Empire's Ally: Canada and the War in Afghanistan, by Jerome Klassen and Greg Albo, eds.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ali G. Dizboni, Royal Military College of CanadaLiberal narratives, of varying types, have long dominated theories of Canadian foreign policy. The fundamental assumption behind concepts such as the Trading State and Middle Power is a basic recognition of Canadian cultural, economic, and geopolitical realities. According to this narrative, Canada's success involved not punching above its weight and seeking multilateralism, i.e. oscillating between continentalism, transatlanticism, and internationalism in order to maintain prosperity and sovereignty. As for Canada's military, peacekeeping marked Canadian forces' international missions and privileged Canada as a non-colonizing power--one welcomed in conflict zones as it carried out United Nations (UN)-mandated missions. This image has comforted the majority of Canadians for decades.Since 9/11, realist narratives have come to rival the liberal line. By seeking safety at home with security beyond peace operations abroad, Canada jettisoned its image as the peaceful kingdom . The US motto With the UN if possible and without it if necessary and its corollaries of unilateral pre-emptive and preventive war confronted Canada with the stark choice to be out or to be in with its paramount ally in trade and security. Under the Conservative government, investment in defence rose and Canadian forces took leading roles in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraqi Kurdistan, and Syria. Soon the Middle Power image was eclipsed by Canada as a rising unilateral power with its own national and international agenda. Accordingly, Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan was increasingly explained by those in both academic and policy think tanks as part of a global war on terror, not only to honour Canadian international obligations (NATO) but also to assert its leadership and to curb threats of global radicalism to Canada's trade and safety interests. The government's Canada First Defence Strategy of 2008 further underlined the degree to which advocates of a more activist and militarily muscular defence strategy eclipsed policy in sync with the liberal tradition.Nemesis to both the liberal and realist narratives, Empire's Ally offers an alternative take. A collection of essays inspired by critical theories and Marxist traditions, it offers a structuralist, and controversial, political economy approach. It construes Canada as a secondary state in the US imperial system. Although the volume's authors believe that historically Canada has been part of the Western-led capitalist empire, they focus on the post-Communist and post-Third Worldist era. They argue that the globalization of the American empire emerged out of the internationalization of the liberal nation-state and the dominance of US capital in the global market. World financial markets came to pivot around the Wall Street hub in which the US government is structurally embedded to finance its deficit and its military engagements and commitments (viii-ix). International institutions, be they economic or political, consolidate this unipolar hegemony based in six regional military command centres leading to continuous military interventions from the Balkans to Afghanistan, Iraq, and the list goes on. The authors maintain that the Middle East is possibly the case par excellence where these processes materialized in terms of economic space, oil flow, and military command. Unlike realists and liberals, the authors believe that Middle Eastern violence is not essentialist and endogenous but rather a reflection of regional grievances against the empire's impositions and its support for dictatorships (i. …