatever risk may be involved in joining this organization,” said St. Laurent, “because the other risk, that of not having international organization, is something of such consequence that one

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dare hardly envisage it.”9 To be a defender of international peace is directly connected to one’s ability to participate in multilateral institutions. Former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark articulated as much stating “[w]hile multilateral approaches to problems may be slower and the result less satisfying, the outcome can often be more significant and stable precisely because it was based on consensus.”10 In recent decades, Canada’s foreign policy has in many ways become synonymous with the country’s peacekeeping missions that, as the name suggests, have furthered this discourse of Canadian multilateralism as a primary means of maintaining peace. Canada the Middle Power Historical reviews of Canadian foreign policy tell stories about Canadian multilateralism that articulate a Canadian Self motivated by more than just the need to avoid World War III. Whereas the Canada as Peace-keeper discursive variation stresses Canada’s responsibility to all other states in playing a part in maintaining peace, the Middle Power discourse stresses Canada’s opportunistic pursuit of status and influence on matters even beyond global conflicts. Literature on Canadian “middle powermanship” is extensive, with the overarching narrative being that within the hierarchy of states, Canada’s material resources constitute a middling position of power as either the greatest of the small states or smallest of the great states. Self-perception as occupying a middling position is said to have been a driving force behind Canadian foreign policy following World War II, as the country was positioned to utilize this status to demand more influence in multilateral institutions. John Holmes wrote of Canada’s middle power role in The Atlantic in 1964: It is a role to which Canadians have been aspiring since they emerged during the last war as the strongest of the lesser powers in the alliance. They had rid themselves of their colonial timidity, and their classic international function as a bridge between Britain and the United States … In casting off their inhibitions, they have become bored with being regarded as a eunuch state. They were realistic enough at San Francisco in 1945 to accept the priority of the great powers in security, but they insisted that the relationship between capacity and status be extended as a principle to differentiate between middle and small powers as well. For the status of middle power they were prepared to pay with their particular capabilities. They threw themselves into the manifold activities of the United Nations,

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inspired by idealism and by a shrewd realization that this was the arena in which a middle power could show its mettle and come out from the shadow of the great powers in whose reflection it did not wish to bask exclusively.11

This discourse situates Canada as spatially distant, though not radically so, from the “great powers” (those permanent members of the UN Security Council) yet offering a unique vantage point on multilateral initiatives. According to Holmes, it is the very fact that Canada, unlike the “great powers,” was itself a secondary player within a larger empire, lacked the militaristic power of the United States, Russia, and Britain, and is positioned geographically isolated from the European and Asian theatres, that garnered the Canadian Self its unique and effective multilateral abilities: It turned out that in the nuclear age, paradoxically, that although the authority of superpowers was enhanced, there was also a greater-than-ever requirement for countries whose influence rested less on military strength than on intelligence, diplomatic skills, access to powerful friends…Paradoxically also, it was the lack of interests beyond their region which involved Canadians…[that made them] dispensers of good offices between Jews and Arabs, Dutch and Indonesians, Laotians and Laotians. Remoteness from the scene of trouble…led Canada, in the world of the United Nations, into duties onerous but not unwelcome.12

This middling position allows Canada to work through multilateral institutions to not only utilize its abilities to influence smaller powers but can also utilize such institutions to exert influence on larger powers. Canada’s “seat at the table” of the United Nations, NATO, and WTO, for example, provides an avenue to impact countries like the United States. Multilateralism, in this sense, is a “levelling exercise.”13 “The country was severely limited in the capabilities it could exercise to control American activities,” Keating remarks in conveying Canadian aspirations for multilateral institutions. “By bringing the Americans within formal institutions, it was hoped that some constraints could be placed on them.”14 Temporally, the historical discourse of Canada as Middle Power is a matter of relevance to the world stage. This “coming of age” style discourse articulates Canada’s active multilateral agenda as signifying the latest stage in the country’s development from a more meagre “satellite” of the British Empire to an important and independent actor in its own right. The seeking of this middling status plays out insofar as Canada

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has important “seats at the table” to influence world politics, sometimes through votes in international organizations, other times in leveraging close ties to its more powerful allies to exert influence. Coxian Discourse: Canada as Subordinate The impetus of a competing discourse to the Canadian internationalism discourses can be located in the work of Canadian political scientist Robert W. Cox. Broadly, Cox articulates an opposing representation of multilateralism—not reflecting the state’s upward progression to increasing independence and influence but the state’s institutionalized subordination to the whims of more powerful states. That international institutions are subject to “the will of the strong” is, of course, not an idea of exclusive providence to studies of Canadian foreign policy or Cox.15 However, the critical theorization of the hegemony of powerful states in exerting power within such institutions offered by Cox has served as a robust theoretical foundation of this thinking within studies of Canadian foreign policy. Cox’s theorization of multilateralism and “world orders” stems from his application of Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to the international sphere. Gramsci, a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy imprisoned under Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime in 1926, theorized the hegemony of the ruling class to be based not just on coercion but also consent from other classes.16 Elite interests manifested in social institutions, like the education system, so that over time, members of society would develop certain subordinated modes of behaviour and expectations consistent with the interests of the ruling class. Cox elevated Gramsci’s insights to the international level in exploring how powerful states, like Great Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States in the twentieth century, managed to build world orders—the United States most successfully—that reflected their interests while socializing less powerful states into understanding their subordinated positions as both natural and good. For Cox, international organizations played a key role in perpetuating this hegemonic order. Such organizations are crucial in not only establishing transnational economic structures that benefit some over others (like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank)17 but also in exporting ideas about universality and the need for free trade, all of which work to quell dissatisfaction in the order.18 “Hegemony is like

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Table 5.1 Historical discourses of “Canada as champion of multilateralism” Discourse

Spatial relations to others in multilateral institutions

Temporal status of Canada’s multilateral obligations

Canada the Peace-keeper Canada the Middle Power

Similar Divided (great, middle, small powers) Divided (weak versus hegemonic)

Necessary to preserve peace Necessary to preserve status

Canada as Subordinate

Not obligated

a pillow,” wrote Cox, “it absorbs blows and sooner or later the would-be assailant will find it comfortable enough to rest upon.”19 Despite writing relatively little on Canada specifically, Cox is among the most influential contributors to the study of International Relations in Canada (and elsewhere), with his ideas inspiring many subsequent critical investigations into the hegemony of international organizations.20 Nevertheless, the Coxian discourse situates non-hegemonic powers (essentially all contemporary states besides the United States) as spatially proximate in terms of their relative subordination to the will of hegemonic states “pulling the strings” of the multilateral institutions. The main spatial and temporal characteristics of these three dominant historical discourses are summarized in Table 5.1.

Team Player or Team Leader: Parliamentary Discourses of Canada as Champion of Multilateralism in the War on Terror Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists (President George W. Bush, September 20, 2001).21 In the case of Iraq, the Security Council did act, in the early 1990s. Under resolutions 678 and 687—both still in effect—the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a question of authority, it is a question of will (President George W. Bush, March 17, 2003).22

Through the eyes of the American President, the military responses to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 and Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003

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were both a matter of team-building and acting within the law. In the early days of the “Global War on Terror,” George W. Bush’s words framed the parameters in which America’s allies discussed their own role towards these impending conflicts. Was one going to be part of a coalition seeking a justified solution or part of the problem itself? Of course, the legality of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 remains a contested topic, but what is of importance in the remained of this chapter is how Canada made sense of its position towards military alliances and coalitions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The analysis below reveals that this sense-making process was intricately tied to parliamentarians’ deployment and navigation of identity discourses related to multilateralism. If Canada had a supposedly long tradition of championing multilateralism, a tradition called upon in justifying the country’s participation in the Afghanistan War in 2001, how could this tradition no longer apply in 2003 when Canada refused to join the “coalition of willing” to topple Saddam Hussein? In what follows, Canadian parliamentarians, in debating these foreign policy paths, perform deft rhetorical articulations that make sense of these seemingly inconsistent decisions. At their core is the re-imagination of a Canadian Self that remains a champion of multilateralism even while bucking certain multilateral efforts. Foreign Policy Discourses on Afghanistan While concerns about “neighbourly” obligations to the United States and the need to protect innocent civilians in Afghanistan occupied significant bandwidth in parliamentary discussions over Canada’s response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, these debates also centred squarely on a third topic: Canada’s relationship to the multilateral coalition the United States was building and the legality of its intended actions. The landscape of international law applicable to the response centred on the United States’ invocation of Article 5 of the NATO Treaty in response to the terrorist attacks in New York City along with the United Nations Security Council’s passing of Resolution 1368 and 1373, which recognized the “inherent right of individual or collective self-defence.”23 Yet, exactly what these invocations and resolutions meant to Canada was not, however, predetermined or automatic, despite their binding nature. Instead, what international law obliged and what it did not, revolved around parliamentarians representations of “Canada as a champion of multilateralism.” While the majority of MPs supported Canada’s active

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participation in the military coalition based on a representation of Canada as an engaged member of the global community prepared to “do its part” for the betterment of the whole, a vocal minority challenged this stance. In advocating Canada’s reserved participation or complete withdrawal from the military coalition, this minority in the House instead stressed Canada’s role as a “middle power” meant to use its unique status to shepherd its allies into a more equitable collective responses and hinder America’s unilateral impulses. The Global Community Discourse Chrétien’s Liberal government, along with the Official Opposition Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservative Party, remained mostly united in the stance that Canada should take on a significant and active role in the military coalition forces US officials were building to disrupt terrorist operations in Afghanistan. This enthusiastic interventionist stance was as much about Canada’s involvement in the coalition as it was about the military operation itself, perhaps even more so. Describing Canada’s plan of action, Jean Chrétien stated that the country would be poised “to be an aggressive international partner in the coalition to destroy, root and branch, the shadow networks of supply, finance and penetration that allowed the terrorists to carry out the mass murder of September 11.”24 This position relied on a particular reading of Canada as a multilateral actor in relation to the terrorist attacks of September 11. What I refer to as the Global Community discourse was a representation of Canada based on spatial articulations of Canada’s “togetherness” with the international community, the “rightness” of international law, and ultimately the need to uphold the Canadian tradition of facilitating sweeping collective solutions to international challenges. Debates over Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan featured repeated articulations of the “togetherness” of the “global community” against the evils of terrorism. Given that the attack was on such a wide community, this warranted a “global response:” We must all stand together in a great coalition against this darkness and this evil of terrorism.25 Canada must be strong, resolute and wholly united behind our American and NATO allies.26

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As Canadians, neighbours and members of the global community of peace, we must stand firmly side by side and fight this barbaric cowardly act…27 The time has come for all Canadians to reflect on what this terrifying event means for Canada and all nations around the globe. It is time to reaffirm our values, our obligations and our most important alliance.28

Continuous with the historical Peace-keeper discourse, Canada must seek out a solution to the global threat of terrorism that elicits a truly multilateral response. The strength of that response is not necessarily in the military of the coalition but in the robustness of international institutions. “Together through our [global] solidarity we will prevail in the war against terrorism,” Liberal MP Lynn Myers remarks. “We will prevail because we have in place the institutions, the expertise and the strong international working relationships we will need to continue to muster in the days, weeks and months to come.”29 The need for a collective military response was supported by a second discursive feature: the “rightness” of such actions under international law. MPs opposing the active interventionist stance would frequently critique Liberal, Canadian Alliance, and Progressive Conservative members over the supposed illegality of a military intervention under international law. Proponents of the intervention countered not only by citing articles from the NATO Treaty and United Nations charter but by invoking international law in articulating Canada’s respect for multilateral institutions. In other words, the Global Community discourse articulates Canada’s military intervention in Afghanistan not just as something “legally authorized” under international law, but by interpreting this authorization as somehow indicative of Canada’s multilateral heritage. For example, various MPs cited the United States’ invocation of Article 5 of the NATO charter, the first time in the organization’s history, thereby labelling the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York to have been “an attack on one” that is considered “an attack on all” members. But it is exactly what this invocation of Article 5 meant for Canada that is of interest here. As these examples show, the invocation of Article 5 was an opportunity to reiterate Canadian respect for international law and solidarity with its multilateral partners:

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This step indicates the iron resolve of all alliance members to act in selfdefence against this evil…It is critical that members of the international community act as one.30 …for the first time in its history NATO invoked its fundamental principle, Article 5 of the NATO charter, which states that an attack on one is an attack on all. This is the time to stand by our friends, our allies and especially our neighbour to the south.31 We stand by our allies and strongly support the decision to invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter. We reaffirm our commitment to the alliance and to the principles of freedom and democracy that guide us.32 How could we fail to respond to an attack on North American soil…NATO invoked this principle [Article 5] for the first time in its history and authorized a collective response to the attacks on the United States. When the United States asked for our assistance we had a moral obligation to provide it.33

The Global Community discourse situates the need for a Canadian multilateral response not just because of Canada’s position as a member of the international community but also because of Canada’s identity as a devoted multilateralist and democratic country; a temporal status that was at risk if the country did not join the coalition forces. For example, the Opposition leader Stockwell Day (CA) articulated two reasons that compelled Canada to join the coalition, both of which pertained to upholding Canadian traditions and values. “It is precisely because we are a free and democratic society with values and desires to protect our way of life that we cannot avoid the awful responsibility of joining the war on terrorism,”34 Day remarked during the first sitting of Parliament following the 9/11 attacks. On October 15, with the United States already beginning a bombing campaign against Taliban forces, Day suggested that “Canada’s support for the American and coalition effort should not be limited to passive approval but should include active participation.” Why? Because “Canada’s participation in this military action is necessary to show solidarity with our allies.”35 Invoking Canada’s participation in World War II and Korea, the Opposition leader articulated Canadian participation as compelled not by unabashed self-interest, but by respect for its multilateral partnerships. “Despite the fact that Canadian lives and interests were not directly at stake in any of these conflicts,

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Canadians were there. Assisting our allies and honouring our international obligations was reason enough then and it is reason enough now.”36 Returning to Ottawa after a visit to ground zero in New York City, Prime Minister Chrétien linked Canadian participation in the military coalition directly to both an expression of Canadian values and Canada’s rightful place among multilateral actors on the world stage. Chrétien suggested that looking upon the ruins of the World Trade Center reinforced his “firm resolve to stand up and be counted, to stand up for our people, for our values, for our way of life... If the attacks on September 11 are a shameful benchmark for the dark side of human nature, the deliberate and forceful manner in which Canada and the world have marshalled their recourses against the forces of terror will be remembered as a proud benchmark of global courage and common purpose…”37 The rhetoric of defending Canadian traditions and reputations through participating in multilateral military efforts also emerged from some critical voices within the pro-interventionist stance. Several MPs from the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative parties expressed concern that the government would not act quickly or contribute enough to the United States and the military coalition, articulating any perceived hesitations on the part of Canadians as a sign of the country’s regression as a “reliable partner.” “Inaction on our part increases the speculation among our allies that our word will not be kept,” declared one Canadian Alliance MP.38 Joe Clark echoed that “Canada should be a fortress in the world, a nation known by our friends and allies to be strong and reliable.”39 The Global Community discourse relied, in particular, on representations of Canada as a member of an international community of states, bound together in an “all for one, one for all” arrangement against the evils of global terrorism. A contemporary re-imagining of the historical Peace-keeper discourse, pro-interventionist parliamentarians articulated Canada’s involvement in the US-led military coalition in Afghanistan as not only necessary to create peace but necessary to uphold Canadian traditions as a multilateral actor. The Middle Path Discourse Despite the majority of the House backing the Chrétien government’s policy of Canada serving as “an aggressive international partner” in a coalition of allies in Afghanistan, a competing perspective emerged from the NDP and Bloc Québécois. To be clear, while NDP members

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adamantly opposed Canada’s participation in any military operations not specifically sanctioned by the UN, the Bloc Québécois remained reservedly supportive of Canada’s military participation. Despite this hesitant support, the BQ expressed outright skepticism and concern that any coalition forces would not be overrun by American military adventurism. What united these two parties, however, was their members’ channelling of these perspectives through similar representations of Canada’s role as a multilateralist country—one that stressed Canada’s role as a unique “middle power” rather than just another member of the international community devoted to peaceful solutions. From the first sitting of Parliament following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, BQ and NDP members repeatedly expressed their support for bringing the terrorist perpetrators to justice but were concerned that in mounting a response, America may not resist its unilateral impulses. A truly multilateral approach through international institutions was necessary to tend to both concerns: serve justice to the perpetrators and keep the United States in check. During the September 17 session, NDP leader Alexa McDonough outlined the party’s stance in articulating this important dual role of multilateral institutions: The international community must spare no effort in bringing to justice all those responsible for these atrocities … However this response must be carried out in accordance with the principle of the rule of law…This is a crime against humanity and an international court should mete out the punishment. No country should be called upon to be the judge, the jury and the executioner, least of all the country that has suffered the greatest loss.40

BQ leader Gilles Duceppe was equally concerned by the prospect of an American carte blanche in responding to 9/11 terrorist attacks. Reminiscent of the historical Middle Power discourse and similar to McDonough’s articulation, Duceppe articulates the constraining forces of a multilateral approach as a means of quelling any unilateral intentions: A response is required. Terrorists must answer for their acts, as must those who sponsor them….This must be done within a framework of the largest possible coalition of countries that live by democratic values, and in granting a greater role to international institutions, such as the UN or International Criminal Court…I support the fact that Canada adheres to

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Article 5 of the NATO Treaty; however, this does not mean that we should give carte blanche to any and all measures.41

Rather than stressing Canada’s spatial likeness to the United States and its allies in combating terrorism, like the Global Community discourse, parliamentarians actually articulated Canada as occupying a “third way” or “middle path.” This “third way” positioned Canada as standing neither with the terrorist Others nor the United States and its allies that were content to support an aggressive military operation outside the confines of international institutions. A particularly vibrant set of these articulations surrounded George W. Bush’s (infamously) divisive statement. Standing before the US Congress on September 20, 2001, President Bush presented the world with a stark choice. “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”42 Bush’s words, while at least partially directed at nonallied countries to strongly consider their role in an impending US-led military operation, elicited affirming responses from some close American allies as well.43 NDP and BQ MPs in the Canadian House of Commons, however, rejected the Manichean binary.44 Instead, what emerged was a spatial articulation of Canadian “middle powermanship” in rejecting Bush’s stance: I say no to the President of the United States. We are not with him as he embarks upon this path of unilateral massive military assaults. We are certainly not with the terrorists. There is a third way which calls for respect for international law as we bring these perpetrators to justice.45 Canada has a great reputation which goes back many years. Lester Pearson and many other Canadians have contributed to Canada’s positive role as a middle power which uses diplomacy and a multilateral approach to solve serious problems around the world. That is what we should be doing.46 …George Bush made his address to America and announced “You are with us or with the terrorists.” He forgot that there is another way and that is to stand shoulder to shoulder with all communities desiring to bring these criminals to justice. Let us seize the opportunity to build new international courts and stronger international law…47 President Bush also said…“Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” In terms of creating a vast international coalition, will the

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Liberals agree that choosing the American camp, the camp of freedom, does not mean giving them carte blanche?48

Importantly, while NDP and BQ members frequently referred to upholding Canadian traditions of respecting international law, working through international organizations like the United Nations, and building as broad of coalitions as possible—not unlike their Liberal, Canadian Alliance, and Progressive Conservative counterparts—there was a key variation on these articulations. Because multilateralist approaches to problem-solving on the global stage faced potential cooptation by their more powerful members (reminiscent of the Coxian historical discourse), Canada’s devotion to such an approach required more than just blind faith. In fact, Alexa McDonough incorporated Canadian independence into a reading of Canada as a multilateral actor. “We need to call upon our earlier tradition of having a more independent foreign policy,” said the NDP leader, before immediately assuring that “We need to always think in terms of multilateralism.”49 The statement suggests both the potential of multilateral responses and their pitfalls in being susceptible to the will of their strong members. As a means of combating the prointerventionist arguments that equally argued for a multilateral approach, NDP MPs deployed articulations that having multiple members present in the room did not automatically legitimize the policies as correct and just. In fact, MPs expressed the unnecessary suffering that previous “collective” foreign policies had caused around the world,50 and hence, the Global Community discourse of Canada’s devoutness to multilateral efforts would not be enough without some independent thinking.51 Foreign Policy Discourses on Iraq The lack of a UN Security Council Resolution specifically authorizing military action in Iraq in relation to suspicions of Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction was the Chrétien government’s primary stated reason against joining the “coalition of willing” in 2003. Yet, as simple as the Prime Minister’s reasoning may have sounded, parliamentary debate over Canada’s position towards intervention in Iraq was not simply about the legality or illegality through the purview of the UN. Instead, competing perspectives on the legality of the intervention were channelled through differing interpretations of what UN authorizations meant for such a devoted supporter of multilateralism like Canada. This

