Europe's Place in Canadian Strategic Culture (1949-2009)

Abstract

International relations theory has a disturbing tendency to treat states as though they were homogenous entities. Thus, realists and liberals alike speak of a national interest determined by a state's geopolitical or economic situation. Constructivists, for their part, talk about a relatively stable national identity fashioned by a country's culture, history, and external relations. These labels are never innocuous: although they endow the international order with meaning, it comes at the expense of confining countries and their populations inside a normative cage. Further, they have the effect of obscuring the divisions and conflicts that create problems when a pronouncement must be made in the name of the state.Canada is no exception to this rule. The question of the country's proper place in the global system is at least as old as the Department of Foreign Affairs (going back to its original incarnation a century ago, as the Department of External Affairs), and the national preoccupation with Canada's international ontology often obscures substantive issues. Some argue that Canada is defined by its continental North American position. Others maintain that Canada's middle-power status determines its role in the international system. A variation on these two themes (a rough borrowing from James C. Bennett) gives Canada membership in the Anglosphere, a club of countries with an Anglo-Saxon democratic tradition, thereby promoting its status to that of a principar power.1 The recent rise in power of the Asian-Pacific region, as well as Canada's growing relations with Latin America, has engendered a literature devoted to the country's Asian and hemispheric vocations.2 There has even been reflection - in particular after the country's refusal to participate in the war against Iraq - on the role of Canada's French heritage and its relations with France, whose influence, it is argued, is manifest in the often singular stance taken by Quebec.3It is in fact difficult to impose a homogenous interest or identity on Canada. Commentators, political parties, and the public are all divided on the question of the country's international role. The only point on which they agree is that Canadians are multilateralist by instinct, with a natural tendency to support all international organizations, such as the UN, NATO, or the World Trade Organization. So goes at any rate the official narrative of the history of Canadian foreign policy, dominated by Lester Pearson, Escort Reid, Hume Wrong, and Norman Robertson, those stellar figures who forged Canadian foreign policy during the glorious postwar years.The situation becomes complicated, however, when the multilateralist position turns out to be impracticable because of conflicts between Canada's allies; the country must then retreat to its second best choice. Should Canada intervene in Iraq? Should it maintain a military presence in Afghanistan? Should it participate in the American missile defence program? Should it favour peacekeeping missions or deeper involvement in North American security measures? Political leaders are often successful in hiding the profound divisions in both the population and the political elite concerning the answers to these international security questions.Our aim in this article on the role of the transatlantic link in Canadian strategic culture is twofold. From a theoretical standpoint, we seek to break with the notion of a homogenous Canadian interest or identity at the international level. In support of this position we refer to literature showing that the Canadian stance in foreign policy, including the transatlantic link, has always been complex. Secondly, to underscore the cleavages found in aU strategic cultures, we examine the place that Europe has occupied in the minds of Canadian thinkers and decision-makers since the end of the Second World War. We show that not only has European loyalty meant different things to leaders and inteUectuals over the years, but that Europe's influence has always been countered by other perspectives, in particular those favouring North America or liberal internationalism. …