A History and Genealogy of the Freedom-from-Fear Doctrine

Abstract

A discussion of the relevance of the human security agenda, and of its impact on Canadian foreign and security policy, is these days likely to cause scholars and policymakers to suppress a yawn. Such a reaction largely stems from a belief that all relevant aspects of the human security agenda have been fully understood and scrutinised. The full story has been told, so to speak. In this paper we argue against the idea that the human security agenda is a story of the past, at least when it comes to: 1) understanding what made the human security agenda possible in the first place; and 2) how the alleged new diplomacy that accompanied the human security agenda was a reflection of broader politico-economic changes within rather than outside of Canada. Using a Foucaultian genealogical perspective, the following analysis provides an alternative account of the origins of the Canadian human security agenda. In so doing, it challenges and adds to the dominant historical narrative of the origins of the human security agenda, produced by government documents, policymakers, and some academic analyses. Specifically, this article presents a genealogical investigation of the Freedom from Fear (FFF) doctrine. The FFF doctrine emerged from a narrowing of the human security concept by the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT) in the late 1990s. Our genealogical investigation analyses why DFAIT chose to narrow its human security agenda around FFF. Second, the article examines the underlying rationale of this narrower FFF agenda. We conclude that the FFF doctrine was shaped by a political economy of power that existed in Canadian society.