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brought competing visions of and questions surrounding the meaning of Canadian multilateralism to the forefront: does championing multilateralism mean obeying the will of the collective over all else? Is Canada devoted to formal multilateral organizations or ad hoc multilateral coalitions equally? Should Canadian independence be subject to the will of multilateral organizations like the UN? What are the limits of Canada’s multilateral devotions? In the days leading up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, Canadian Parliament would debate answers to these questions invoking two distinct discourses on Canadian identity as a multilateral actor: The Good Ally discourse and the Bad Ally discourse. The Good Ally Discourse On March 17, 2003, Jean Chrétien stated in the House that without a UN Security Council Resolution specifically authorizing military action in Iraq, “we are not participating.”52 The stance was overwhelmingly supported by fellow Liberal, NDP, and BQ MPs. Yet, as opposition members began to criticize the position, arguing that military intervention was, in fact, legal, and questioning the government’s dedication to its key allies, several of which, the United States and the UK included, were enthusiastically preparing for military intervention, anti-interventionist MPs expanded their justification for inaction. They did so primarily by articulating Canada’s need to abstain from the invasion of Iraq as a matter of upholding a key feature of Canadian identity: its historic faith in multilateral institutions. Non-interventionists articulated a representation of Canada as a “good ally” in the international community of states, respecting international law, preserving the relevance of the UN, and standing up to those seeking to bypass multilateral institutions for their own unilateral aims. This Good Ally discourse was constructed by repeated articulations of Canada’s historical traditions and values of being a faithful ally and respecting multilateralism. Some MPs pointed to the Prime Minister’s attempts to “broker compromise” in the UN, which, while ultimately failing to reach an agreement, in fact, reinforced Canada’s “rightness” in abstaining from the military coalition. If a true multilateral compromise could not be reached, participating in anything less would be unjust or even illegal:53 Canada has a long and respected tradition of working for peaceful and lawful resolutions of disputes. In the current situation, Canada worked

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very hard to broker a compromise position through diplomatic channels. We tried to bring the Security Council together.54 We are a country that has a set of values. We are a society that believes in multiculturalism and multilateral support for various countries.55 …the Canadian position is a principled one based on…robust principles. First of all, we stand by our multilateral principles in the United Nations.56 …I think the government has demonstrated over the last month an incredible determination both to work as hard as we can for the preservation for peace and to exhaust every multilateral avenue available to us…We will relentlessly pursue the need to have peace as we work through our multilateral institutions to achieve them.57

Furthermore, the Good Ally discourse situated this devotion to multilateral decision-making as necessitating Canada to stand up to the United States, not simply as a “neighbour” (as discussed in Chapter 3) but specifically as a defender of the established multilateral order. For example, NDP leader Alexa McDonough accused the United States of threatening its allies in the UN to act against the will of the UN, formulating more a “coalition of coerced” than “coalition of the willing:” No aware Canadian can be unmindful of the intense pressure that was brought to bear on the government to fall into line with the US led war in Iraq…One of the truly disgusting things about what has gone on in and around the United Nations in recent weeks has been the bullying, the virtual bribing, which would be found illegal in most contexts in this world, and the threatening by the USA in particular to bring to heel the non-permanent members…It is very apt that someone suggested that of those 30 countries many among them can be thought of not so much as being a part of a coalition of the willing but as a coalition of the coerced.58

Moreover, the Bush administration was articulated as holding unilateral ambitions in Iraq necessitating Canada to “join the world” in standing against such disregard for multilateral institutions. BQ MP Francine Lalonde cited a Philadelphia Inquirer article suggesting that “Iraq is a test case for a new Bush Doctrine to police the world and remake it in our

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[American] image,” pressing the government to act urgently for “countries of the world joined together by the United Nations to address this crisis.”59 Importantly, abstaining from the coalition was articulated as a means of reinforcing the legitimacy of the United Nations that had not explicitly authorized the coalition’s military intervention. Reminiscent of the historical Canada as Peace-keeper discourse, the UN was articulated as a necessary institution that all states needed strong and healthy to avoid the kind of conflicts the UN was originally created to ameliorate. As such, concerns about US unilateralism “sidelining” the UN is cast as a dangerous precedent. “It does not matter to the United States that the Security Council has ended up sidelined, even though it is the only body that is capable of taking action, under international law,” stated Francine Lalonde of the BQ.60 Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham (LP) even cast the importance of respecting the UN over the need to deal with the violence caused by the Hussein regime: The decision we took does not reflect any illusions about the brutality of Saddam Hussein and his regime. It was a decision based on our judgement about the interest of Canadians in accordance with our principles and our deep and longstanding commitment to the United Nations and multilateral system and to the Security Council process.61

In short, Canada was a “good ally” in the structure of multilateral institutions that facilitated global cooperation. In refusing to join a military coalition without specific UN authorization, Canada lived up to its multilateral traditions, even if the country ultimately failed to “broker a compromise” at the UN and a US-led invasion of Iraq occurred. The Bad Ally Discourse The government’s non-interventionist stance sparked a lively response from Canadian Alliance MPs, with support from Progressive Conservative members critical of the Chrétien government’s perceived lack of influence in the foreign policy decisions of Canada’s allies. At its core, pro-interventionist arguments relied on a representation of the Canadian Self as at risk of regressing from its prized position as a “reliable ally” and “influential international actor” by abandoning what they articulated as a legally justified multilateral military coalition. Canada’s absence from the invasion of Iraq would situate Canada, according to

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this discourse, as a “bad ally,” “left alone” without its friends who had all joined the coalition, “betraying” Canada’s historic tradition of multilateral participation.62 Representations of Canada as a “bad ally” were supported by interpretations of the justness of the military coalition under international law. Assuming the NATO Treaty and UN Security Council resolutions to be legally binding, Canada was in fact failing to be the devoted multilateralist from its past by not upholding such laws. Even worse, Canada was now part of the problem that other “true” multilateral actors were working to solve. In reciting the UN Security Council resolutions that he said authorized the intervention, the Opposition leader Stephen Harper (CA) went further in commending the United States for pushing the need to disarm Saddam Hussein through the usual gridlock of international institutions: That leads to a final criticism, that the coalition is somehow inadequate because it is not unanimous and because it is led by the United States of America. Ironically, as even our Liberal government has acknowledged, America, with Britain in particular, has given strong leadership to the world on this issue. What has been accomplished in recent months has only been accomplished solely because of the American-British coalition and their allies and their determination to act. Indeed, without strong leadership of leading powers, usually the U.S.A., the failures of the United Nations are too numerous and too grisly to even mention.63

As Harper’s statement illustrates, this Bad Ally discourse contained a peculiar feature. As much as the pro-interventionist arguments had relied on painting Canada as the ultimate team player, it contained a level of skepticism about blind loyalty to multilateral institutions and the effectiveness of such institutions themselves, not unlike the NDP’s Middle Path discourse of 2001 which ironically argued for Canada’s abstention rather than active participation in this case. Does the adherence to the rulings of multilateral institutions have the potential to erode Canadian independence? Might respect for the decisions of the collective jeopardize values unique to Canada? Or perhaps it is multilateral organizations themselves, not their actors, that jeopardize the ability of groups of states to achieve their goals? Reminiscent of the historical Coxian discourse of subordination, proponents of intervention in Iraq articulated a particular representation of just how devoted Canada needed to be to

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multilateral institutions, in order to still adhere to its multilateral tradition. Articulations surrounding the UN Security Council’s veto provide an illustrative example. Surrounding what would become the Second Gulf War, the United States did not lobby the Security Council to authorize military intervention in Iraq. One reason, among others, was because such a resolution would almost certainly have been vetoed by one or several other permanent members whose representatives had expressed no support for such a resolution.64 Canadian Alliance members, however, articulated the Chrétien government’s stance of needing UN authorization to join the military coalition as subjecting Canadian sovereignty and independence to the will of Security Council states. As the Chrétien government’s non-interventionist stance rested in large part on needing specific UN authorization for military intervention in Iraq, Canadian Alliance members retorted by representing respect for the UN Security Council’s veto power as a detriment to the Canadian Self, not a reinforcement of it. The problem was not that states had come together and worked out a multilateral solution on their own. The problem was that they had to do so to avoid the structure of the United Nations that inhibited true multilateralism. Stockwell Day draws together these themes in criticizing the Prime Minister’s reliance on UN authorization: The Liberal government has seriously injured the interests and reputation of Canada by refusing to support the effort of the United States, the United Kingdom and 32 other countries. Let us not continue to use the world unilateral in this debate. This is not a unilateral movement of one nation. This is a coalition of some 32 allied nations that have committed to this task of disarming Saddam Hussein from his weapons of horror. The Prime Minister’s reason for abandoning our allies is the failure to secure a second resolution at the United Nations Security Council. The Liberal government has chosen to support the symbolism of multilateral process over the substance of advancing the ideals of the United Nations. We have taken our sovereignty and subjected it to the veto of one or two nations, nations that are seriously implicated in conflict of interest in Iraq.65

The actions of the United States and the United Kingdom, the leading members of the “coalition of the willing,” were celebrated as achieving that which needed to be done by working outside the confines of the UN. Canadian Alliance MP Jason Kenney declared that had it not been for their actions, Saddam Hussein “would have killed thousands more were it not for the no fly zones being operated by the US and UK forces without a UN mandate.”66

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In short, the Bad Ally discourse challenged the government’s Good Ally discourse by re-imagining the terms of Canada’s status as a champion of multilateralism. While equally stressing Canada’s need to live up to its traditions of working with its allies and respecting international law, the Canadian Alliance MPs challenged the government’s reasoning of needing UN authorization by re-articulating the Canadian Self as devoted to true multilateralism, even more so than the multilateral institutions, themselves.

Conclusion While the legality (or illegality) surrounding the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 has occupied considerable attention in framing the context within which Canada chose not to join the coalition, this chapter has argued that identity considerations were equally implicated. Despite the binary language deployed by the Canadian Prime Minister (there either is an authorization or there is not), the government’s position of abstention relied on representing a particular relationship between Canada and its history of multilateralism. Facing competing arguments and representations from pro-interventionist parliamentarians, the government advanced its position by articulating a Canadian identity devoted to protecting the multilateral international order, in respecting key institutions like the UN, such that any actions outside those directly authorized by the UN threatened the stability of the system as a whole. Looking two years earlier, the government’s discursive articulations were actually fairly consistent with those it offered in arguing for, not against, Canada’s participation in the Afghanistan War in 2001: arguing it had obligations to join because the NATO Treaty and UN charter authorized such actions. That being said, visions of Canada as a champion of multilateralism were adapted in distinct ways in response to each foreign policy episode. Despite the NDP’s consistent worries of American unilateralism in Afghanistan, the Liberal government’s pro-interventionist stance mostly swept over the risks of military adventurism, and instead, more consistent with the historical Peace-keeper discourse, emphasized the need for a collective response by the “global community” to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was better to be “with us” [the United States] than “against us.” Yet, two years later, it was enough for Canada to simply flex its “middle power” muscles in attempting to broker a compromise at the UN (divided over the situation in Iraq) and, even when failing to secure an agreement, be content to let

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the situation play out and watch from the sidelines, knowing the country had at least lived up to its traditions, even in failure. As the previous three chapters have demonstrated, a plethora of factors significantly shaped the Canadian Parliament’s deliberations on Canada’s stance in relation to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in early moments of the “Global War on Terror.” The relevance of Canada’s geostrategic location in North America, the suffering of individuals under despotic regimes, alliance obligations, and respect for international law all formulated concerns the House of Commons strongly considered in debating Canada’s foreign policy response. But these factors did not impart an automatic logic on parliamentarians nor were they simply selfevident “facts” with objective existences separate from the ways in which parliamentarians made sense of them. Instead, these various factors shaped the terrain of foreign policy debate insofar as parliamentarians articulated their relevance through dynamic rhetorical processes of repetition of and innovation on discourses of Canadian identity. Geo-strategic concerns and international law, in other words, were highly relevant to Canada’s foreign policies in the “Global War on Terror” in that they were channelled into competing discourses of the Canadian Self that situated certain foreign policy responses as necessary, not simply to secure the continent or uphold the rule of law but because failing to do so would threaten the stability of Canadian identity itself. Central to these discourses were three rhetorical commonplaces that occupied a central role in realizing the political possibility of these foreign policies. Providing the basic narrative scaffolding of identity discourses that “made sense” to the Canadian public, these commonplaces were linked to diverse foreign policies that could be articulated as consistent with an enduring notion of Canadian identity even while re-imagining its meaning. In the end, for as much as parliamentary debate centred on what Canada must do, the backbone of these discussions was in fact about who Canada is, as suggested foreign policies were only as relevant as the identity discourses linked to them. While these commonplaces greatly shaped the political possibility of Canadian foreign policies in the “Global War on Terror,” their continued relevance to contemporary foreign policy episodes has yet to be explored. For the exploration of this topic, we turn to Chapter 6.

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Notes 1. Keating, T. (2002). Canada and the World: The Multilateralist Tradition in Canadian Foreign Policy, 2nd edition. Oxford Universe Press, 1. 2. Cox, R.W. (1992). Multilateralism and World Order. Review of International Studies 18(2), 161–180. 3. Nossal, K.R. (1985). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy, 1st edition. Prentice-Hall Canada, 44–53. 4. Ibid., 53. 5. Holmes, J.W. (1979). The Shaping of Peace: Canada and the Search for World Order, 1943–1957 (Volume 1). University of Toronto Press, 27. 6. Nossal, K.R. (1985), 12. 7. Ibid., 12. 8. Ibid., 53. 9. Ibid., 55. 10. Keating, T. (2002), 163; original: Department of External Affairs and International Trade (1990, September 13). Canada in the World: Foreign Policy in the New Era speech by Joe Clark. Statements and Speeches 90/11. 11. Holmes, J.W. (1964, November). The Diplomacy of a Middle Power. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/ 1964/11/the-diplomacy-of-a-middle-power/657429/. 12. Ibid. 13. Keating, T. (2010). Multilateralism: Past Imperfect, Future Conditional. Canadian Foreign Policy 16(2), 15. Original: Herman, L. (1997, January 29). Multilateralism Works in Favour of Smaller Nations Like Canada. The Financial Post, 15. 14. Keating, T. (2002), 13. 15. See Mearsheimer, J.J. (1994/1995) The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security 19(3), 5–49. 16. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Hoare, Q. & Smith, G.N. (Eds). International Publishers. 17. Cox, R.W. (1996). Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations: An Essay in Method. In Cox, R.W. & Sinclair, T.J. Approaches to World Order. Cambridge University Press, 138; for an encapsulation of Cox’s Gramsciinspired perspective to the field of international relations see Cox, R.W. (1996). Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory. In Cox, R.W. & Sinclair, T.J. Approaches to World Order. Cambridge University Press. 18. Cox did not, however, argue that a hegemonic order could not be countered or toppled. He also focused on the means of resisting and countering hegemony. See Cox, R.W. (1996), 140. 19. Ibid., 139. See also Cox, R.W. (1992), 176–180.

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20. See Gill, S. (1990). American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission. Cambridge University Press; Rupert, M. (1995). Producing Hegemony: The Politics of Mass Production and American Global Power. Cambridge University Press. 21. Bush, G.W. (2001, September 20). Address to Joint Session of Congress and the American People. 22. Bush, G.W. (2003, March 17). Address to the Nation on Iraq. 23. United Nations Security Council. (2001, September 12). Resolution 1368; United Nations Security Council (2001, September 28). Resolution 1373. 24. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1910h. 25. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 26). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1615h (emphasis added). 26. Moore, J. (Port Moody-Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2015h (emphasis added). 27. Cannis, J. (Scarborough Centre, Lib). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1400h (emphasis added). 28. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1250h (emphasis added). 29. Myers, L. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada, Lib). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1055. 30. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1250h (emphasis added). 31. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 26). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1610h (emphasis added). 32. Bulte, S. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Lib). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1600h (emphasis added). 33. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1940h (emphasis added). 34. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1135h (emphasis added).

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35. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1940h. 36. Ibid., 1940h. 37. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1905h. 38. Pallister, B. (Portage-Lisgar, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1315h. 39. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1225h. 40. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1210h. 41. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1200h. 42. Bush, G.W. (2001, September 20). 43. Tony Blair of the United Kingdom in particular. See Holland, J. (2013). Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11. Routledge, 98–134. 44. Ibid., 99. 45. Robinson, S. (Burnaby-Douglas, NDP). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2220h (emphasis added). 46. Nystrom, L. (Regina-Qu’Appelle, NDP). (2001, October 2). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1715h (emphasis added). 47. Lill, W. (Dartmouth, NDP). (2001, September 21). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1110h (emphasis added). 48. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2001, September 21). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1120h. 49. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1220h. 50. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP) for example: “Does the member agree with me? Members in our caucus have really tried to put a very strong message out today that in that response we have to ensure violence does not now beget violence, that we do not escalate the kind of conflict we have seen and that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past in terms of NATO policy or U. S. policy that caused great suffering and oppression for peoples around the world” (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 1755h. 51. This counter argument to the pro-interventionist stance also manifested in articulations of the need for UN leadership over NATO leadership, the former being considered more multilateral than the latter. For example: Proctor, D. (Palliser, NDP). (2001, October 2). House

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52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

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of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2155h; Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2335–2350h. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1420h. Statements regarding the illegality of the Bush administration’s actions are abundant in these days of debate. For a sample, see Gauthier, M. (Roberval, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1140h; McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1515h; Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1815h; Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1035h. Maloney, J. (Erie-Lincoln) (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1110h. Bonwick, P. (Simcoe-Grey, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1345h. McCallum, J. (Minister of National Defence, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1440h. Graham, B. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2003, March 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1440h. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1215h. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 19). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1430h. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1815h. Graham, B. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1100h. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1130–1145h. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1135h; The leader of the Opposition would articulate Canada as spatially isolated stating “our government is not part of the multilateral coalition in support of this action and it has not been part of any coalition opposing it; just alone, playing irrelevant and contradictory games on both sides of the fence, to the point where we go so far as to leave military personnel in the region without the active and moral support of the government that sent them there” (ibid., 1140h).

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64. Tagliabue, J. (2003, March 6). France and Russia Ready to Use Veto Against Iraq War. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/ 2003/03/06/international/europe/france-and-russia-ready-to-use-vetoagainst-iraq-war.html; United Nations News (2003, March 17). UK, US and Spain won’t seek vote on draft resolution, may take ‘own steps’ to disarm Iraq. https://news.un.org/en/story/2003/03/62132. 65. Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1850h. 66. Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2003, March 19). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1435h.

Bibliography Bonwick, P. (Simcoe-Grey, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Bulte, S. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Lib). (2001, September 25). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Bush, G. W. (2001, September 20). Address to Joint Session of Congress and the American People. Bush, G. W. (2003, March 17). Address to the Nation on Iraq. Cannis, J. (Scarborough Centre, Lib). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2003, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Clark, J. (Calgary Centre, PC). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Cox, R. W. (1992). Multilateralism and World Order. Review of International Studies, 18(2), 161–180. Cox, R. W. (1996). Gramsci, Hegemony, and International Relations: An Essay in Method. In R. W. Cox & T. J. Sinclair (Eds.), Approaches to World Order. Cambridge University Press. Cox, R. W. (1996). Social Forces, States and World Order: Beyond International Relations Theory. In R. W. Cox & T. J. Sinclair (Eds.), Approaches to World Order. Cambridge University Press. Davies, L. (Vancouver East, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session.

