Making Sense of Canada's “irrational” International Security Policy

Abstract

According to certain realist standards, Canada's post-9/11 international security policy is irrational. Prominent realists have noted that the Jean Chretien government's decision to forego a role in the Iraq War was anomalous, inconsistent, and bizarre.1 WaI economic and security interests, as well as Canada's independence and influence, are also said to have demanded a reversal of Prime Minister Paul Martin's 2005 decision to decline participation in the American ballistic missile defence system. Further, Canada's defence policy has been criticized for failing to meet ends with means as Canada's defence ambitions exceed its capabilities and interests as a secondary power.2 Moreover, as David McDonough's article in this volume argues, the extension of Canada's military mission in Afghanistan to 2011 is unwise, given its diminishing returns, increasing costs, and marginal benefits. Two scholars point to the lack of realism in Canada's international security policy in these words:Canadian foreign policy seems increasingly detached from reality. A strong tendency has emerged favouring sentiment over interest and posture over position, informed by a lingering belief that Canada is, or should be, as important a nation today as it was in the immediate postwar period. This tendency is reinforced by the continuing pretence that Canada is a middle power with global interests, rather than a regional power with significant regional interests and modest global interests.3Other so-called realist arguments have been offered to explain such deviances, namely the lack of domestic support (Iraq and ballistic missiles), national pride (overstretched armed forces), and allied solidarity (Afghanistan). However, neither the lack of domestic support for the Afghan mission nor allied solidarity regarding ballistic missile defence really are as significant explanatory factors. To make sense of Canada's international security policy, one can select any realist argument (and there are many) and posit it, ex post, as the underlying motivation for Canada's strategic behaviour. The ambiguity of Canadian realism is all the more pronounced given that the country's core material interests are not threatened and that its position in the global hierarchy of power does not suggest that it should adopt a significant extra-regional international security role.The purpose of this article is to help refine and circumscribe Canadian realism by highlighting the importance of constructivist, or cultural, factors that underpin interpretations of national interests. It seeks, in other words, to make sense of Canada's irrational international security policy. To achieve this, I employ two concepts, identity and strategic culture, and argue that Canada's international security policy is essentially identity-based. While this may not come as a shock to many Canadian foreign policy decisionmakers and scholars, it remains a mostly implicit if not marginalized and under-conceptualized explanation in mainstream Canada foreign and defence policy analysis. The article begins by defining and linking the notions of identity and strategic culture to provide a coherent theoretical framework for the analysis, and the remainder of the article addresses Canada's three concurrent and coexistent strategic cultures: continental soft-bandwagoning, defensive internationalism, and soft-balancing Atlanticism. It argues that the first explains the home game, while Atlanticism, rather than internationalism, is the salient strategic culture behind Canada's expeditionary operations.STATE IDENTITIES AND STRATEGIC CULTURESThe part played by identity in shaping foreign policy has been and remains a highly debated topic among political scientists and historians. According to John Mearsheimer, [r]ealists believe that state behavior is largely shaped by the material structure of the international system.... Individuals are free to adopt non-realist discourses, but in the final analysis, the system forces states to behave according to the dictates of realism, or risk destruction. …