Is Ottawa following Washington's Lead in Foreign Policy?

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONIs Canada's foreign policy aligned with that of the United States? This question frequently comes up in foreign policy circles and was recently raised during the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. Some observers have maintained that Ottawa's policy with regard to the Spring followed that of Washington.1 This criticism is in keeping with the perception that, since coming to power in February 2006, the Harper government has strategically aligned Canada's policies more closely with those of the United States.2 Some positions of the Harper government, in particular with respect to the Kyoto Protocol, the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, and the North American security perimeter, have reinforced this idea.3The question of Canada's foreign policy alignment with the United States has also been the subject of much debate within the academic community. Some see such an alignment as the best strategy for enhancing Canada's national interests.4 Others feel that it is detrimental to the country.5 Beyond impressions and normative debates concerning the values and strategies that should guide foreign policy in Canada, there is a need to empirically and systematically assess whether the existence of such an alignment is indeed supported by fact. This article presents a study of the responses of Canada and the United States to the popular uprisings and revolutions that marked Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2010-2011. These crises, which helped define the Arab Spring, are the ones to which Canadian and US diplomatic responses had ended at the time this article was written and which therefore lent themselves to a complete analysis of events.By conducting a chronological and a content analysis, this study examines all the official statements (statements, news releases, and remarks) issued by the Office of the Prime Minister of Canada (PMO), the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), the White House, and the US Department of State regarding these crises. In all, 67 statements are analyzed.6 The analysis shows two recurring patterns in the way Canada responded to the Arab Spring. First, the Harper government generally issued its statements after the Obama administration had stated its point of view. Second, once Washington had made its positions known, Ottawa adopted the same stance. These findings suggest that Canada's statements were most of the time aligned with those of the United States and sometimes fashioned in cooperation with Washington. However, this apparent alignment of Canada represents one part of the story, since our study shows that the Harper government did not always emphasize the same themes, values, and principles as the US while responding to these foreign crises. For instance, Ottawa was consistently more concerned with the issue of stability than Washington. The Harper government also put more emphasis on the need to protect the State of Israel during the Egyptian uprising than did the Obama administration. Finally, the study indicates that the White House was particularly concerned with multilateralism in the resolution of these crises, while Canada has not shown the same interest in a multilateral approach.ALIGNMENT AND CONVERGENCEWhat exactly do we mean by alignment? Steven David explains that alignment occurs when one state its policies into close cooperation with those of another state.7 For David, this behaviour is usually motivated by a relationship of dependence of one state on Gordon Mace brings additional clarification to this concept by opposing it with that of convergence. He explains that alignment can be said to have occurred when only one actor has modified its position to bring it in line with that of another. However, when each actor modifies an initial position X and adopts a new position Y, this can be described as convergence.8 Convergence results therefore from coordination among governments to arrive at a common position. …