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Day, S. (Okanagan-Coquihalla, CA). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, September 26). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Day, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2001, October 15). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Department of External Affairs and International Trade. (1990, September 13). Canada in the World: Foreign Policy in the New Era speech by Joe Clark. Statements and Speeches 90/11. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2001, September 21). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Duceppe, G. (Laurier-Saint-Marie, BQ). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Gauthier, M. (Roberval, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Gill, S. (1990). American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission. Cambridge University Press. Graham, B. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2003, March 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Graham, B. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds.). International Publishers. Harper, S. (Leader of the Opposition, CA). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Herman, L. (1997, January 29). Multilateralism Works in Favour of Smaller Nations Like Canada. The Financial Post. Holland, J. (2013). Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses after 9/11. Routledge. Holmes, J. W. (1964, November). The Diplomacy of a Middle Power. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1964/11/the-dip lomacy-of-a-middle-power/657429/ Holmes, J. W. (1979). The Shaping of Peace: Canada and the Search for World Order, 1943–1957 (Vol. 1, p. 27). University of Toronto Press. Keating, T. (2002). Canada and the World: The Multilateralist Tradition in Canadian Foreign Policy (2nd edition). Oxford Universe Press. Keating, T. (2010). Multilateralism: Past Imperfect, Future Conditional. Canadian. Foreign Policy, 16(2), 9–25.

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Kenney, J. (Calgary Southeast, CA). (2003, March 19). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Lalonde, F. (Mercier, BQ). (2003, March 19). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Lill, W. (Dartmouth, NDP). (2001, September 21). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Manley, J. (Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Maloney, J. (Erie-Lincoln) (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session, 1110h. McCallum, J. (Minister of National Defence, Lib). (2003, March 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. McDonough, A. (Halifax, NDP). (2003, March 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 2nd session. Mearsheimer, J. J. (1994/1995). The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security, 19(3), 5–49. Moore, J. (Port Moody-Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam, CA). (2001, September 17). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Myers, L. (Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada, Lib). (2001, September 18). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Nossal, K. R. (1985). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (1st ed., pp. 44– 53). Prentice-Hall Canada. Proctor, D. (Palliser, NDP). (2001, October 2). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session, 2155h. Robinson, S. (Burnaby-Douglas, NDP). (2001, September 20). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliamentary, 1st session. Tagliabue, J. (2003, March 6). France and Russia Ready to Use Veto Against Iraq War. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/int ernational/europe/france-and-russia-ready-to-use-veto-against-iraq-war.html United Nations News. (2003, March 17). UK, US and Spain Won’t Seek Vote on Draft Resolution, May Take ‘Own Steps’ to Disarm Iraq. https://news. un.org/en/story/2003/03/62132 United Nations Security Council. (2001, September 12). Resolution 1368. United Nations Security Council. (2001, September 28). Resolution 1373.

CHAPTER 6

Re-imagining Canada? Foreign Policy Discourses in the Age of Trump, Putin, and Pandemic Politics

This chapter surveys the current landscape of Canadian foreign policy to assess the relevance of the rhetorical commonplaces elaborated in the previous chapters to Canadian international relations today. While the scope of this book has, to this point, mostly centred around Canadian foreign policy up until 2003, this chapter asks to what extent (if at all) “Canada as America’s neighbour,” “Canada as protector of foreign civilians,” and “Canada as champion of multilateralism” have continued to anchor representations of Canadian identity in foreign policy discussions in recent years. In this chapter, I survey prominent discourses emanating from Canadian politicians and Canadian society surrounding several major ‘topological’ events and trends within the current Canadian foreign policy landscape. These events include the elections of Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden as American president in the 2016 and 2020 elections, respectively, the chaotic US-led NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Canada’s recent turn to “feminist” foreign policy under the Justin Trudeau government, the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic, and Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine since February 2022. These events have not only significantly shaped the contemporary international terrain within which Canadian foreign policy is formulated, but all were widely considered surprising or unexpected in different ways. In this sense, this landscape provides ample opportunity to re-think © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_6

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assumptions about Canada’s place in an ever-changing world. As this chapter demonstrates, however, the persistence of familiar narratives regarding Canadian identity to make sense of these novel challenges and events has produced both innovative moments of re-imagination and recurrent visions of Canada’s place in a changing world.

Being America’s Neighbour in the Age of Trump, Biden, and the COVID-19 Pandemic Few recent events provided more of a shock to the international system than the election of Donald J. Trump as American president in 2016. The Trump administration’s re-orientation of US foreign policy presented the world with an America that was apparently on its path to being “great again:” favouring transactional bilateralism over multilateralism, immediate economic interests over ideals-driven policy, and an overall flippant approach to international norms and alliances (to put it mildly).1 Canada, for its part, found itself dealing with an “America First” United States that was outwardly skeptical of or downright hostile towards key institutions that had long been at the centre of Canada–US relations including NATO and NAFTA.2 Did the neighbour commonplace continue to be a central conduit through which Canada–US relations were popularly articulated? If so, how? What kind of neighbours would Canada be to Trump’s America? Justin Trudeau’s 2015 election during the Barack Obama presidency witnessed the resurrection of historical discourses of Canadian closeness to the United States, culturally and otherwise—with a modern day twist. Somewhere between best friends and close relatives, prevailing media discourses represented the countries’ relations through the mucharticulated “bromance” among the two world leaders.3 The leaders themselves even engaged in the affectionate rhetoric.4 From their initial meetings, “[t]he [American] president and his senior advisors regarded Trudeau as a kindred spirit who reminded them of a younger Obama,” Roland Paris reports, deploying diction reminiscent of 1930s historian John Dafoe’s description of Canada and the US relations.5 In Obama’s final months in office, the outgoing President echoed the closeness of Canada and the United States, using a speech to Canadian Parliament to proclaim the countries as “linked by the ties of friendship and family…The point is we see ourselves in each other, and our lives are richer for it.”6

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Extending the sentiment, on February 13, 2017, following Trump’s inauguration, Justin Trudeau used his first meeting with the new President in Washington to declare that “Canada and the United States will forever be a model example of how to be a good neighbour.”7 Initial speculation that the Canada–US “bromance” could continue under a new US administration8 quickly dissipated as Trump’s tenure would mark a highly contentious period in Canada–US relations. Despite the Trudeau government’s careful rhetorical manoeuvring in dealing with the ornery Trump, at times offering outright flattery of the President or more commonly simply avoiding overt criticism, it appeared the “dudeplomacy” of the Obama years would not be rekindled.9 Canada–US trade wars, disputes over Canada’s contributions to NATO, turbulent negotiations over a new NAFTA deal, and highly publicized personal jabs exchanged between the two leaders marked just a few of the two countries’ contentious moments during Trump’s tenure. “So much for the bilateral bromance?” read a January 2017 Maclean’s article.10 So what came next? Trump’s contentious term birthed a plethora of new, yet familiar, sounding articulations in Canada regarding what it meant to be a neighbour to Donald Trump’s America. Recurrent among these articulations were not only discourses of fundamental characteristic difference between the Canadian Self and American Other, but also the return of “bad neighbour” signifiers. The drastic negative shift in Canada–US relations from the Obama administration to the Trump administration was articulated as all the more egregious because the two countries shared a border. Major news outlets ran stories with titles like “The US isn’t being very neighbourly. Here’s what it means for Canada’s foreign policy”11 and “Canada’s efforts to appease our grumpy neighbour were always doomed.”12 Canadian political leaders joined in as well, invoking and adapting the neighbourly commonplace to construct representations of Canadian and American identities over various policy issues. While the words of Trudeau and his cabinet members have received ample attention—least of all because a number of them were the direct target of Trump’s twitter-based personal attacks—far less attention has been paid to identity articulations of other parliamentarians in the House of Commons. Two particularly contentious episodes are worth briefly surveying here, one from the Trump administration’s earliest days and one from its last.

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First, a testy episode in Canada–US relations that occurred in the early days of the Trump presidency surrounded the Trump administration’s 2017 travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries entering the United States. On January 27, 2017, the newly minted President issued “Executive Order Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” what would commonly be referred to in popular media as “the travel band” and “the Muslim ban.” The original order banned nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States for 90 days, including citizens of Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, while also imposing a hold on the US refugee resettlement programme and an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.13 Immediately following the order’s issue, Canadian Parliament erupted in fervent debate regarding how Canada should react and respond, though the House was overwhelmingly disapproving of the executive order itself. Concerns regarding whether such a travel ban would affect Canadians with dual citizenship,14 if Canada could offer temporary residency permits to those affected,15 and how the government should broach the new American administration in light of this action, were channeled through identity rhetoric that relied on mobilizing familiar neighbourly discourses. For example, during a January 30, 2017 Question Period, Justin Trudeau faced pointed questioning from NDP leader Thomas Mulcair over the Prime Minister’s apparent failure to unequivocally denounce the American President’s actions and whether he would make his opposition to the ban known to Trump. Trudeau offered a diplomatic response that painted a particular picture of Canada’s relationship with Trump’s America. Trudeau remarked that the Canadian government fulfilled a double role. “We need to make sure we are protecting Canadian jobs and growing the economy by having a constructive working relationship with our most important trade partner and ally,” said the Prime Minister. But he continued, “[w]e are also standing up for Canadian values and principles…we have stood loudly and clearly for the openness, for the welcoming, for the compassion, for the strength that Canadians expect of all of us.”16 The Prime Minister articulated the terms of one modern day representation of Canada–US relations: Canada needed to tolerate a certain amount of contemptible behaviour from the American Other, with whom it now differed in core values and vision, in order to reap economic rewards and avoid undue stresses that come from living next to the United States.

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Trudeau’s middle-of-the-road position towards the United States on the travel ban was met with resistance in the House of Commons, particularly from NDP MPs. In advocating for the government to adopt a bolder stance to oppose the ban, some MPs linked their policy preferences to an opposing reading of Canada and the United States’ neighbourly relationship. Many NDP members, for example, called for Canada to “step up” and provide refuge to those the travel ban would exclude from the United States. Reminiscent of the World War Allies historical discourse, this policy was accompanied by spatial articulations of Canadian “goodness” and value-driven action versus American Otherness and cruelty in a juxtaposition said to be all the more evident because the two entities share a border. These articulations also featured temporal elements that tied these articulations of difference to notions of American decline for shirking its responsibilities and historic values while reinforcing Canada’s core values in “stepping in” to help those in need. NDP MP Jenny Kwan, for example, invoked the words inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in articulating American failure to live up to its historic values: Inscribed on the Statue of Liberty are the words, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses,’ but now it falls to other nations to step up and provide shelter to those fleeing violence and persecution…we want to step up in troubling times with our neighbour making such a discriminatory proclamation.17

Wayne Stetski of the NDP likewise articulates an American regression of reputation that leaves a void for which Canadian identity can be reinforced by filling: So this beacon of hope and freedom [the United States] that is our neighbour is getting a reputation around the world that is really quite unfortunate. We as Canadians need to emphasize what it means to be Canadian and the fact that we value multiculturalism, diversity and equity.18,19

It was not, however, rare to encounter articulations continuous of those deployed in the “Global War on Terror” debates in the early 2000s. Similar to Voice of Reason discourses, the neighbourly commonplace served a dual purpose: on the one hand, the articulation of Canada as America’s neighbour elevated the egregiousness of the United States’ actions (“our own neighbour of all people!”) while on the other hand,

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obligating Canada to voice displeasure and guidance to the United States as a neighbour (“as a true friend, you should say something”). Canada was capable of “calling out” and “standing up” to the United States given its special position as neighbour and friend: The measure of a friendship is not how we act during the good times. The real measure, the real test, comes in how our relationship interacts during the tough time, when we see a friend, a valued neighbour, taking the wrong course of action. The true measure of a friendship is when we have the courage to speak out against the wrong we see.20,21

If the Trump administration’s travel ban marked one of the earliest and most contentious topological features of Canada–US relations during the President’s tenure (Trump had only been in office seven days at the time of its issuance) then the onset and persistence of the COVID-19 pandemic (first declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March of 2020) marked one of the last. Various ridges and wrinkles of the now more than three-year long pandemic constituted a range of points in which Canadian and American governments interacted, often contentiously. The historic closing of the Canada–US border to non-essential travel, competition for PPE (personal protective equipment) and COVID vaccines all occurred alongside the dizzying rise of COVID cases in the United States making the country a global leader in positive cases. This “once-in-a-century” event22 inevitably brought novel challenges for governments and societies to navigate, but when presented with challenges related to the United States, Canadian politicians and society-at-large quickly fell back on familiar neighbourly discourses in making sense of these tensions. While addressing the extent of Canada– US pandemic relations is beyond the scope of this chapter, popular articulations emanating from Canadian society surrounding several key moments of the pandemic are worth highlighting. First, there was Donald Trump’s consideration of deploying troops to the Canadian border. Following agreement from both governments to close the Canada–US border to all but essential travel on March 18, 2020, reports emerged that the Trump administration was actively mulling the idea of sending troops to stymie potential security threats related to illegal border crossing. Militarizing the border was apparently an effort to support American border patrol agents in intercepting “irregular crossers” from Canada who were said to pose a security threat to

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the United States in light of the spread of COVID-19.23 The Canadian government adamantly opposed the move suggesting that militarizing the “world’s longest unmilitarized border” would only hurt Canada–US relations. “We’re neighbours,” said Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland of the reports out of Washington, saying the countries have been “friends for a very, very long time.”24 “[I]s that how you treat long-time friends?” asked a March 26 Toronto Star article on the potential mobilization of US troops.25 The Trump administration ultimately backed off from the plan.26 Then, in April 2020, there was the Trump administration’s attempt to block shipments of American-made N-95 medical respirators to Canada. Trump lambasted 3M, the company manufacturing the masks, for its shipments to Canada and Latin America after the US government invoked the Defense Production Act in an effort to increase America’s production of PPE for its own citizens. 3M had been Canada’s only US supplier of the vital equipment, leaving the government in a precarious position as countries competed with one another to acquire vital equipment.27 Canadian politicians responded with adamant disapproval, but channeled their displeasure with America’s policy through articulating America as failing to uphold its neighbourly obligations. Ontario Premier Doug Ford, frustrated over a shipment of masks from South Dakota that was blocked before crossing the Canadian border, articulated his disapproval of the US government’s stance by re-articulating a familial discourse. “It’s like one of your family members [saying], ‘OK you go starve and we’ll go feast on the rest of the meal,’” stated Ford.28 Alberta’s Premier Jason Kenney expressed his disappointment in similar terms remarking “I would remind our American friends and neighbours that we’ve always been there together in important moments in history.”29 Rather than reading the American government’s actions as simply protectionist policies during a time of crisis, America’s actions were articulated as the behaviour of an ungrateful neighbour, happy to ask for a cup of sugar when it is in need but closing its stocked pantry when others come knocking. Newfoundland Premier Dwight Ball expressed frustration with the Trump administration’s actions by reminding American leaders of the assistance Canadians provided passengers of grounded America flights in Newfoundland on September 11 following the terrorist attacks in New York City. Newfoundlanders provided refuge for thousands of passengers of American flights during a chaotic period, but Ball asserted that the Trump administration’s actions appeared to show the same assistance and

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courtesy would not be offered the other way around. “Newfoundland and Labrador will never give up on humanity. We will not hesitate for one second if we had to repeat what we did on 9–11. We would do it again.”30,31 Ultimately, the US government worked out a deal with 3M to allow for international shipments to continue. Amidst the pandemic, the United States also conducted a presidential election that saw former Democratic Vice President Joseph R. Biden unseat the incumbent Trump in November of 2020. While the Canadian government offered mostly subdued formal responses to the change of administrations in Washington (and prospect of change during the election),32 parts of Canadian society found the neighbour commonplace particularly fitting in articulating what Biden’s victory meant for Canada– US relations. “Biden’s the neighbour who would help you shovel your walk, while Trump was the guy who would dump the snow at the end of your driveway,” wrote Susan Delacourt in a Toronto Star article titled “Canada’s neighbour sees return of decency.”33 “Now that change has come - no doubt reassuring some who felt their southern neighbours had turned into the stranger next door” wrote another commentator.34 “Canadians who have been anxious that the raging flames of their neighbours dumpster fire might cross the property line and burn their own house down may well be ready to relax” reads a third article.35 Some MPs outside of Trudeau’s cabinet offered equally stark assessments in their congratulations of the new president-elect. “This brings an end to the nightmare presidency of Donald Trump…Americans are our closest friends and neighbours. Our undefended border is a symbol of peace and hope worldwide”36 cheered the NDP’s Peter Julian.

Persistence of Canada as Protector? Trudeau’s Feminist Foreign Policy The contemporary landscape of Canadian foreign policy has also been shaped by domestic events. On this front, the end of the nearly ten year run of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government unseated by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party victory in the 2015 federal election has garnered significant scholarly attention. Much has been made of the Harper government’s strategic “re-branding” of Canadian identity during the Conservatives’ years in power from 2006–2015 and Trudeau’s subsequent adjustments years later. Striking a distinctly militaristic tone, Harper’s government sought to recast Canada as a “warrior nation”

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in advertising-style campaigns aimed at linking Canadian identity more with the actions of the country’s troops than its everyday citizens.37 The government relied heavily on simplistic binary readings of world politics (“good guys” vs “bad guys”) in its rhetoric that often sidelined more nuanced perspectives of Canada’s complex relations with allies and adversaries, and muted discussions of Canada’s role in international organizations. This was a stark departure from previous branding more closely associated with Canadian peacekeeping and multilateralism. No longer a mouse beside the giant elephant symbolizing the United States, Harper’s Canada was a fiercely territorial wolverine, small in stature but capable of fighting with great ferocity when called upon.38 Whether the Harper-era branding and the government’s supposed “ideology-driven” vision actually amounted to a consistent and coherent foreign policy, remains debatable, and beyond the scope of this study.39 There is far more agreement among scholars of Canadian foreign policy that Trudeau’s government, at least in its messaging, presented its vision for the country as a stark departure from what was on offer during the Harper years. Following a successful campaign full of promises to restore Canada’s position as a leader of multilateral efforts to combat various global issues,40 Trudeau’s claim that “Canada is back” purported a recapturing of the “essence” of Canadian identity that had been lost under the previous government. Again, the extent to which Trudeau has actually lived up to this proposed departure from Harper-era foreign policies or simply continued along the tracks that the previous government had already laid down remains up for debate.41 But the question here is whether familiar identity discourses were deployed in making certain policies possible? Could these governments govern without the usual narratives? To be sure, one general through line from Stephen Harper’s foreign policy to that of Justin Trudeau’s has been the mobilization of gendered discourses surrounding Canada as a protector of foreign civilians, though each government re-imagined these discourses in different ways. Each governments’ incorporation of global issues related to women’s equality (and gender equality in the case of Trudeau’s government) to their foreign policy agendas offers a case in point. Chapter 4 demonstrated the ways in which historical discourses of Canadian protection of innocent, non-agentic, foreign civilians, often aimed at protecting women and children, were (re)articulated in Canadian foreign policy debates surrounding the “Global War on Terror.” Discourses of Canada as a protector of

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various “vulnerable” groups continued in unique ways under Harper and Trudeau. For the Harper government, the Muskoka Initiative represented the country’s key aims and messaging surrounding Canadian contributions to women’s equality and development assistance abroad. Using its agenda-setting powers as host of the G8 summit in 2010, the Harper government prioritized issues of maternal, newborn, and child health (MNCH) which culminated in G8 members’ commitment to addressing these concerns in developing countries through the Muskoka Initiative.42 Various analyses of Canadian government texts and rhetoric surrounding MNCH have highlighted the gendered discourses that these texts rely on in representing global issues to which Canada is dedicated to addressing.43 Rebecca Tiessen, for example, finds that MNCH texts overwhelmingly focus on “mothers” and “motherhood,” offering essentialising narratives that represent women only in their capacity to give birth, rather than their “rights or options around sexual and reproductive health.” Furthermore, these narratives limit the issues the government aims to address primarily to those related to providing health services rather than addressing many other substantive factors that limit women’s access to such services.44 Canada, on the other hand, as Julia Keast highlights, is represented as a “saviour” to “vulnerable mothers,” an agentic “champion” of women’s health that knows best how to solve the problems of those who cannot help themselves.45 Canadian identity is articulated as one willing to take on this important initiative for the betterment of others because “[t]he Muskoka Initiative will save millions of lives and make a significant, tangible difference to the world’s most vulnerable.”46 The Harper government’s rhetoric surrounding the Initiative coincided with a directive to eliminate references to “gender equality” from official Canadian government documents and statements. Instead, references to “gender equality” were to be replaced by “equality between men and women.”47 These discursive shifts did not appear to stymie government spending on aid allocated to support gender equality internationally, but appear to have coincided with an increase in spending.48 Nevertheless, what is important here is that the Harper government’s development assistance policies relied upon particular readings and re-articulations of Canada as a protector of foreign civilians. So what of the Trudeau government’s development assistance? Trudeau’s successful 2015 campaign was predicated on a dismantling of Harper’s legacy and a re-orientation of Canadian foreign policy,49 so does

