The Canadian Isolationist Tradition

Abstract

CANADIAN POLITICS IS NOT HEAVILY ENDOWED WITH APHORISMS OR memorable phrases. This is understandable. Aphorisms come from history, and much of Canada's present consists of running away from its past. Yet there are a few sayings that linger. 'The twentieth century belongs to Canada' was the product of the silver-tongued Sir Wilfrid Laurier, to which present-day Canadians are tempted to reply, 'Well, maybe the twenty-first century.' Mackenzie King, Laurier's successor, contributed 'conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription.'(f.1) There is no answer to this one, but the phrase lingers in the annals of circumlocution if not statesmanship. And then there is, 'We live in a fire-proof house, far from inflammable materials.' This gem, pithy, vivid, and concise, a model of the aphorist's art, was uttered in 1924 by Canada's delegate to the League of Nations, Senator Raoul Dandurand.(f.2) Long forgotten, it may be in for a new lease on life, for it says more about Canada's foreign policy than most Canadians would like to think.More familiar, if less elegant (and certainly less comprehensible), is the term 'Pearsonian diplomacy.' Its user is immediately identified as a Canadian, for only in Canada does the memory of Canada's only Nobel Peace Prize winner spring to mind as a definition of a particular approach to foreign policy.(f.3) In its most favourable interpretation, 'Pearsonian diplomacy' is today a formula for altruism, a progressive and liberal engagement in international affairs. Offered a choice between 'Dandurandism' (apparent aloofness and distance, based on a certain sense of invulnerability and superiority) and 'Pearsonianism' (apparent activity and engagement based on a sense of common peril), most Canadians would officially and publicly opt for the latter. Yet Dandurand's cause is not entirely lost.Dandurand spoke in particular historical circumstances. He was reminding the other members of the League of Nations, a mutual insurance society against international conflagrations, that Canada did not need their protection. He did not quite say that under the circumstances Canada would not rush to their defence, but he was intimating that such an action would be deeply altruistic or, in the language of the science of politics, 'asymmetrical.' Canada was in the world, and a big, bad world it was, but not of it.Perhaps this was something the other members of the League needed to hear. Not for nothing did Dandurand's master, Prime Minister Mackenzie King, call the organization 'the League of Notions'(f.4): the idea that one country would automatically rush to another's defence against external aggression was in King's opinion deeply dangerous. King knew many Canadians were tempted to do just that, which, in his view, would imperil the very existence of the country. Canada's most recent adventure abroad, the Great War of 1914-18, had required conscription to keep up its army in Europe. Conscription had highlighted and even exacerbated the differences between enthusiastic English Canadians and unenthusiastic French Canadians. A crisis in the Canadian political system resulted, with the country divided between the English-speaking majority and the French-speaking minority. Canada might not survive another such crisis.Mackenzie King had a gift for the diagnosis of political problems, and he was right. Canada was a divided country. There was nothing that could be done about that, certainly not in his lifetime. There were more English-speakers than French-speakers, and there was nothing that could be done about that, either. Yet living with these facts meant that a prudent Canadian leader must avoid, as far as possible, a situation where the English majority would be tempted to impose its will on the French minority. It also meant avoiding any circumstance in which the French minority thwarted the majority over something it deeply desired. Thus conscription if necessary but not necessarily conscription. …