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one see an abandonment of the “Canada as protector” commonplace that Trudeau’s predecessor made central to his development assistance? Yes and no. Trudeau’s government certainly recasts the Canadian Self away from the role of “saviour of vulnerable mothers” in the government’s official development assistance documents. A self-declared “proud feminist,”50 Trudeau made several highly publicized remarks that signalled his government was taking gender equality seriously to make up for the previous government’s apparent failure to modernize to the norms of Canadian society.51 The Trudeau government has been synonymous with the increasing movement among states in adopting a feminist foreign policy, following Sweden in 2014.52 At the centre of Canada’s feministoriented foreign policy is the government’s 2017 document Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy #hervoiceherchoice (FIAP). The FIAP lays out the country’s vision for development assistance, including the areas of focus, goals, and approach. A significant departure from the Harper-era “saviour of vulnerable mothers,” the FIAP’s emphasis is on “empowering women and girls” of developing countries as powerful agents of change that, in remedying the economic, social, and cultural barriers that have historically limited women’s “seat at the table,” can produce a more economically prosperous and peaceful world.53 But does the FIAP do away with the commonplace of Canada as a protector of foreign civilians? Scholarly analyses of the FIAP have centred around the version(s) of feminism(s) that the Trudeau government invokes in the document.54 Here, however, I am concerned with how Canadian identity is articulated. Rather than asking what is feminist about Canada’s FIAP,55 I ask what is Canadian about the FIAP? Despite a significant shift in rhetoric from previous articulations of Canadian development assistance,56 the FIAP continues to rely upon a ternary relationship among threatened, threatener, and the Canadian Self who is empowered to protect the threatened, as discussed in Chapter 4. While those represented in the FIAP as most “threatened” (“women and girls,” and those marginalized based on sex, race, ethnicity, etc.) and “threatener” (“exclusionary governments,” “perpetrators of sexual and gender-based violence,” and “social norms”) have expanded from previous government’s foreign policy agendas, the Canadian Self remains positioned to bring about the necessary protection, even in “empowering” others to enact change. The FIAP represents the Canadian Self as motivated to provide a solution to the threats facing primarily women and girls in developing countries in a number of ways. On the one hand,

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Canada is articulated as motivated by its long-standing commitment to values of “international solidarity” and “collective responsibility…to safeguard and promote global health and security, education, environmental protection and growth that works for everyone…”57 On the other hand, Canada is motivated by its own self-interested security goals as “helping to eradicate poverty and vulnerability around the world enhances our own safety and prosperity.” In other words, Canada’s international assistance is necessary because providing support for others both reiterates Canadian values of international responsibility and strengthens Canada’s own security at home—not unlike the identity representations of the early 2000s in Freedom From Fear.58 While the language of the FIAP is focused on Canada “empowering” individuals, it is also ultimately Canada’s “targeted investments, partnerships, innovation and advocacy efforts…” that aid in “eliminating barriers to equality,” “challenging the discrimination faced by women and girls,” and “transforming ” “social norms and power relations” to close “gender gaps and improve everyone’s chances for success.”59

Expect the Expected? Discourses of Canadian Identity and the Withdrawal from Afghanistan The US-led withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan that culminated in the chaotic and deadly evacuations at the Kabul airport in August 2021 stands among the clearest examples of the persistence of the rhetorical commonplaces analysed in this book. The oxymoronic nature of an “end” to America’s “forever war” already draws attention to the unfathomability—the void in understanding—of a withdrawal that would bring a conclusion to a war without end. The frantic and devastating scenes from Kabul only heightened how unthinkable this “end” would be. And yet, in formulating Canada’s response and in seeking to provide an understanding of these unimaginable events to the Canadian populace, the Canadian government did not fill this void with unique or unexpected meaning to seemingly match the moment. On the contrary, Trudeau and his cabinet responded to the clamour of media outlets seeking an interpretation of these events by falling back on the all-too-familiar narratives of Canadian identity this study has explored. In 2020, the Trump administration negotiated the terms of the United States and NATO members’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, reaching an agreement with the Taliban the Biden administration was adamant about

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upholding in the summer of 2021. Despite the United States’ leading role, Canada was nonetheless embroiled in the chaos that unfolded as Canadian officials scrambled to issue paperwork, process applications, and coordinate evacuation flights for those fleeing the Taliban takeover. The Canadian government had announced an end to its evacuation operations on August 26, a day before Australia, France, and New Zealand, two days before the UK, and five days before the August 31 negotiated deadline for NATO’s withdrawal. The government acknowledged that some Canadian citizens, permanent residents and their families, and those seeking refuge in Canada remained in Afghanistan—this included Afghan interpreters, support staff, and their families who worked with the Canadian military throughout the protracted war and faced potential reprisals from Taliban forces. Canadian officials reportedly received roughly 8,000 applications requesting evacuation to Canada, with about two-thirds actually processed.60 The bungled evacuation efforts, a deadly bombing outside the airport, the crumbling of Afghan military forces, the fleeing of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, and the Taliban’s return to power61 —how would the Canadian government make sense of Canada’s role and response to these events? Throughout August, Trudeau’s cabinet faced pointed questioning from the media and significant public criticism regarding Canada and its allies’ actions. The Canadian government made its rhetorical response an issue of identity. In public statements on the withdrawal as it unfolded, Trudeau’s cabinet habitually relied on two discourses of Canadian identity in offering a representation of the ensuing chaos. The first discourse articulated Canadian partnership with NATO allies and the United States in particular, as the primary means of ameliorating the current and future challenges related to the withdrawal and future life in Afghanistan. Only through Canada’s role as a close ally to the United States and others could the threats be confronted and dealt with. The second and related discourse articulated Canada as a leading defender of women and women’s rights in Afghanistan and that the country would continue to serve as a case where Canada’s efforts to combat the challenges facing women and girls would be on display, regardless of the country’s withdrawal from the region. On August 15, as the Taliban descended upon the streets of Kabul and the President of Afghanistan fled the country, Justin Trudeau commented on the increasingly dire situation during his remarks meant to announce the launch of his campaign in a justtriggered federal election. Addressing the reports of escalating violence

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in Kabul, Trudeau condemned such behaviour and stated that Canada was “heartbroken at the situation the Afghan people find themselves in today.” “This is especially so,” remarked the Prime Minister, “given the sacrifices of Canadians who believed - and continue to believe - in the future of Afghanistan.” Nevertheless, Trudeau offered a familiar remedy stating that “[w]e will continue to work with allies and the international community to ensure those efforts were not in vain.”62 “Our commitment to the people of Afghanistan, including women and girls, and the LGBTQ2 communities, remains unwavering”63 he added. Two days later, alarming reports and footage had circulated showing thousands of people waiting on the tarmac for evacuation, several clinging to the outside of an aircraft that took off, and thousands more waiting in massive lines outside the airport desperate to enter. Trudeau’s rhetoric remained steadfast. “[W]e’re working with our allies on what Canada, as part of the international community, can do to stabilize the situation, protect civilians, and put an end to the violence” he reiterated in a phrasing that would be mirrored nearly identically in his public comments throughout the rest of the month.64 On reports of the Taliban committing to uphold women’s rights in an attempt to quell the exodus of citizens out of Afghanistan, Trudeau reiterated that “one of our priorities in Afghanistan has always been the safety of women and girls…governments, international organizations, and civil society must continue to work together to support woman and girls in Afghanistan. The Afghan people need the world to stand with them. And that is what Canada will continue to do.”65 In fact, Trudeau continued to reiterate Canada’s commitment to the women and girls of Afghanistan as events of the withdrawal unfolded, frequently articulating Canada’s multilateral efforts with the international community as capable of pressuring the Taliban to respect women’s rights.66 Neither discourse appeared to be particularly fitting to the circumstances or the images that news outlets had been sharing from the ground, as reporters would routinely point out to the government. For one, the withdrawal efforts seemed to represent a total failure of Canadian partnership and planning with the United States and other NATO allies. Mixed intelligence reporting from US and Canadian officials about the Afghan military forces’ ability to repel Taliban forces appeared to leave both countries flatfooted as the Taliban easily swept into the capital city and descended on the Kabul streets.67 Furthermore, the evacuations themselves were so mismanaged that Trudeau (and other NATO leaders) lobbied Biden at the virtual G7 summit to extend the withdrawal

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deadline past August 31. The American President refused.68 Throughout August, Trudeau would avoid casting any blame on the US or other allies for all that took place, often sidestepping questions on the Biden administration’s decision-making, and instead doubling down that the events of the withdrawal reinforced Canada’s role as a leading member of a galvanized international community. The discourse of Canada as a defender of women’s rights in Afghanistan seemed an even poorer fit. The Canadian government had withdrawn from a country now run by Taliban forces, notorious for their brutality towards women and disregard for human rights. Yet, continuous with historical Canadian protector discourses, Trudeau steadfastly articulated Canada’s continued dedication towards supporting the rights of Afghan women and girls—despite no longer having any significant presence in the country and acknowledging the limits of providing humanitarian aid under a Taliban government.69 Few would expect the government to wander from several basic talking points as such a devastating series of events unfolded. Perhaps even fewer would have expected the government to admit its shortcomings and miscalculations regarding an ongoing crisis. How exactly the government articulated its avoidance of blame and represented the actions it did take is what is of concern here. In short, the Canadian government articulated these unfathomable events through familiar narratives of Canadian identity. Regardless of their suitability to meet the moment, the Canadian government repeatedly fell back on enduring commonplaces to fill a void of understanding with a familiar meaning.

Russia’s War in Ukraine: Canadian Multilateralism and “The Return of the West?” Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 marked the latest episode of Vladimir Putin’s military incursions into Ukrainian territory since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. As Russian troops amassed around Ukraine’s border in early 2022, President Joe Biden warned on February 17 that Putin’s invasion was likely imminent.70 On February 24, that prediction would prove correct, with the invasion bringing fullscale war between two states back to the European continent for the first time in decades. The brutality of the Russian military’s indiscriminate bombing campaigns, largely of Ukrainian civilian areas, the rampant reports of war crimes committed by Russian forces, and Vladimir Putin’s blatant disregard for international norms have triggered a wide-scale

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international reckoning over the sustainability of the so-called ‘liberal international order’ and the position of actors within it, Canada included. For some, the invasion simply spotlighted an already ageing international order in decline with increasing challengers to its principles and norms and few willing to sacrifice to salvage it.71 “The Return of History” headline sprawled across Time Magazine’s March 2022 issue presaged a “West” less capable and with less appetite to stymie the efforts by authoritarian regimes to ignore or co-opt post-WWII era international institutions the United States and its allies had once championed.72 For others, Russia’s invasion has been read quite differently, spawning renewed desires to maintain a rules-based order and having galvanized America and its historic allies around a new sense of purpose.73 During a speech outside Warsaw’s Royal Castle in March 2022, Biden himself declared that Russia’s actions had “revitalized” democracies around the world before calling Putin’s provocation of war “nothing less than direct challenge to the rule-based international order…it threatens to return to decades of war that ravaged Europe before the international-rule based order was put in place.”74 With a new lease on life, “the West” is supposedly “back.”75,76 States have sought to locate their own position between those (supposedly) defending the international order versus those hastening its decline. Calls to strengthen the unity of democracies in light of Russia’s aggressions, for example, have been received favourably in Eastern Europe. Calls to defend the order have elicited tepid responses, however, from some developing countries in Africa and South America—willing to condemn the invasion but stop short of endorsing revival of a system whose power is often used against the so-called “Global South.”77 Where is Canada in all this? What is the state of Canada’s self-reflection in this (prolonged) moment of reckoning? The Canadian government, with significant and sustained public backing,78 has expressed “unwavering support” for Ukraine in repelling Russia’s invasion. Official government channels file Canada’s foreign policy responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into four categories: development and humanitarian assistance, sanctions, military support, and political support for Ukrainian sovereignty through condemning Russia’s actions as illegal and dangerous.79 While the Canadian government, like those in the United States and Europe, has not contributed military troops to Ukraine at the time of writing, Volodymyr Zelenskyy applauded Canadian contributions during Trudeau’s surprise visit to Kyiv in May

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2022. The Ukrainian President seconded Canadian support only to the United States (having committed tens of billions as opposed to Canada’s roughly $3.4 billion at the time of writing)80 and grouped the country with the Baltic states from which Zelenskyy remarked “we also cannot ask more from.”81 Russia’s latest aggressions have proved to be a “moment” for Canada on the international stage, a chance to discourse a Canadian identity relevant to a changing world at a dire inflection point. Canadian officials have responded boldly. The government has been outspoken in its pointed criticism and condemnation of the Putin regime and the Russian military’s actions, especially relative to some (particularly Western) European counterparts, who face the added challenge of navigating precarious levels of dependence on Russian energy exports Canada mostly avoids. Embracing the general “West is back” narrative prominently articulated by American and European leaders—stressing the “renewed” unity among “democracies” and resolve of NATO members against Russian threats to norms of sovereignty and democracy—the Canadian government has imbued their own discursive features unique to the Canadian context. Central to these representations have been the mobilization and modernization of all three rhetorical commonplaces. Global turmoil surrounding Russia’s invasion has been articulated as Canada’s chance to show its unique power. “I think for a lot of citizens, they said, well, Russia just invaded militarily Ukraine, surely if you want to stand for Ukrainians, the response has to be military,” remarked Trudeau at the Munich Security Conference just two weeks after the February invasion. “Well, actually, we have more and better tools than that now. The power we have that we have built up over the past 75 years of unprecedented peace and stability around the world means that we have the tools to damage the Putin regime far more effectively than we ever could with tanks and missiles”82 he concluded. Canada’s unique power supposedly allows the country to play an important role in limiting Russia’s access to the “growth and prosperity” of the post-WWII system. In addition to economic sanctions, the Canadian government has considered itself a champion of multilateral efforts responding to the invasion, including supporting a resolution to condemn Russia’s invasion at the UN83 and participating in a walkout of the G20 meeting in Washington, D.C. as Russian officials began to speak.84 “For Canada, the choice is clear,” stated Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly from the United

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Nations dais in September. “[W]e’re convinced that we need more multilateralism, not less.”85 Previewing his talks with G7 nations in February, Trudeau emphasized the need for Canada’s allies to “collectively respond to these reckless and dangerous acts…,”86 while Joly called “Russia’s egregious and unprovoked attack on Ukraine… a challenge to democracy, the likes of which reached new heights today.”87 In terms of humanitarian assistance, while Canada has committed approximately $320 million at the time of writing,88 Canadian officials have taken a particular lead globally in condemning the Russian military’s violence committed against civilians in Ukraine. Principles of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy have been extended to Ukraine as well in addressing the violence against civilians. Canadian officials formally requested an International Criminal Court (ICC) probe into Russia’s alleged war crimes back in March,89 with Foreign Affairs Minister Joly calling the Russian military’s actions “clearly war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” citing the importance for “Canada to play its role in making sure there is accountability for these acts…”90 In December 2022, Joly announced a $1 million contribution to the ICC to support investigations into sexual and gender-based violence, specifically in response to extensive reports of such violence committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.91 Importantly, Russian aggression in Europe has also spurred increased continental defence discussions among Canadian and American officials, reigniting neighbourly discourses of “close friends” that had faded during the Trump presidency. An April 28 bilateral meeting in Washington, D.C. saw US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and Canadian Defence Minister Anita Anand discuss the need for increased “joint efforts to strengthen North American defence ties, including the need to ensure a stable Arctic region…” Casting a familiar familial discourse over the meeting, Austin remarked “[w]e know that we can count of the enduring partnership between the United States and Canada. Canada isn’t just a great neighbour, it’s also a true friend and a steadfast ally.”92 Several months later back in Washington, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken welcomed Joly for further bilateral talks including continued joint condemnation of Russia’s invasion and increased partnership in defence of the Arctic. “The United States and Canada are also standing together in responding to virtually every major global challenge that is having an effect on our people, just as we have for 150 years,” remarked Blinken, as Joly called Canada and the United States a “special, unique relationship.

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Of course, our two countries are bound by geography and history. We are friends, allies, and trading partners because we know we are stronger together…”93 Unlike prominent debates and disagreements among Canadian politicians over the “Global War on Terror,” the Trudeau government’s foreign policies in support of Ukraine, and the Canadian Self they articulate, have met relatively little pushback in the House of Commons. The Parliament remains mostly united in its overwhelming appall at Russia’s brutal and blatant violation of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty. One key policy area has, however, proved contentious since even before Putin’s February 24 full-scale invasion: Canada’s supply of lethal weaponry to the Ukrainian military. Despite Trudeau’s claim that Canada possessed more effective power to wield against the Putin regime than simply sending “tanks,” Canada has nevertheless contributed significant military resources to Ukraine. According to official channels, the country has committed over $1 billion in military assistance to the Ukrainian military including sending armoured vehicles, heavy artillery weapons like howitzer guns, tens of thousands of artillery rounds, anti-armour equipment, and more.94 Furthermore, the country has extended and expanded the Canadian Armed Forces’ training of Ukrainian military and security personnel established in 2015 under Operation UNIFIER.95 The sending of lethal weaponry has formed a critical fissure in Parliament around which competing representations of Canada’s role as a multilateralist and protector of foreign civilians have congregated. Back in January, roughly a month before the invasion, leading Conservative Party members criticized the Trudeau government for not sending heavy artillery that Ukrainian officials had requested. According to the Conservatives, failure to do so constituted Canada as not only a laggard among its allies in supporting Ukraine, but an abandoner of innocent Ukrainian civilians who required weapons to defend themselves. Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole stated in a January 31 parliamentary debate on Canada’s response to Russia’s buildup of troops around the Ukrainian border that withholding arms was squarely an issue of Canada’s identity in the world, stating: [T]his is a debate about who Canadians are as a friend on the world stage. This is a debate about our values as a nation and the dependability of Canada as an ally…is Canada that friend and ally that the world knows? Is Canada living up to its reputation as a founding member of NATO?…

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The Ukrainian government…has been asking for lethal defensive weapons…They are asking for our help in their hour of need, and other allies have responded: the U.S., the U.K., Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic. Where is Canada?96

In early 2022, The NDP and Green Party, however, adamantly opposed Canadian shipments of lethal weaponry to Ukraine (a position the NDP has since recanted). NDP concerns surrounded the misuse and potential escalation of tensions in the region that would only make the situation worse for those on the ground.97 Green Party MPs have continued to express adamant opposition to the sending of arms to Ukraine, an extension of their party’s commitment to non-violence. Interim Green Party leader Amita Kuttner stated in March that the party’s opposition to the sending of arms centred on its potential for increasing suffering for those involved, reminiscent of Condemner discourses from “Global War on Terror” debates decades earlier. “We are going to be contributing to violence in one way or another if it is sending weapons,”98 said Kuttner. This, of course, was not the first time the sending of weaponry to a foreign government produced tensions over Canadian identity. Canada’s sale of light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia in 2017, a country widely known for its poor record on women’s rights, garnered criticism as it appeared at odds with the country’s feminist principles and supportive stance on human rights around the world.99 Some have wondered if shipping arms to Ukraine presents a similar rupture in Canadian identity, forcing Canada to “shed its self-image as a peacekeeper,” as the headline of a March CBC article read.100 In the light of the argument of this study, however, discourses surrounding Canada’s foreign policies toward Ukraine present more of a chameleon-like colour change rather than a shedding of skin. As this section has discussed, Canadian politicians have not dropped the habitual reliance on familiar commonplaces to make sense of the world and Canada’s place within it. Instead, they have reimagined them in a new light. For their part, Liberal Party members have frequently discussed the sending of lethal weapons as reinforcing Canada’s role as a key multilateral player in NATO efforts to bolster Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, even at times downplaying Canada’s military assistance relative to its other contributions. Echoing the Prime Minister’s “not sending tanks” remark, Foreign Affairs Minister Joly openly claimed Canada is “not a military power” but instead that the country “is good at convening and making sure that diplomacy is happening.”101

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Conclusion In recent years, Canada has faced a series of unexpected challenges in the international arena that have necessitated foreign policy responses to meet the moment. On first look, the country’s response has not, however, been particularly novel. Instead, Canadian foreign policies in response to these events have primarily been articulated through familiar narratives of Canadian identity that situate these policies as necessary to uphold an enduring sense of the Canadian Self. But something else is occurring as well. As was the case during the early days of the “Global War on Terror,” the basic elements of these narratives are habitually repeated by Canadian politicians, yet the specific meanings of these narratives are continually adapted to fit the contemporary moment. This analysis gives reason to be skeptical of certain interpretations of current Canadian foreign policy discourses. Contemporary Canadian foreign policy discourses related to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may strike some as convenient or perhaps necessary. Canada’s military and economic power is minor in comparison to the United States and the EU bloc, so doubling down on discourses of unity among the world’s democracies and collective resistance against Russian aggression reinforces the need for smaller powers, like Canada, to have a seat at the table. Furthermore, stressing the importance of diplomacy, sanctions, holding leaders accountable at the ICC and aiding vulnerable individuals through expanding refugee assistance programmes deftly allows Canada to participate in resistance efforts without having to commit troops or further squeeze a defence budget. Since Canada relies heavily on the United States for continental security, perhaps discourses of Canada remaining in “lockstep” with the United States against Russia is a convenient strategy to stay in America’s good graces. But if political rhetoric surrounding Canada as a neighbour to the United States, protector of the innocent, or champion of multilateralism is merely strategic framing or skillful branding on the part of the government to achieve material ends, how does one explain the endurance of basic narratives of Canadian identity, over decades and with different governments, and the variance in their meaning? To suggest that any of these narratives constitute a Canadian myth that any government can fall back on over the years to frame a policy issue in a positive light, assumes that the myth endures, even if events change. This, however, is contrary to the analysis provided above. The meanings of these narratives are not, in fact, stable across years and foreign policy episodes, even if their basic discursive shell continues to live on. Instead, what persists is the centrality

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of these commonplaces to the political visions of Canada’s place in the world and debate over what they mean and how best they can be realized. What does this mean for the future of Canadian foreign policy as the country lurches through one set of global crises, with more appearing on the horizon? Consideration of this question is taken up in the final chapter to which we now turn.

Notes 1. Stokes, D. (2018). Trump, American Hegemony and the Future of the Liberal International Order. International Affairs 94(1), 137–138. 2. Roland Paris considers Trump’s surprising 2016 election to have been “the first real foreign-policy crisis to hit the Trudeau government.” See Paris, R. (2018). The Promise and Perils of Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy. In Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P. (Eds). Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan; Meredith B. Lilly considers Trump’s surprising election to have “posed the largest challenge to Canada-US trade relations in more than two decades”. See Lilly, M.B. (2018). International Trade: The Rhetoric and Reality of the Trudeau Government’s Progressive Trade Agenda. In Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P. (Eds). Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, 131. 3. Hall, C. (2016, March 11). Trudeau-Obama Bromance’s Real Prize Comes with the World Watching. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/ news/politics/hall-trudeau-obama-bromance-1.3486409; Kohut, T. (2016, June 29). Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau’s ‘Bromance’ Meets Policy in Canada. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/2795403/ barack-obama-justin-trudeaus-bromance-meets-policy-in-canada/; Blake, A., Epstein, K. & Carey-Mahoney, R. (2016, March 10). The Budding Bromance between President Obama and Canada’s Justin Trudeau in 11 Great Pictures. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/10/the-budding-bromance-between-presid ent-obama-and-canadas-justin-trudeau-in-11-great-pictures/ 4. Trudeau said he wanted to give everyone a view of the “bromance in person” while also expressing his preference for their close connection to be called “dudeplomacy”. See Kohut, T. (2016, June 29). 5. Paris, R. (2018), 23 (emphasis added); Dafoe, J.W. (1935). Canada, An American Nation. Columbia University Press, 35. 6. Obama, B. (2016, June 29). Remarks by President Obama in Address to the Parliament of Canada. House of Commons Chamber. 7. Trudeau, J. (2017, February 13). Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau in Joint Press Conference.

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8. Barton, R. (2017, November 8). It’s No Bromance, but Trudeau Has Found a Way to Charm Trump. CBC News. https://www.cbc. ca/news/politics/it-s-no-bromance-but-trudeau-has-found-a-way-tocharm-trump-rosemary-barton-1.4392979; Wingrove, J. & Weinstein, A. (2017, February 9). Trudeau Heads to Visit Trump, Leaving ‘Dudeplomacy’ Behind. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/art icles/2017-02-09/-dudeplomacy-era-long-gone-as-trudeau-heads-tovisit-trump?leadSource=uverify%20wall; Ottawa Citizen editorial board. (2017, February 15). Trudeau and Trump - Not a bromance, but not bad. Regina Leader-Post. https://leaderpost.com/opinion/editorials/ trudeau-and-trump-not-a-bromance-but-not-bad 9. Nimijean, D. (2019). Where is the Relationship Going? The View from Canada. In Carment, D. & Sands, C. (Eds). Canada-US Relations: Sovereignty or Shared Institutions? Palgrave Macmillan, 44. 10. Blanchfield, M. (2017, January 22). So Much for the Bilateral Bromance? Maclean’s. https://www.macleans.ca/politics/so-much-for-the-bilateralbromance/. 11. Carvin, S. (2018, July 1). The U.S. Isn’t Being Very Neighbourly. Here’s What It Means for Canada’s Foreign Policy. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/07/ 01/the-u-s-isnt-being-very-neighborly-heres-what-it-means-for-canadasforeign-policy. 12. McKenna, B. (2018, June 29). Canada’s Efforts to Appease Our Grumpy Neighbour Were Always Doomed. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-can adas-efforts-to-appease-our-grumpy-neighbour-were-always-doomed/. 13. Hamedy, S. (2018, June 26). Everything You Need to Know About the Travel Ban: A Timeline. CNN . https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/ 26/politics/timeline-travel-ban/index.html; Liptak, A. (2017, January 28). President Trump’s Immigration Order, Annotated. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/ann otating-trump-immigration-refugee-order.html. 14. Saroyan, B. (Markham-Unionville, CPC). (2017, January 30). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 1450 h. 15. Mulcair, T. (Outremont, NDP). (2017, January 30). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 1425 h. 16. Trudeau, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 1420 h. 17. Kwan, J. (Vancouver East, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 1435 h. 18. Stetski, W. (Kootenay-Columbia, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 2335 h.

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19. Another example is expressed by Pierre-Luc Dusseault (Sherbrooke, NDP): “[I]f our neighbour and ally does not want to take in any more refugees, we will compensate for that and meet our international obligations. We are going to ensure that our country takes a more active role in protecting refugees if our neighbour does not want to do so” (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 2125 h. 20. MacGregor, A. (Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 2355 h. 21. Thomas Mulcair used somewhat different language: “We are not afraid to call a spade a spade.” See Mulcair, T. (Outremont, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session, 1425 h. 22. Gates, B. (2020, April 30). Responding to COVID-19—A Once-in-aCentury Pandemic? The New England Journal of Medicine 382, 1677– 1679. 23. Stephenson, M., Armstrong, J. & Connolly, A. (2020, March 26). Trump Looking to Put Troops Near Canadian Border Amid Coronavirus Fears. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/6735064/cor onavirus-militarizing-canada-us-border/. 24. Keenan, E. (2020, March 26). Donald Trump May Not Have Understood Why the U.S. Considered Sending Troops to the Canadian Border. But It Was an Insult Anyway. Toronto Star. https://www. thestar.com/news/world/2020/03/26/donald-trump-may-not-unders tand-why-the-us-is-sending-troops-to-the-canadian-border-but-its-an-ins ult-anyway.html. 25. Ibid. 26. Lubold, G. & Vieira, P. (2020, March 26). U.S. Drops Proposal to Put Troops at Canadian Border. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj. com/articles/canada-objects-to-u-s-plan-to-put-troops-at-border-115 85247654. 27. Forrest, M. (2020, April 8). Trump Order Would Have Cut Off Canadian Government’s Sole U.S. Supplier of N95s. Politico. https://www. politico.com/news/2020/04/08/trump-order-would-have-cut-off-can adian-governments-sole-us-supplier-of-n95s-175294. 28. Gillies, R. (2020, April 5). Premier Infuriated by Trump, Says Canada Helped US Amid 9/11. Associated Press News. https://apnews.com/art icle/virus-outbreak-donald-trump-united-states-canada-us-news-937942 e71228f88efedec1689def3829. 29. Dryden, J. (2020, April 3). Kenney Says He’s ‘Insulted’ by Trump Order to Stop Exporting N95 Masks to Canada. CBC

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30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39.

40.

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News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/jason-kenney-donaldtrump-n95-3m-coronavirus-covid-19-1.5521778. O’Kane, C. (2020, April, 6). After Trump Bans Mask Exports, “Infuriated” Canadians Remind U.S. They Helped During 9/11. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-3m-masks-coronavirus-def ense-production-act-export-canada-helped-united-states-9-11-trudeau/. Alberta Premier Jason Kenney similarly invoked a reading of history in his articulation as he likened the US government’s current self-interested actions to American’s (supposedly) late entrance into World War II. “The United States sat out the first two or three years and actually initially refused to even provide supplies to Canada and the United Kingdom that was leading the fight at the time”. See Gillies, R. (2020, April 5). An example of the Prime Minister’s ‘diplomatic’ phrasing around the US election: “Mr. Speaker, first of all, I want to reassure everyone in the house and all Canadians that we are closely watching the process unfolding in the United States. As has been the case for many years, we will be there to defend Canadians, our interests, our business people and our workers such as aluminum or steel workers. We will be there to defend Canadians no matter the result of the U.S. election. We will continue to work with our allies, including France, on major issues around the world. See Trudeau, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2020, November 4). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 43rd Parliament, 2nd session, 1430 h. Delacourt, S. (2021, January 21). Canada’s Neighbour Sees Return of Decency. Toronto Star A.1. Keenan, E. (2020, December 5). Light at the Tunnel’s End, but It Might Be Fire Trump Lit. Toronto Star A.19. Ibid. Julian, P. (New Westminster-Burnaby, NDP). (2020, November 6). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 43rd Parliament, 2nd session, 1115 h. McKay, I. & Swift, J. (2012). Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety. Between the Lines. The Economist. (2007, February 17). Rebranding Canada: Tenacious, Smelly—and Uncool. 382(8516), 54; see also Martin, L. (2010). Harperland: The Politics of Control. Viking. For a succinct summary of competing perspectives surrounding the ‘ideological drive’ of Harper’s foreign policy, see Nossal, K.R. (2022). Primat Der Wahlurne: Ideology and Politicization in Harper’s Foreign Policy. In McKenna, P. (Ed). Harper’s World: The Politicization of Canadian Foreign Policy, 2006–2015. University of Toronto Press, 33–34. Nossal, K.R. (2018). Promises Made, Promises Kept? A Mid-term Trudeau Foreign Policy Report Card. In Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P.

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41.

42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

52.

53.

(Eds) Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, 34–36. Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P. (2018). The Age of Trudeau and Trump. In Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P. (Eds) Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, 3–4. Keast, J. (2017). Missed Opportunity: A Discursive Analysis of Canada’s Commitments to Maternal Health under the Muskoka Initiative. In Tiessen, R. & Baranyi, S. (Eds). Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 49–67. See Swiss, L. & Barry, J. (2017). Did Changes in Official Language Lead to Spending Shifts? In Tiessen, R. & Baranyi, S. (Eds). Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 23–47; Tiessen, R. (2015). Walking Wombs’: Making Sense of the Muskoka Initiative and the Emphasis on Motherhood in Canadian Foreign Policy. Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric 8(1), 74–93; Tiessen, R. & Carrier, K. (2015). The Erasure of “Gender” in Canadian Foreign Policy under the Harper Conservatives: The Significance of the Discursive Shift from “Gender Equality” to “Equality between Women and Men”. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal 21(2), 95–111. Tiessen, R. (2015), 75. Keast, J. (2017), 55. Tiessen, R. (2015), 86. Tiessen, R. & Carrier, K. (2015), 99–100; Swiss, L. & Barry, J. (2017), 23. Swiss, L. & Barry, J. (2017), 42–43. Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P. (2018), 2. Tiessen, R. & Swan, E. (2018) Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy Promises: An Ambitious Agenda for Gender Equality, Human Rights, Peace, and Security. In Hillmer, N. & Lagasse, P. (Eds) Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, 189. Ibid., 188–189; Ditchburn, J. (2015, November 4). ‘Because It’s 2015’: Trudeau forms Canada’s 1st Gender-Balanced Cabinet. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-trudeau-liberalgovernment-cabinet-1.3304590. For a resource on tracking the growth of feminist foreign policies globally, see The Center for Feminist Foreign Policy. https://centreforfemini stforeignpolicy.org/. Government of Canada. (2017). Feminist International Assistance Policy, vi-1. https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_dev elopment-enjeux_developpement/priorities-priorites/policy-politique. aspx?lang=eng.

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54. Thomson, J. (2020). What’s Feminist about Feminist Foreign Policy? Sweden’s and Canada’s Foreign Policy Agendas. International Studies Perspectives 21(4), 424–437. https://doi.org/10.1093/isp/ekz032; Morton, S.E., Muchiri, J. & Swiss, L. (2020) Which Feminism(s)? For Whom? Intersectionality in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal 75(3), 329–348; Rao, S. & Tiessen, R. (2020). Whose Feminism(s)? Overseas Partner Organizations’ Perceptions of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal 75(3), 349–366; Cadesky, J. (2020) Built on Shaky Ground: Reflections on Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal 75(3), 298–312. 55. Thomson, J. (2020). 56. Though Canada’s feminist foreign policy is in many ways continuous with the rhetoric of Canada’s human security agenda of the 1990s. See Smith, H. & Ajadi, T. (2020). Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy and Human Security Compared. International Journal 75(3), 367–382. 57. Government of Canada. (2017). Feminist International Assistance Policy, iii. 58. Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. (2002). Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign Policy for Human Security. Ottawa: Government of Canada. 59. Ibid., vi, 8, 9, (emphasis added). 60. Gollom, M. (2021, August 28). Why Canada Failed to Rescue ‘A Hell of a Lot More’ Afghans, According to Former Generals. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/afghanistan-canada-tal iban-evacuation-1.6155596. 61. Ruby, M. (2022, August 10). Two Weeks of Chaos: A Timeline of the U.S. Pullout of Afghanistan. The Washington Post (Online). https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/afg hanistan-withdrawal-timeline/. 62. Trudeau, J. (2021, August 15). ‘Forward. For Everyone.’ Statement. https://liberal.ca/forward-for-everyone/. 63. Ibid. 64. CPAC (Cable Public Affairs Channel). (2021, August 17). Justin Trudeau Discusses National Child-Care Plan, Situation in Afghanistan (video), 10:17–10:50. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmtbGgUSdc. For similar statements, see Trudeau, J. (2021, August 15); Government of Canada. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin Discuss Situation in Afghanistan and

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65.

66.

67.

68.

Reinforce Defence Ties (Online). https://www.canada.ca/en/depart ment-national-defence/news/2021/08/defence-minister-harjit-sajjanand-us-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-austin-discuss-situation-in-afghanistanand-reinforce-defence-ties.html; following the bombing outside Kabul airport on August 26, 2001: Tunney, C. (2021, August 26). Canada’s Airlift Mission from Kabul Ends, Leaving Many Behind. CBC News (Online). https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-afghanistan-last-fli ght-1.6153899. Trudeau continued to discuss Canada’s multilateral efforts on this front, including citing discussions with former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. See CPAC (Cable Public Affairs Channel). (2021, August 17). Justin Trudeau Discusses National Child-Care Plan, Situation in Afghanistan (video), 10:40–11:38. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= CmtbGg-USdc. Trudeau frequently stated that Canada would be working with its international partners “to pressure the Taliban to not reverse the tremendous progress specifically made for women and girls in Afghanistan because of Canadians and other allies’ efforts over the past two decades” See Blanchfield, M. (2021, August 27). ‘We Need Your Support,’ Pleads Female Afghan Activist Once Helped by Canada. National Post https://nationalpost.com/pmn/news-pmn/canada-news(Online). pmn/trudeau-says-speed-of-taliban-taking-afghanistan-surprised-peopleall-over-the-world; also Canada’s joint statement with G7: Diplomatic Service of the European Union. (2021, August 24). G7 Leaders Statement on Afghanistan (Online). https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/g7leaders-statement-afghanistan_en. Ruby, M. (2022, August 10); Mazzetti, M., Barnes, J.E. & Goldman, A. (2021, September 8). Intelligence Warned of Afghan Military Collapse, Despite Biden’s Assurances. The New York Times (Online). https:// www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/afghanistan-biden-admini stration.html; Salama, V. & Strobel, W.P. (2021, August 15). Intelligence Reports from Afghanistan Missed One Key Element: Speed. The Wall Street Journal (Online). https://www.wsj.com/articles/int elligence-reports-from-afghanistan-missed-one-key-element-speed-116 29056759; Tumilty, R. (2022, August 24). Intelligence Presented to Trudeau Said Afghanistan Would Not Fall for Months. National Post (Online). https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/intelligence-presen ted-to-trudeau-said-afghanistan-would-not-fall-for-months. Blanchfield, M. (2021, August 24). Biden Rejects U.S. Extension in Kabul, as Trudeau, G7 Leaders Extend Offers to Stay. Toronto Star https://www.thestar.com/politics/2021/08/24/trudeau(Online). mum-on-us-deadline-to-leave-kabul-by-aug-31-as-he-meets-with-g7-lea ders.html.

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69. See Blanchfield, M. (2021, August 24). Biden Won’t Commit U.S. Extension in Afghanistan, as Trudeau, G7 Leaders Offer to Stay. Canada’s National Observer (Online). https://www.nationalobserver. com/2021/08/24/news/trudeau-says-canada-prepared-stay-kabulafter-aug-31. 70. Macias, A.M. (2022, February 18). Biden Believes Putin Has Decided to Attack Ukraine in Coming Days. CNBC (Online). https://www. cnbc.com/2022/02/18/biden-believes-putin-has-decided-to-attack-ukr aine-in-coming-days.html. 71. Leonard, M. (2022, June 13). The Real End of Pax Americana. Foreign Affairs (Online). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/202206-13/real-end-pax-americana. 72. Campbell, C. (2022, February, 24). How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Change the Global Order Forever. Time Magazine (Online). https://time.com/6150874/world-order-russia-ukraine/. 73. Beckley, M. & Brands, H. (2022, March 14). The Return of Pax Americana? Foreign Affairs (Online). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/russia-fsu/2022-03-14/return-pax-americana. 74. Biden, J. (2022, March 26). Remarks by President Biden on the United Efforts of the Free World to Support the People of Ukraine. The White House, Speech and Remarks. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefingroom/speeches-remarks/2022/03/26/remarks-by-president-biden-onthe-united-efforts-of-the-free-world-to-support-the-people-of-ukraine/. 75. For an example, see Patrick, S.M. (2022, March 2). Putin’s Catastrophic War of Choice: Lessons Learned (So Far). Council on Foreign Relations (Online). https://www.cfr.org/blog/putins-catastrophic-warchoice-lessons-learned-so-far. 76. There may be a third perspective as well: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine presents democracies an opportunity to strengthen the world order. Whether or not democracies are successfully taking up the challenge, remains to be seen. See Applebaum, A. (2022). There is No Liberal World Order. The Atlantic (Online). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/ autocracy-could-destroy-democracy-russia-ukraine/629363/. 77. Acharya, A. (2022, March 29). Global South Reacts to Western Call for Unity against Russia. Responsible Statecraft (Online). https://respon siblestatecraft.org/2022/03/29/global-south-reacts-to-western-callfor-unity-against-russia/; Murphy, T. (2022, November 9). Principles for Global Order: How Europe and the Global South Can Shape the International Order Together. European Council on Foreign Relations (Online). https://ecfr.eu/article/principles-for-global-order-howeuropeans-and-the-global-south-can-shape-the-international-order-tog ether/.

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78. Boynton, S. (2022, March 11). Canadians Support Actions against Russia over Ukraine, but Have Economic Concerns: Poll. Global News (Online). https://globalnews.ca/news/8674701/ukraine-russiacanada-ipsos-poll/; Van Dyk, S. (2022, November 11). Majority of Canadians Support Increasing Aid to Ukraine Despite Chance of Larger Deficit: Nanos Poll. CTV News (Online). https://www.ctvnews.ca/pol itics/majority-of-canadians-support-increasing-aid-to-ukraine-despite-cha nce-of-larger-deficit-nanos-poll-1.6144360. 79. Government of Canada. Canada’s Response to the Russian Invasion of Ukraine (Online). https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/ issues_development-enjeux_developpement/response_conflict-reponse_c onflits/crisis-crises/ukraine.aspx?lang=eng. 80. Zimonjic, P. (2022, November 14). Canada Announces Additional $500 m in Military Aid to Ukraine, Adds 23 Names to Sanctions List. CBC News (Online). https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadaannounces-military-aid-ukraine-1.6650616. 81. Stewart, A. (2022, May 9). Trudeau says Putin Responsible for ‘Heinous War Crimes’ during Surprise Visit to Ukraine. Global News (Online). https://globalnews.ca/news/8817866/justin-trudeauukraine-surprise-trip/. 82. Trudeau, J. (2022, March 9). Question and Answer Session on the Situation in Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference. Government of Canada, Office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Online). https://pm.gc.ca/en/videos/2022/03/09/question-and-ans wer-session-situation-ukraine-munich-security-conference. 83. UN General Assembly. (2022, March 2). General Assembly Resolution Demands End to Russian Offensive in Ukraine (Online). https://news. un.org/en/story/2022/03/1113152. 84. Aiello, R. (2022, April 20). Freeland, Allies Walk Out of G20 Meeting over Russian Participation. CTV News (Online). https://www.ctvnews. ca/politics/freeland-allies-walk-out-of-g20-meeting-over-russian-partic ipation-1.5868864. 85. UN News. (2022, September 26). Today’s Crisis Highlight Need for More Multilateralism, Stronger UN, says Canada’s Foreign Minister (Online). https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1128001. 86. Blatchford, A. (2022, February 23). Trudeau: Russia’s Brazen Acts Will Not Go Unpunished. Politico (Online) (emphasis added). https://www. politico.com/news/2022/02/23/canadian-defense-minister-russia-000 11215. 87. Ibid. 88. Government of Canada. Economic, Humanitarian, Development Assistance and Peace and Stabilization Support—Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

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(Online). https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_develo pment-enjeux_developpement/response_conflict-reponse_conflits/crisiscrises/ukraine-dev.aspx?lang=eng. Blatchford, A. (2002, March 1). Canada Wants ICC Probe of Russia for Alleged War Crimes. Politico (Online). https://www.politico.com/ news/2022/03/01/canada-icc-russia-war-crimes-00012803. Blanchfield, M. (2002, April 4). Foreign Minister Jolly Condemns Attacks on Ukrainian Civilians as Calls Grow for Russian War Crimes Trail. CTV News (Online). https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/foreignminister-joly-condemns-attacks-on-ukrainian-civilians-as-calls-grow-forrussian-war-crimes-trial-1.5847642. Canadian officials have articulated concerns over sexual and gender-based violence in Ukraine as a continuation of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. See Government of Canada. Prioritizing the interests and needs of survivors and victims of core international crimes—Focus on sexual and gender based crimes. Department of Justice (Online). https://www.canada.ca/en/department-justice/news/2022/07/priori tizing-the-interests-and-needs-of-survivors-and-victims-of-core-internati onal-crimes--focus-on-sexual-and-gender-based-crimes.html. Keenan, E. (2022, April 28). ‘A True Friend:’ America’s Top Military Leader Heaps Praise on Canada. Toronto Star (Online). https://www. thestar.com/news/world/2022/04/28/a-true-friend-americas-top-mil itary-leader-heaps-praise-on-canada.html; Anand seconded the sentiment in saying “The United States is Canada’s most important ally and defense partner. Our armed forces have worked and fought together throughout our histories, and our militaries continue to work side by side every day…” See Government of Canada. Readout of a meeting in Washington between Defence Minister Anita Anand and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. National Defence (Online). https://www.can ada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/2022/04/readout-of-ameeting-in-washington-between-defence-minister-anita-anand-and-ussecretary-of-defense-lloyd-austin.html. U.S. Department of State. (2022, September 30). Secretary Another J. Blinken and Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly at a Joint Press Availability. Remarks (Online). https://www.state.gov/secretaryantony-j-blinken-and-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-jointpress-availability/. Government of Canada. Canadian military support to Ukraine. National Defence (Online). https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-def ence/campaigns/canadian-military-support-to-ukraine.html. Government of Canada. Operation UNIFIER (Online). https://www. canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/operations/mil itary-operations/current-operations/operation-unifier.html.

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96. O’Toole, E. (Leader of the Opposition, CPC). (2022, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 44th Parliament, 1st session, 1915 h. 97. New Democratic Party. (2002, January 24). NDP’s Statement on Ukraine (Online). https://www.ndp.ca/news/ndps-statement-ukraine; for another example, see McPherson, H. (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP). (2022, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 44th Parliament, 1st session, 2000 h. 98. Green Part of Canada. (2002, March 8). Green Party Statement on the Worsening Crisis in Ukraine (Online). https://www.greenparty.ca/en/ statement/2022-03-08/green-party-statement-worsening-crisis-ukraine; CPAC (Cable Public Affairs Channel) (2022, March 1). Green Party Interim Leader Discusses Latest UN Report on Climate Change (video). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCm8X0roL1g, 41:54–44:08. 99. Vucetic, S. (2017). A Nation of Feminist Arms Dealers? Canada and Military Exports. International Journal 72(4), 503–519. https://doi. org/10.1177/0020702017740156. 100. Brewster, Murray. (2022, March 21). The War in Ukraine Could Force Canada to Shed Its Self-Image as a Peacekeeper. CBC News (Online). https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-russia-tru deau-nato-putin-1.6390707. 101. Ibid.

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Brewster, M. (2022, March 21). The War in Ukraine Could Force Canada to Shed Its Self-Image as a Peacekeeper. CBC News (Online). https://www.cbc. ca/news/politics/ukraine-russia-trudeau-nato-putin-1.6390707 Cadesky, J. (2020). Built on Shaky Ground: Reflections on Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal, 75(3), 298–312. Campbell, C. (2022, February 24). How Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Could Change the Global Order Forever. Time Magazine (Online). https://time. com/6150874/world-order-russia-ukraine/ Carvin, S. (2018, July 1). The U.S. Isn’t Being Very Neighbourly. Here’s What It Means for Canada’s Foreign Policy. The Washington Post. https://www.was hingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/07/01/the-u-s-isnt-beingvery-neighborly-heres-what-it-means-for-canadas-foreign-policy CPAC (Cable Public Affairs Channel). (2021, August 17). Justin Trudeau Discusses National Child-Care Plan, Situation in Afghanistan (video), 9:04– 11:44. CPAC (Cable Public Affairs Channel). (2022, March 1). Green Party Interim Leader Discusses Latest UN Report on climate change (video), 41:54–44:08. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCm8X0roL1g Dafoe, J. W. (1935). Canada. Columbia University Press. Delacourt, S. (2021, January 21). Canada’s Neighbour Sees Return of Decency. Toronto Star, A.1. Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. (2002). Freedom from Fear: Canada’s Foreign Policy for Human Security. Ottawa: Government of Canada. Diplomatic Service of the European Union. (2021, August 24). G7 Leaders Statement on Afghanistan (Online). https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/g7-lea ders-statement-afghanistan_en Ditchburn, J. (2015, November 4). ‘Because It’s 2015’: Trudeau forms Canada’s 1st Gender-Balanced Cabinet. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/pol itics/canada-trudeau-liberal-government-cabinet-1.3304590 Dryden, J. (2020, April 3). Kenney Says He’s ‘Insulted’ by Trump Order to Stop Exporting N95 Masks to Canada. CBC News. https://www.cbc. ca/news/canada/calgary/jason-kenney-donald-trump-n95-3m-coronaviruscovid-19-1.5521778 Dusseault, P. L. (Sherbrooke, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Forrest, M. (2020, April, 8). Trump Order Would Have Cut Off Canadian Government’s Sole U.S. Supplier of N95s. Politico. https://www.politico. com/news/2020/04/08/trump-order-would-have-cut-off-canadian-govern ments-sole-us-supplier-of-n95s-175294 Gates, B. (2020, April 30). Responding to COVID-19—A Once-in-a-Century Pandemic? The New England Journal of Medicine, 382, 1677–1679.

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Green Part of Canada. (2002, March 8). Green Party Statement on the Worsening Crisis in Ukraine (Online). https://www.greenparty.ca/en/statement/ 2022-03-08/green-party-statement-worsening-crisis-ukraine. Hall, C. (2016, March 11). Trudeau-Obama Bromance’s Real Prize Comes with the World Watching. CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hall-tru deau-obama-bromance-1.3486409 Hamedy, S. (2018, June 26). Everything You Need to Know About the Travel Ban: A Timeline. CNN . https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/26/politics/tim eline-travel-ban/index.html. Hillmer, N., & Lagasse, P. (2018). The Age of Trudeau and Trump. In N. Hillmer & P. Lagasse (Eds.), Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Julian, P. (New Westminster-Burnaby, NDP). (2020, November 6). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 43rd Parliament, 2nd session. Keast, J. (2017). Missed Opportunity: A Discursive Analysis of Canada’s Commitments to Maternal Health under the Muskoka Initiative. In R. Tiessen & S. Baranyi (Eds.), Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Keenan, E. (2020, March 26). Donald Trump May Not Have Understood Why the U.S. Considered Sending Troops to the Canadian Border. But It Was an Insult Anyway. Toronto Star. https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2020/ 03/26/donald-trump-may-not-understand-why-the-us-is-sending-troops-tothe-canadian-border-but-its-an-insult-anyway.html Keenan, E. (2020, December 5). Light at the Tunnel’s End, But It Might Be Fire Trump Lit. Toronto Star, A.19. Kohut, T. (2016, June 29). Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau’s ‘Bromance’ Meets Policy in Canada. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/2795403/bar ack-obama-justin-trudeaus-bromance-meets-policy-in-canada/ Kwan, J. (Vancouver East, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Leonard, M. (2022, June 13). The Real End of Pax Americana. Foreign Affairs (Online). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/japan/2022-0613/real-end-pax-americana Lilly, M. B. (2018). International Trade: The Rhetoric and Reality of the Trudeau Government’s Progressive Trade Agenda. In N. Hillmer & P. Lagasse (Eds.), Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Liptak, A. (2017, January 28). President Trump’s Immigration order, Annotated. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/ annotating-trump-immigration-refugee-order.html Lubold, G., & Vieira, P. (2020, March 26). U.S. Drops Proposal to Put Troops at Canadian Border. The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ canada-objects-to-u-s-plan-to-put-troops-at-border-11585247654

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MacGregor, A. (Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Macias, A. M. (2022, February 18). Biden Believes Putin Has Decided to Attack Ukraine in Coming Days. CNBC (Online). https://www.cnbc.com/2022/ 02/18/biden-believes-putin-has-decided-to-attack-ukraine-in-coming-days. html Martin, L. (2010). Harperland: The Politics of Control. Viking. Mazzetti, M., Barnes, J. E., & Goldman, A. (2021, September 8). Intelligence Warned of Afghan Military Collapse, Despite Biden’s Assurances. The New York Times (Online). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/17/us/politics/ afghanistan-biden-administration.html McKay, I., & Swift, J. (2012). Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety. Between the Lines. McKenna, B. (2018, June 29). Canada’s Efforts to Appease Our Grumpy Neighbour Were Always Doomed. The Globe and Mail. https://www.the globeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-canadas-efforts-to-appeaseour-grumpy-neighbour-were-always-doomed/ McPherson, H. (Edmonton Strathcona, NDP). (2022, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 44th Parliament, 1st session, 2000h. Morton, S. E., Muchiri, J., & Swiss, L. (2020). Which Feminism(s)? For Whom? Intersectionality in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal, 75(3), 329–348. Mulcair, T. (Outremont, NDP). (2017a, January 30). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Mulcair, T. (Outremont, NDP). (2017b, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Murphy, T. (2022, November 9). Principles for Global Order: How Europe and the Global South Can Shape the International Order Together. European Council on Foreign Relations (Online). https://ecfr.eu/article/principlesfor-global-order-how-europeans-and-the-global-south-can-shape-the-internati onal-order-together/ New Democratic Party. (2002, January 24). NDP’s Statement on Ukraine (Online). https://www.ndp.ca/news/ndps-statement-ukraine Nimijean, D. (2019). Where is the Relationship Going? The View from Canada. In D. Carment & C. Sands (Eds.), Canada-US Relations: Sovereignty or Shared Institutions? Palgrave Macmillan. Nossal, K. R. (2018). Promises Made, Promises Kept? A Mid-term Trudeau Foreign Policy Report Card. In N. Hillmer & P. Lagasse (Eds.), Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan.

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Nossal, K. R. (2022). Primat Der Wahlurne: Ideology and Politicization in Harper’s Foreign Policy. In P. McKenna (Ed.), Harper’s World: The Politicization of Canadian Foreign Policy, 2006–2015 (pp. 33–34). University of Toronto Press. Obama, B. (2016, June 29). Remarks by President Obama in Address to the Parliament of Canada. House of Commons Chamber. O’Kane, C. (2020, April 6). After Trump Bans Mask Exports, “Infuriated” Canadians Remind U.S. They Helped during 9/11. CBS News. https:// www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-3m-masks-coronavirus-defense-productionact-export-canada-helped-united-states-9-11-trudeau/ O’Toole, E. (Leader of the Opposition, CPC). (2022, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 44th Parliament, 1st session. Ottawa Citizen Editorial Board. (2017, February 15). Trudeau and Trump—Not a Bromance, but Not Bad. Regina Leader-Post. https://leaderpost.com/opi nion/editorials/trudeau-and-trump-not-a-bromance-but-not-bad. Paris, R. (2018). The Promise and Perils of Justin Trudeau’s Foreign Policy. In N. Hillmer & P. Lagasse (Eds.), Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Patrick, S. M. (2022, March 2). Putin’s Catastrophic War of Choice: Lessons Learned (So Far). Council on Foreign Relations (Online). https://www.cfr. org/blog/putins-catastrophic-war-choice-lessons-learned-so-far Rao, S., & Tiessen, R. (2020). Whose Feminism(s)? Overseas Partner Organizations’ Perceptions of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal, 75(3), 349–366. Ruby, M. (2022, August 10). Two Weeks of Chaos: A Timeline of the U.S. Pullout of Afghanistan. The Washington Post (Online). https://www.washin gtonpost.com/world/2022/08/10/afghanistan-withdrawal-timeline/ Salama, V., & Strobel, W. P. (2021, August 15). Intelligence Reports from Afghanistan Missed One Key Element: Speed. The Wall Street Journal (Online). https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligence-reports-fromafghanistan-missed-one-key-element-speed-11629056759 Saroyan, B. (Markham-Unionville, CPC). (2017, January 30). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Smith, H., & Ajadi, T. (2020). Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy and Human Security Compared. International Journal, 75(3), 367–382. Stetski, W. (Kootenay-Columbia, NDP). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Stephenson, M., Armstrong, J., & Connolly, A. (2020, March 26). Trump Looking to Put Troops Near Canadian Border Amid Coronavirus Fears. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/6735064/coronavirus-militariz ing-canada-us-border/

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Stewart, A. (2022, May 9). Trudeau Says Putin Responsible for ‘Heinous War Crimes’ during Surprise Visit to Ukraine. Global News (Online). https://glo balnews.ca/news/8817866/justin-trudeau-ukraine-surprise-trip/ Stokes, D. (2018). Trump, American Hegemony and the Future of the Liberal International Order. International Affairs, 94(1), 133–150. Swiss, L., & Barry, J. (2017). Did Changes in Official Language Lead to Spending Shifts? In R. Tiessen & S. Baranyi (Eds.), Obligations and Omissions: Canada’s Ambiguous Actions on Gender Equality (pp. 23–47). McGill-Queen’s University Press. The Center for Feminist Foreign Policy. https://centreforfeministforeignpolicy. org/ The Economist. (2007, February 17). Rebranding Canada: Tenacious, Smelly— and Uncool. 382(8516), 54. Thomson, J. (2020). What’s Feminist about Feminist Foreign Policy? Sweden’s and Canada’s Foreign Policy Agendas. International Studies Perspectives, 21(4), 424–437. Tiessen, R. (2015). Walking Wombs’: Making Sense of the Muskoka Initiative and the Emphasis on Motherhood in Canadian Foreign Policy. Global Justice: Theory Practice Rhetoric, 8(1), 74–93. Tiessen, R., & Carrier, K. (2015). The Erasure of “Gender” in Canadian Foreign Policy under the Harper Conservatives: The Significance of the Discursive Shift From “Gender Equality” to “Equality between Women and Men.” Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 21(2), 95–111. Tiessen, R., & Swan, E. (2018). Canada’s Feminist Foreign Policy Promises: An Ambitious Agenda for Gender Equality, Human Rights, Peace, and Security. In N. Hillmer & P. Lagasse (Eds.), Justin Trudeau and Canadian Foreign Policy. Palgrave Macmillan. Trudeau, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2017, January 31). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 42nd Parliament, 1st session. Trudeau, J. (2017, February 13). Remarks by President Trump and Prime Minister Trudeau in Joint Press Conference. Trudeau, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2020, November 4). House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 43rd Parliament, 2nd session. Trudeau, J. (2021, August 15). Forward. For Everyone. Statement. https://lib eral.ca/forward-for-everyone/ Trudeau, J. (2022, March 9). Question and Answer Session on the Situation in Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference. Government of Canada, Office of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Online). https://pm.gc.ca/en/vid eos/2022/03/09/question-and-answer-session-situation-ukraine-munich-sec urity-conference

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Tumilty, R. (2022, August 24). Intelligence Presented to Trudeau said Afghanistan Would Not Fall for Months. National Post (Online). https:// nationalpost.com/news/politics/intelligence-presented-to-trudeau-said-afg hanistan-would-not-fall-for-months Tunney, C. (2021, August 26). Canada’s Airlift Mission from Kabul Ends, Leaving Many Behind. CBC News (Online). https://www.cbc.ca/news/pol itics/canada-afghanistan-last-flight-1.6153899 UN General Assembly. (2022, March 2). General Assembly Resolution Demands End to Russian Offensive in Ukraine (Online). https://news.un.org/en/ story/2022/03/1113152 UN News. (2022, September 26). Today’s Crisis Highlight Need for More Multilateralism, Stronger UN, Says Canada’s Foreign Minister (Online). https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/09/1128001 U.S. Department of State. (2022, September 30). Secretary Another J. Blinken and Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly at a Joint Press Availability. Remarks (Online). https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinkenand-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-joint-press-availability/ Van Dyk, S. (2022, November 11). Majority of Canadians Support Increasing Aid to Ukraine Despite Chance of Larger Deficit: Nanos Poll. CTV News (Online). https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/majority-of-canadians-supportincreasing-aid-to-ukraine-despite-chance-of-larger-deficit-nanos-poll-1.614 4360 Vucetic, S. (2017). A Nation of Feminist Arms Dealers? Canada and Military Exports. International Journal, 72(4), 503–519. Wingrove, J., & Weinstein, A. (2017, February 9). Trudeau Heads to Visit Trump, Leaving ‘Dudeplomacy’ Behind. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomb erg.com/news/articles/2017-02-09/-dudeplomacy-era-long-gone-as-tru deau-heads-to-visit-trump?leadSource=uverify%20wall Zimonjic, P. (2022, November 14). Canada Announces Additional $500m in Military Aid to Ukraine, Adds 23 Names to Sanctions List. CBC News (Online). https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-announces-military-aidukraine-1.6650616

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

Reflecting on the global odyssey that was 2020, former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy labelled the year a “revelatory period.” “The epidemic has been a prism,” said Axworthy, “throwing refracted light on many outworn conventional assumptions, revealing major flaws and failures of present practices.”1 2021 provided little reprieve. “[M]ultiple and overlapping crises…have challenged mechanisms of national, regional, and global governance to the limit,” conclude Carment et al.2 With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 spurring increased food insecurity in Africa, precipitating severe energy crises in Europe, and inflaming nuclear sabre-rattling rhetoric to levels not seen since the Cold War, there is little doubt the streak of tumultuous years in the international system will continue. The overwhelming sentiment among scholars of Canadian foreign policy has been that Canada needs to adapt amid this turbulence, and quickly. But how? “The question is whether those transcendent values that one might describe as ‘historically’ if not ‘uniquely’ Canadian can continue to shape and inform discourse on Canadian foreign policy in an era of disruption and instability” ponders Nimijean, Carment, and Stewart.3 This book has offered an answer. Chaos in the international system may have altered Canada’s global position, but it has done little to destabilize the identity narratives that have long been at the centre of Canadian foreign policy. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_7

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The rise of Donald Trump, the decline of the rules-based international order,4 the “once-in-a-century” pandemic, and Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine have not eroded old avenues of Canadian self-understandings; they have been co-opted by them. And yet, as this concluding chapter argues, the reliance on a limited set of rhetorical commonplaces to formulate visions of Canadian identity and foreign policy offers continual opportunities for re-imagination and re-invention of the Canadian Self.

The Not-So Same Old Song and Dance? This book began by probing a perplexing pattern among Canadian governments responding to foreign policy events. Regardless of the details on the ground, the governments seemed to habitually rely on familiar and similar sounding identity narratives in making sense of Canada’s response to international crises and conflicts. Even in the face of a previously unimaginable end to America’s “forever war” in Afghanistan that culminated in horrifyingly mismanaged and ultimately deadly NATO members’ withdrawal from the country, the Trudeau government seemed incapable of singing any tunes other than the usual hits. Canada would continue to work closely with the United States and its allies for next steps and support the rights of Afghan women; prospects of which seemed slim given the country’s withdrawal. Similar identity narratives were equally relied upon by previous governments in explaining Canada’s opposing decisions towards joining the military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and abstaining from the invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the circumstances surrounding interventions in both countries were certainly different, each situation appeared to present similar reasoning to compel a Canada supposedly acting based on its values and traditions to intervene. Yet, Canada enthusiastically joined in the Afghanistan War but abstained from the Iraq War. Thus, a puzzle was presented: how could a supposedly stable Canadian identity, so often presented as the guiding light of Canada’s foreign policy decisions, elicit such variable foreign policy outcomes? The book proceeded to assess the ability of extant theories, particularly in the study of Canadian foreign policy, to aid our understanding of this puzzle. Traditional approaches to Canadian foreign policy analysis tend to dismiss political rhetoric as mostly inconsequential to Canada foreign policy decision-making or merely a means of placating the populace with feel-good stories that distract from the government’s “true” policy

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pursuits. Leaving the specific role of identity narratives in foreign policy largely unexplored. This book offered an alternative approach that took seriously the role of politicians’ identity rhetoric in the shaping of Canadian foreign policy. Central to this alternative perspective has been to approach political rhetoric surrounding who Canada is as deeply implicated in what Canada must do in the world. Echoing insights from discursive approaches in International Relations, I suggested that Canadian foreign policies are not decided in a vacuum or according to an automatic logic whereby material conditions in the international system dictate state behaviour free of the limits of human interpretation. On the contrary, foreign policies rely on stories about those involved, why certain actions are or are not necessary, and what is at stake in a sense-making process. Stories about identities, particularly identities of states, play a leading role. While some previous examinations of Canadian foreign policy have considered the relationship between foreign policy and discourse, they do so in a manner that either approaches identity discourses as enduring cultural ideas, consistently shaping policy or as fluid myths that continue to shift over the years. The crux of what this book has offered has been the explication of a theoretical framework equipped to apprehend two elements simultaneously: the repetitive narrative elements that Canadian politicians habitually repeat in their visions of Canada and the innovative narrative elements that allow them to re-imagine the meaning of Canadian identity to fit diverse circumstances over time. Merging insights of discursive approaches with those of theories of practice, I argued that the stories politicians tell about Canada and the world constitute a sense-making performance. In order to legitimize their preferred policy, politicians must present their policy within a story the Canadian population can understand and follow. This leads them to habitually utter the same basic narratives of Canadian identity, even while innovating on the specific content of these narratives to fit new moments, details, and actors involved. Hence, oft-repeated adages of Canadian identity appear to endure over years, though a narrative shell thinly conceals variable identity discourses housed inside when analysed. Rather than dismissed as merely “ear candy”5 to satisfy the population, these performances surrounding Canadian identity are deeply implicated in the realization of Canadian foreign policy—its political possibility. Since foreign policies are constituted by the stories told about them, the dually repetitive and innovative performances politicians give serve a central role in how one policy becomes more possible than another.

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This theoretical framework was leveraged to offer empirical insights on some prickly questions that remain surrounding Canada’s initial involvement in the so-called “Global War on Terror.” Chapters 3–5 tell the story of Canadian parliamentarians’ debates over Canada’s involvement in the country’s two most impactful foreign policy decisions throughout the “Global War on Terror,” the “yes” to Afghanistan and “no” to Iraq. They do so through the lens of three basic and familiar Canadian identity narratives: “Canada as America’s neighbour,” “Canada as protector of foreign civilians,” and “Canada as champion of multilateralism.” Conceptualized as rhetorical commonplaces à la social psychologist John Shotter,6 these narratives act as the raw materials politicians draw on to build discourses that link their preferred foreign policies to familiar sounding stories of the Canadian Self, even while innovating on their meanings in unique ways. While Canadian parliamentary rhetoric has received little attention in foreign policy analyses, mostly due to the assumption that Prime Ministers, not parliaments, overwhelmingly drive foreign policy decisionmaking,7 these chapters focus specifically on the rhetorical contests and argumentative dynamics of these foreign policy debates. Whether or not Prime Ministers decide policies on their own or collectively, careful analysis of House of Commons debates reveals the intricacies of the discursive terrain within which one foreign policy is realized over another; the constitutive features that bring policies to “life.” The empirical chapters suggest that parliamentarians were not so much adopting and advocating for competing foreign policies towards Afghanistan and Iraq, as they were advocating for competing perspectives of Canadian identity itself. While issues of alliance obligations, international law, and human rights all featured prominently in these discussions, they did so insofar as these topics were subsumed under identity discourses. In other words, the issue was not, for example, what the NATO treaty requires, but how a Canadian Self fundamentally dedicated to upholding international law and a rich multilateralist tradition must respond to an invocation of Article 5. Analysis of parliamentary debates reveals that the seemingly enduring, “stable” conceptions of Canadian identity—its neighbourly relations with the United States, defence of human security and multilateralism—were in fact the lightning rods of contestation driving these foreign policy debates. These basic narratives were adapted, bent, and uniquely re-imagined within different discursive arrangements. At times, politicians, even the Prime Minster, advocated a policy linked to a particular discourse of Canadian identity, only to reverse

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course two years later and abandon one reading of the Canadian Self for an opposing representation. Moving beyond the “Global War on Terror,” Chapter 6 surveyed the contemporary landscape of world politics to assess the relevance of these rhetorical commonplaces to Canadian foreign policy in recent years. From the Trump presidency to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the centrality of these familiar narratives has not receded from Canadian self-articulations during this precarious time. On the contrary, these familiar commonplaces continue to serve as dominant lenses through which the unexpected events of the last few years have been filtered in popular discussions of Canadian foreign policy, inside and outside Parliament. This, however, is not to suggest that Canadian foreign policy has somehow remained consistent in practice. Nor is it to suggest that politicians articulate Canada’s place in the world uniformly. Instead, this analysis suggests that while these familiar identity narratives continue to occupy prime real estate in the discursive terrain of Canadian foreign policy, they also continue to structure diverse and often inconsistent representations of the Canadian Self and Others, just as they had during the “War on Terror” debates.

Navigating a Tumultuous World8 The rapidly shifting terrain of world politics has led to growing calls for Canada to seize the opportunity to define itself anew. Canadian policymakers have been implored to ditch old adages and assumptions, having worn out their welcome years ago, and think boldly. Canada’s commitment to international institutions is not what it once was decades ago and democratic backsliding around the world has further hindered the efficiency of multilateral organizations.9 What’s more is that the Trump administration highlighted that Canadians cannot depend on a stable relationship with the United States, itself a country experiencing immense domestic upheaval and divisiveness. While Trump’s “war on the world order”10 only exacerbated the fragility of the rules-based order, signals of America’s hegemonic retrenchment were hardly new.11 Furthermore, Canada’s commitment to defending human rights around the world, an enterprise that was always selective, appears all the more misguided amid widespread acknowledgement of the country’s own record of human rights abuses,12 a recent example being growing evidence and discoveries of a series of mass graves of indigenous children buried during

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the operation of Canadian Residential Schools.13 “Canada cannot simply appeal to its past record to maintain its status. It must think and act” suggest Nimijean et al.14 What can the insights offered by this study contribute on this front? Three considerations are particularly timely. First, if current upheaval in the international arena has, in fact, highlighted the years of wear on conventional assumptions that have long surrounded Canadian foreign policy, do not expect to see them perish anytime soon. As explored in Chapter 6, for all the unexpected international challenges of recent years, the habit of drawing on familiar narratives to make sense of Canada’s place in the world has not weakened. Those calling for Canada to chart a bold, new course will likely be dissatisfied to hear familiar sounding representations of the country, its enemies, allies, and aims, emerging from Ottawa for the foreseeable future. If the unfathomable events surrounding NATO’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 still triggered the impulse to represent the situation within usual narratives, there is little reason to believe a different event, somehow even less “fitting” for these familiar stories, would break the habit. To adopt an old adage that still appears highly relevant to Canadian foreign policy today: old habits die hard. At the same time, one should not expect Canadian foreign policy to be static or “stuck in its ways,” even if the basic narratives of these foreign policies habitually reappear. What we have seen from analysis of the “Global War on Terror” is that Canadian foreign policies were hardly predetermined, linear, or consistent, despite deployments of identity narratives that suggested otherwise. Identity discourses contribute to certain paths becoming politically possible, but they never do so identically across time. While this book has explored the discursive terrain, both historical and contemporary, that shapes, and even limits, the political possibilities of certain policies and certain identity representations, it has equally stressed the “wiggle room” for innovative thinking and acting. Rhetorical commonplaces, after all, serve as raw materials15 or basic scaffolding that allow for a diverse range of representations and possibilities to be constructed. For example, while leaving plenty of room for improvement,16 the boldness of the Trudeau government’s feminist-oriented foreign policy should not be downplayed, especially when considering how unthinkable current messaging surrounding such policies would have been under the previous Harper government. Canada has contributed to an increasingly global movement of states adopting feminist-oriented foreign policy. The government’s efforts rendered all the more daring

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given that Trudeau’s cabinet developed its Feminist International Assistance Policy 17 in the midst of a global resurgence of support for farright political actors and policies with specifically prominent strands of anti-feminist sentiments.18 More recently, Canada’s support of Ukraine and bold, outspoken, critical stance on Russia’s invasion, were neither automatic nor predetermined. Instead, the government’s response has drawn together and adapted a unique assemblage of historical discursive elements into contemporary discourses regarding Canada’s place within a resurgent “West.”19 That Canada, once again, appears to be a “feminist arms dealer”20 in its shipment of lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military could be read as an innovative wrinkle in Canadian identity “protector” discourses surrounding Russia’s war. Of course, some will point to certain material “realities” that either necessitate or at least make certain responses permissible, separate from the shaping power of discourse. Canada’s vocally critical stance on the Putin regime benefits from Canada’s geographic location relatively far from the Russian frontline, with continental protection guarantees from the United States, and avoidance of energy dependence on Russian exports, unlike many European counterparts. It is easy, in other words, to be outspoken from the other side of the ocean. What I stress here, however, is not that the “facts” surrounding these “realities” are inconsequential to Canadian foreign policy, but rather, the ways in which they are articulated as mattering can and do lead to innovative political possibilities. For all the similar sounding rhetoric that emerged during parliamentary debates on the “Global War on Terror,” no party or politician replicated their exact representations of Canada or the world across foreign policy episodes. Even while deploying similar sounding narratives there were always discursive variations and innovations ensuring that Canada is perpetually in a process of becoming 21 rather than being. This begets a third point, a reflection on the place of identity narratives and their study in Canadian foreign policy analysis. Few can deny the international turmoil of recent years, but the common proposition that events like the rise of authoritarian states and retrenchment of American leadership have revealed how “out of touch” or “worn out” Canadian adages have become suggests that a clear distinction can be made between “real” events and the stories we tell ourselves about them; as if the former can be used to assess the accuracy of the latter. If this book has contributed anything, it is that the two cannot be neatly disentangled.

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Indeed, such a proposition would face the prickly challenge of determining where the discourse of the world ends and the “real” world begins. It should be noted that discourses of global upheaval have already manifested in foreign policy narratives, including in Canada. A recurrent theme in recent “the West is back” discourses is the articulation of various Others’ attempts to “challenge,” “upend,” and “assault” a preexisting stable “order” that “Western” actors are “strengthening” and “defending.”22 The challenge going forward for students and scholars of Canadian foreign policy (and the challenge that animates much of this book) will be assessing Canada’s place in a changing world without reifying the illusory fixedness of values, traditions, and cultures, supposedly defining Canada itself in their inquires. As this book has explored, supposedly “enduring” elements of Canadian identity emerge from sticky narrative shells with very slippery content. Such a challenge is not new, though the struggle continues. Patrick Thaddeus Jackson articulated similar sentiment in reference to over-reliance on the concept of “Western Civilization” in scholarly inquiries, no doubt all the more relevant given the concept’s rise in popularity in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Jackson offered a prescription: …we should not be asking about the stability of ‘Western’ practices of community; we should instead be analyzing the ways in which, at some specific moment, social resources are deployed so as to produce a particular outcome. Such deployment also shapes the topography of resources available at the next successive moment, so that any particular point in time there are only a finite number of possible courses of action viable based on the available set of social resources. The possibilities of any given moment are, in this sense, indebted to the actions undertaken in the previous moment; the actualization of one of those possibilities shapes the possibilities characteristic of the next moment. And so on…23

In this sense, there is promise for gleaning insights for the country during this tumultuous time not by focusing on Canadian identity and foreign policy as “thinglike”24 or guided by an essential force, but as a constant process of becoming. In short, if the goal is for Canada to “think and act,” scholars of Canadian foreign policy are well-served to inquire further into how policymakers incorporate and deploy common ideas surrounding Canadian traditions and strategic cultures—rather than the traditions and cultures being “thinglike” in themselves—in acting to produce political possibilities and realities.

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Notes 1. Axworthy, L. (2021). Reflections on 2020: Awakening to a World at Risk. In Carment, D. & Nimijean, R. (Eds). Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan, 34. 2. Carment, D., Paltiel, J., Macdonald, L., Rodriguez, F., & Wallace, R.Z. (2022). Conclusion: What’s Ahead for Canada? Challenges to the Liberal International Order and Great Power Rivalry. In Carment, D., Macdonald, L., & Paltiel, J. (Eds). Canada and Great Power Competition: Canada Among Nations 2021. Palgrave Macmillan, 343–344. 3. Nimijean, R., Carment, D., & Stewart, S. (2021). Will Canada Forge Its Own Path in a Turbulent World? In Carment, D. & Nimijean, R. (Eds). Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan, 322 (emphasis added). 4. McBride, S., & Fry, N. (2022). Locked in: Canadian Trade Policy and the Declining Liberal Order. In Carment, D., Macdonald, L., & Paltiel, J. (Eds). Canada and Great Power Competition: Canada Among Nations 2021. Palgrave Macmillan, 25. 5. Nossal, K.R. (2005). Ear Candy: Canadian Policy toward Humanitarian Intervention and Atrocity Crimes in Darfur. International Journal 60(4), 1017–1032. 6. Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructivism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Open University Press. 7. Nossal, K.R. (1985). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy, 1st edition. Prentice-Hall Canada, 163–186. See also: Dutil, P. (2017). Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden. University of British Columbia Press. 8. Carment. D., & Nimijean, R. (Eds). Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan. 9. Nimijean, R., et al. (2021), 331. 10. Lynch, C. (2018, December 27). Trump’s War on the World Order. Foreign Policy (Online). https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/27/tru mps-war-on-the-world-order/. 11. Cooley, A., & Nexon, D. (2020). Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. Oxford University Press, 4–5; Traub, J. (2018, May 11). RIP the Trans-Atlantic Alliance, 1945–2018. Foreign Policy (Online). https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/11/rip-the-transatlantic-alliance-1945-2018/. 12. Nimijean, R., et al. (2021), 321. 13. Austen, I. (2022, September 5). ‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada. New York Times (Online). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kam loops-mass-grave-residential-schools.html.

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14. Nimijean, R., et al. (2021), 332 (emphasis in original). 15. Jackson, P.T. (2006). Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press, 28–30. 16. See Cadesky, J. (2020) Built on Shaky Ground: Reflections on Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal 75(3), 298–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020702020953424; Morton, S.E., Muchiri, J., & Swiss, L. (2020). Which Feminism(s)? For whom? Intersectionality in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal 75(3), 329–348. https://doi.org/10.1177/002 070202095; Rao, S., & Tiessen, R. (2020). Whose Feminism(s)? Overseas Partner Organizations’ Perceptions of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal 75(3), 349–366. https://doi. org/10.1177/00207020209601. 17. Government of Canada. (2017). Feminist International Assistance Policy. https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enj eux_developpement/priorities-priorites/policy-politique.aspx?lang=eng. 18. Kuhar, R., & Paternotte, D. (Eds) (2017). Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe Mobilizing against Equality. Roman & Littlefield; Graff, A., & Korolczuk, E. (2022). Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. Routledge; Zaremberg, G., Tabbush, C., & Friedman, E.J. (2021). Feminism(s) and Anti-gender Backlash: Lessons from Latin America. International Feminist Journal of Politics 23(4), 527–534. 19. For the ‘West is back’ discourse emerging in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, see Acharya, A. (2022, March 29). Global South Reacts to Western Call for Unity against Russia. Responsible Statecraft (Online). https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/03/29/glo bal-south-reacts-to-western-call-for-unity-against-russia/. 20. Vucetic, S. (2017). A Nation of Feminist Arms Dealers? Canada and Military Exports. International Journal 72(4), 503–519. https://doi.org/10. 1177/0020702017740156. 21. Campbell, D. (1992). Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press, 4. 22. For a prominent example, see Biden, J. (2022, March 26). Remarks by President Biden on the United Efforts of the Free World to Support the People of Ukraine. The White House, Speech and Remarks. https:// www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/26/ remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-united-efforts-of-the-free-world-tosupport-the-people-of-ukraine/; see also Patrick, S.M. (2022, March 2). Putin’s Catastrophic War of Choice: Lessons Learned (So Far). Council on Foreign Relations (Online). https://www.cfr.org/blog/putins-catast rophic-war-choice-lessons-learned-so-far. 23. Jackson, P.T. (2006), 253. 24. Ibid., 252–253.

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Bibliography Austen, I. (2022, September 5). ‘Horrible History’: Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada. New York Times (Online). https://www.nyt imes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-mass-grave-residential-sch ools.html Acharya, A. (2022, March 29). Global South reacts to Western call for unity against Russia. Responsible Statecraft (Online). https://responsiblestatecraft. org/2022/03/29/global-south-reacts-to-western-call-for-unity-against-rus sia/ Axworthy, L. (2020). Reflections on 2020: Awakening to a World at Risk. In: D. Carment & R. Nimijean (Eds.), Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan. Biden, J. (2022, March 26). Remarks by President Biden on the United Efforts of the Free World to Support the People of Ukraine. The White House, Speech and Remarks. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-rem arks/2022/03/26/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-united-efforts-of-thefree-world-to-support-the-people-of-ukraine/ Cadesky, J. (2020). Built on Shaky Ground: Reflections on Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal, 75(3), 298–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020702020953424 Campbell, D. (1992) Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press. Carment, D., & Nimijean, R. (Eds.). (2021). Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan. Carment, D., Paltiel, J., Macdonald, L., Rodriguez, F., & Wallace, R. Z. (2022). Conclusion: What’s Ahead for Canada? Challenges to the Liberal International Order and Great Power Rivalry. In: D. Carment, L. Macdonald & J. Paltiel (Eds.), Canada and Great Power Competition: Canada Among Nations 2021. Palgrave Macmillan. Cooley, A., & Nexon, D. (2020). Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order. Oxford University Press. Dutil, P. (2017). Prime Ministerial Power in Canada: Its Origins under Macdonald, Laurier, and Borden. University of British Columbia Press. Government of Canada. (2017). Feminist International Assistance Policy. https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/issues_development-enjeux_ developpement/priorities-priorites/policy-politique.aspx?lang=eng Graff, A., & Korolczuk, E. (2022). Anti-Gender Politics in the Populist Moment. Routledge. Jackson, P. T. (2006). Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press. Kuhar, R., & Paternotte, D. (Eds.). (2017). Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe Mobilizing against Equality. Roman & Littlefield.

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Lynch, C. (2018, December 27). Trump’s War on the World Order. Foreign Policy (Online). https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/27/trumpswar-on-the-world-order/ McBride, S., & Fry, N. (2022). Locked in: Canadian Trade Policy and the Declining Liberal Order. In: D. D. Carment, L. Macdonald & J. Paltiel (Eds.), Canada and Great Power Competition: Canada Among Nations 2021. Palgrave Macmillan. Morton, S. E., Muchiri, J., & Swiss, L. (2020). Which Feminism(s)? For whom? Intersectionality in Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal, 75(3), 329–348. https://doi.org/10.1177/002070 202095 Nimijean, R., Carment, D., & Stewart, S. (2021). Will Canada Forge Its Own Path in a Turbulent World? In: D. Carment & R. Nimijean (Eds.), Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan. Nossal, K. R. (1985). The Politics of Canadian Foreign Policy (1st ed.). PrenticeHall Canada. Nossal, K. R. (2005). Ear Candy: Canadian Policy toward Humanitarian Intervention and Atrocity Crimes in Darfur. International Journal, 60(4), 1017–1032. https://doi.org/10.1177/00207020050600040 Patrick, S. M. (2022, March 2). Putin’s Catastrophic War of Choice: Lessons Learned (So Far). Council on Foreign Relations (Online). https://www.cfr. org/blog/putins-catastrophic-war-choice-lessons-learned-so-far Rao, S., & Tiessen, R. (2020). Whose Feminism(s)? Overseas Partner Organizations’ Perceptions of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy. International Journal, 75(3), 349–366. https://doi.org/10.1177/002070 20209601 Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Constructivism. Open University Press. Traub, J. (2018, May 11). RIP the Trans-Atlantic Alliance, 1945–2018. Foreign Policy (Online). https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/11/rip-thetrans-atlantic-alliance-1945-2018/ Vucetic, S. (2017). A Nation of Feminist Arms Dealers? Canada and Military Exports. International Journal, 72(4), 503–519. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0020702017740156 Zaremberg, G., Tabbush, C., & Friedman, E. J. (2021). Feminism(s) and Antigender Backlash: Lessons from Latin America. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 23(4), 527–534.

Index

A Acharya, Amitav, 221, 242 Adler, Emanuel, 30, 31, 45, 51, 52, 54, 66, 67 Afghanistan debates, 7, 25, 27, 54, 63, 64, 73, 87–89, 106, 137, 139, 142, 143, 152, 163, 164, 171, 172, 236 withdrawal, 1, 7, 26, 193, 204–206, 238 alliance NATO, 1, 87, 174, 205, 206 obligations, 7, 24, 185, 236 with historic allies, 49, 89, 208 with United States, 2, 83, 87, 90, 102–104, 138, 143, 164, 183 ally bad, 182 good, 179, 181 reliable, 64, 181 anti-americanism, 81, 85 Axworthy, Lloyd, 154, 233, 241

B Bachand, Claude, 158, 159 Bagnell, Larry, 141, 156 Benabdallah, Lina, 31, 32, 66 Berger, Carl, 75, 107 Biden, Joseph, 193, 200, 204, 206, 207, 220, 221, 242 Blaikie, Bill, 103, 112 Bonwick, Paul, 104, 189 Bothwell, Robert, 78, 79, 82, 84, 107–109 Boucher, Jean Christophe, 18, 28, 32, 33, 35, 58, 59, 68 Bush, George W. and Chrétien, Jean, 2, 65, 87, 148 and coalition of the willing, 87, 96, 100, 101, 137, 147, 149, 180, 183 “with us or with the terrorists”, 177 C Campbell, David, 12, 14, 28, 31, 47, 49, 66, 221, 242

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0

245

246

INDEX

Canada and familiar narratives, 1, 2, 5, 28, 194, 204, 207, 213, 237, 238 and identity, 2–7, 15–19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 47, 49, 50, 53, 54, 62–64, 74, 79, 82, 87, 90, 92, 95, 98, 100, 102–106, 117, 124, 137, 138, 144, 149, 152, 184, 185, 193, 197, 200–205, 207, 209, 212, 213, 234–236, 239, 240 and NATO, 1, 17, 83, 168, 173, 182, 184, 195, 204, 205, 212, 234 and the United Nations, 96, 122, 143, 150, 167, 168, 171, 183, 210 and the United States, 2, 4, 17, 48, 64, 65, 74, 76–87, 90–92, 94–96, 101–103, 106, 145, 164, 168, 180, 183, 196–198, 209, 210, 213, 237, 239 and the world, 94, 102, 123, 175, 235 as champion of multilateralism, 7, 27, 163, 164, 170, 171, 184, 193, 213, 236 as neighbour to the United States, 16, 213 as protector of foreign civilians, 27, 117–119, 137, 144, 147, 150, 152, 153, 193, 201–203, 211, 236 Canadian foreign policy and alliance obligations, 7, 24, 236 and domestic politics, 47 and myths, 18–21, 47, 235 and political leaders, 16, 195 and public opinion, 16, 17, 119 as discursive practice, 5, 53, 54 Careless, J.M.S., 82, 86 Carment, David, 28, 215, 233, 241

Casey, Bill, 105, 111, 112 Charbonneau, Yvon, 94, 110 Chrétien, Jean and Afghanistan, 18, 59, 87, 136, 138, 139, 145, 153, 172, 175 and Bush, George W., 65, 87, 96, 97, 105, 136 and Iraq, 26, 65, 87, 96, 100, 105, 136, 153, 178, 183 Clark, Joe, 105, 126, 142, 143, 167, 175 Commonplaces America’s neighbour, 7, 73, 74, 236 as practices, 6, 45, 55, 62, 63 as “raw materials”, 6, 57, 61, 238 champion of multilateralism, 7, 163, 214, 236 protector of foreign civilians, 117, 118, 137, 150, 152, 193, 203, 236 condemner Afghanistan, 143–146 discourse, 144–146, 150–152, 212 Iraq, 150, 152 Constructivism conventional, 10 critical, 10–12 social, 30 continentalism, 75 Cox, Robert W., 165, 169, 170 crusader Afghanistan, 147 discourse, 138, 142–144, 146, 148, 152 Iraq, 148

D Dafoe, John Wesley, 76, 107, 194 Day, Stockwell, 92, 97, 98, 140, 149, 158, 174, 183

INDEX

and Afghanistan, 140 and Iraq, 97, 98, 183 Discourse and identity, 4, 14–16, 22, 26, 48, 50, 65, 97, 102, 165, 171, 185, 201, 235, 236, 238 and materiality, 4, 11, 239 and practice, 4, 5, 16, 22, 45, 52, 53 Discursive practice, 6, 12, 15, 16, 22, 45, 53–56, 60, 62, 63 and foreign policy, 5, 6, 8, 15, 16, 22, 45, 53, 54, 63 and identity, 6, 15, 21, 52–55, 63 Doty, Roxanne, Lynn, 13, 14, 22–24, 30, 31, 35 Duceppe, Gilles, 69, 95, 99, 110, 112, 152, 158, 159, 176, 188 and Afghanistan, 152 and Iraq, 152 E Eggleton, Art, 111 Epp, Ken, 147, 149, 157, 158 F family Canada and United States, 76, 78, 85, 90, 91, 194 discourse, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 97 feminist and Trudeau, Justin, 200, 202 approaches to Canadian foreign policy, 234 International Assistance Policy, 203, 210, 239 Foreign policy and discourse, 4, 5, 7, 13, 14, 16, 22, 25–28, 45–47, 50, 53, 54, 57, 62, 89, 164, 185, 193, 195, 201, 213, 235, 239, 240

247

and identity, 2–5, 7–10, 12, 14–16, 18, 20–22, 26, 27, 44–50, 54, 58, 60, 62, 65, 122, 129, 152, 234, 235, 237, 239 and practice, 5, 9, 15, 22, 27, 45, 50, 53, 55, 62, 65, 164, 235, 237 as feminist, 21, 193, 200, 203, 238 Foucault, Michel, 4, 12, 28, 52, 54 G Gauthier, Michel, 101, 111, 189 Girard-Bujold, Jocelyne, 44, 66, 152, 159 Graham, Bill, 91, 110, 133, 181, 189 Gramsci, Antonio, 169, 186 Granatstein, J.L., 78, 80, 81, 85, 107–109 H Hansen, Lene, 28, 30–32, 35, 50, 52, 54, 66–69, 107, 109 Harper, Stephen, 8, 18, 29, 96, 98, 99, 102, 106, 111, 158, 182, 189, 200–202, 238 and Afghanistan, 8, 18, 59, 106 and Iraq, 60, 183 Harvard, John, 112 Hillmer, Norman, 109, 214, 217, 218 Holland, Jack, 32, 35, 109 House of Commons and decision-making, 23, 45, 236 and performance, 4 debates, 6, 24, 27, 44, 63, 65, 73, 87, 89, 97, 101, 138, 152, 163, 164, 236 Howell, Alison, 22, 34, 35, 155 humanitarian assistance, 127, 135, 208, 210 and development, 208 human rights

248

INDEX

and Afghanistan, 118, 137, 140, 143, 145, 207, 238 and human security, 118, 131, 133, 134 and Hussein, Saddam, 118, 136, 149 and Iraq, 118, 136, 137 Human security and Axworthy, Lloyd, 154 and Canadian foreign policy, 164, 237 Hussein, Saddam, 44, 65, 96, 99, 100, 118, 136, 148–151, 170, 171, 178, 181–183 and human rights, 118, 131, 133, 136, 149 as “evil”, 136, 148 Hutchison, Bruce, 78, 79, 82, 84, 85, 94, 107–109 I identity and discourse, 4, 5, 14, 22, 26, 45, 48, 50, 58, 62, 64, 65, 74, 93, 95, 97, 102, 142–144, 146, 164, 165, 171, 174, 185, 193, 201, 205, 209, 212, 235, 236, 238 and foreign policy, 2–9, 12, 14–16, 18, 21, 23, 26, 27, 45–50, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 62, 65, 92, 152, 185, 200, 201, 213, 233–236, 239, 240 and practice, 4, 5, 15, 22, 26, 47, 50, 53, 55, 62, 65 as productive, 12, 21, 46, 48 as relational, 46, 47 as spatial, 64, 74, 79, 94, 103, 104, 144, 148 as temporal, 64, 74, 98, 118, 145, 146, 148 as unstable, 3

interpretation, 4, 9, 24, 47, 49, 61, 139, 178, 182, 204, 213, 235 and foreign policy, 4, 47, 213, 235 as unavoidable, 4 Iraq debates, 7, 25, 27, 54, 63, 65, 87, 88, 101, 152, 164, 196

J Jackson, Patrick Thaddeus, 57, 240

K Kabul airport, 1, 204 withdrawal, 1, 204–206 Keating, Tom, 164, 168, 186 Kenney, Jason, 110, 148, 156, 158, 183, 190, 199, 216 Kymlicka, William, 19, 33, 34

L Lalonde, Francine, 93, 94, 103, 110, 111, 159, 180, 181, 189

M making sense, 58, 60, 137, 198, 234 as following, 60 meaning, 58 Maloney, John, 104, 189 Manley, John, 90, 139, 187 Marceau, Richard, 43, 90, 109 Marland, Alex, 34 Massie, Justin, 17, 33 McCallum, John, 189 McDonough, Alexa, 93, 94, 110, 138, 143–145, 156, 157, 159, 176, 178, 180, 188, 189 and Afghanistan, 93, 143–145 and Iraq, 180 McKay, John, 112, 150, 158

INDEX

Meredith, Val, 141, 156 middle power, 168, 176 and Afghanistan, 172 and Canada, 83, 165, 167, 172, 176, 177 and Iraq, 184 discourse, 165 Moore, James, 44, 66, 140, 156, 187 Mulcair, Thomas, 196, 215, 216 multilateralism and Afghanistan, 8, 27, 50, 163, 164, 171, 184, 193 and Iraq, 17, 18, 164, 171, 178 and middle powermanship, 167 and peace-keeping, 49, 167, 201 and subordination, 169, 170, 182 as narrative, 7, 8, 27, 167, 194, 201, 213, 236 Mutimer, David, 48, 50, 66 Myers, Lynn, 110, 173, 187 myths about Canada, 18, 19, 21, 47 and discursive practices, 21, 47, 213, 235 N narratives and rhetorical commonplaces, 6, 7, 63, 185, 193, 194, 204, 234, 236, 239 Canada as America’s neighbour, 7, 27, 107, 194, 236 Canada as champion of multilateralism, 27, 194, 236 Canada as protector of foreign civilians, 27, 194, 236 NATO and Afghanistan, 17, 87, 89, 184, 205, 234, 238 and Article 5, 89, 95, 171, 173, 174, 177, 236 Neighbour

249

and Afghanistan, 17, 27, 43, 44, 87, 93, 106, 164 and Iraq, 17, 44, 106, 164 as rhetorical commonplace, 7, 107, 117 Canada as, 2, 7, 16, 27, 107, 194, 213, 236 with United States, 2, 17, 27, 74, 75, 77–80, 83–87, 90, 94–96, 101, 102, 104, 106, 118, 180, 193, 195, 200, 210, 213 Neumann, Iver, 28, 51–54, 60, 61, 67, 68 Nimijean, Richard, 21, 28, 34, 215, 233, 241, 242 Nossal, Kim Richard, 18, 20, 23, 32–35, 58, 59, 68, 79, 83, 108, 166, 186, 217, 241

O order international, 44, 152, 184, 208, 234 liberal international, 208 rules-based, 208, 237 world, 169, 237 Oren, Ido, 32, 68, 155 Other and Canada, 2, 47, 48, 59, 78, 81, 102, 118, 125, 129, 144, 145, 195, 237 and discourse, 4, 11, 12, 22, 49, 50, 54, 90, 144, 146, 173, 205, 207 versus Self, 13

P Pallister, Brian, 156, 188 Paris, Roland, 194, 214 Parliament

250

INDEX

and debates, 7, 24, 25, 27, 63–65, 73, 101 and decision-making, 164, 236 and rhetoric, 4, 7, 20, 25, 27, 73, 117, 163, 185 Canadian, 2, 6, 7, 24, 25, 65, 73, 87, 89, 93, 117, 137, 152, 171, 194, 196, 236 parliamentarians and debates, 91, 106, 118, 139, 152, 163, 164, 171, 236, 239 and discursive practices, 26, 63 Peace-keeper Afghanistan, 24 discourse, 165, 167, 173, 175, 181, 184 Iraq, 170, 184 Peric, Janko, 43, 66, 104, 112 political possibility, 65, 185, 235 Pouliot, Vincent, 45, 51, 52, 54, 62, 63, 66–68 power as coercive, 13, 15 as constitutive, 24 as productive, 12, 13, 21, 22, 48 practices and discourse, 4, 5, 16, 22, 52, 53 and performance, 4, 15, 52 definiton, 51 Proctor, Dick, 157, 188 protector and Afghanistan, 26, 44, 117, 118, 143, 153 and Iraq, 27, 117, 118, 136, 137, 147, 149, 153 and morality, 121 and national identity, 129, 143 as discourse, 7, 21, 27, 118, 135, 137, 143, 144, 146, 147, 152, 164, 193, 201, 207, 239 of women and children, 26, 118, 129, 132, 133, 135, 138, 201

Putin, Vladimir, 62, 207–209, 211, 239 R Regan, Geoff, 91, 110, 111 Rhetorical commonplaces and discourses, 6, 7, 45, 55, 57, 58, 60, 61, 185, 193, 236, 239 and legitimacy, 57, 58 and narratives, 7, 63, 185, 194, 204, 234, 236, 237, 239 as practices, 6, 45, 55, 62, 63 Russia and Canadian politicians, 193, 211–213 and Putin, Vladimir, 62, 207–209, 211 invasion of Ukraine, 207, 208, 213, 233, 240 S security imaginary, 16, 18, 59 and beliefs, 16 as explanatory, 16 self and foreign policy, 9, 185, 203, 208, 234, 237 and identity, 3, 4, 12, 48–50, 57, 146, 148, 236 as spatial, 64, 78, 80, 98, 118, 139, 140, 144, 145, 148, 165 as temporal, 64, 80, 103, 145 Canadian, 3, 22, 74, 81, 93, 94, 96–98, 100, 103, 104, 118, 126, 127, 129, 138–141, 143–146, 148–150, 152, 165–168, 171, 181, 183–185, 203, 213, 234, 236, 237 Shotter, John, 6, 29, 45, 55–57, 65, 67, 68, 236, 241 and background, 55, 56

INDEX

251

and rhetoric, 6, 45, 55–57, 65, 236 Sloan, Karen, 159 social constructivism conventional, 10 critical, 10 Solomon, Ty, 30–32, 68, 155 St.Laurent, Louis, 129, 139, 153 strategic culture, 16–18 and beliefs, 16 as explanatory, 16

United Nations, 96, 122, 143, 150, 164, 168, 171, 173, 178, 180–183, 210 United States as ally, 9, 89, 95, 205 as bully, 4 as neighbour, 2, 16, 17, 27, 74, 75, 77–80, 83–87, 90, 94–96, 101, 102, 104, 106, 118, 180, 193, 195, 200, 210, 213

T Tiessen, Rebecca, 202, 218, 219, 242 Trudeau, Justin and Afghanistan withdrawal, 205, 206 and border, 122, 197, 200 and covid-19 pandemic, 237 and feminism, 21, 200, 201, 203, 238 and Trump, Donald, 195, 196, 200, 237 and Ukraine, 8, 208–211 Trump, Donald allies, 205, 206, 234, 238 covid-19, 28, 193, 194, 198, 199, 237 election, 193, 194, 200, 205

V voice of reason and Afghanistan, 93 and Iraq, 93, 96, 100, 106 discourse, 93, 100, 197 to United States, 93, 96, 101, 105, 106, 198 Vucetic, Srdjan, 17, 30–33, 35, 110, 156, 224, 242

U Ukraine and Canada, 8, 27, 194, 208–213, 233, 237, 239, 240 and Operation UNIFIER, 211 and Russian invasion, 222

W war Afghanistan, 7, 17, 24, 26, 44, 45, 50, 58, 59, 141, 145, 171, 184, 205, 234 and withdrawal, 1, 7, 26, 204, 205 in Ukraine, 28, 193, 207, 210–212, 234, 237 Iraq, 7, 17, 18, 27, 43–45, 234 world war I, 54, 76, 79, 81, 165, 166 world war II, 79, 81, 120, 122, 149, 165–167, 174 war on terror

252

INDEX

and Afghanistan, 6, 17, 25–27, 63, 73, 87, 93, 117, 136, 141, 163, 171, 185, 236 and Iraq, 7, 17, 25, 27, 43, 63, 73, 87, 93, 97, 117, 136, 163, 171, 185, 236 Wendt, Alexander, 9, 10, 30 West

as “back”, 208, 209, 240 as civilization, 43, 44, 57, 90, 93, 240 Whelan, Susan, 90, 110

Z Zelenskyy, Volodymyr, 29, 208, 209