The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations Francine Mckenzie The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations. Adam Chapnick. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2005. Pp. 336, $85 cloth Adam Chapnick's examination of Canada's role in the establishment of the United Nations Organization (un) is judiciously iconoclastic. Chapnick challenges the popular and persistent belief that Canada played a seminal and leading role in the establishment of the un during and immediately after the Second World War. He disputes the claim that Canada emerged as the leader of a second tier of states in world affairs, the so-called middle powers. If these two contentions are not enough, he portrays Lester Pearson, icon of Canadian liberal internationalism, as ambitious, self-serving, and occasionally ineffectual. The Middle Power Project makes for informative, perhaps dispiriting, reading, as Chapnick debunks several cherished national myths. The scope of his research – which includes extensive primary sources from Canada, Britain, and the United States – and the international parameters of the narrative establish a context in which he situates Canadian ideas, policies, and diplomacy. This approach, which integrates the history of Canadian diplomacy instead of having it stand alone, injects valuable perspective into the analysis. Chapnick's final judgments are, as a result, convincing. However, the causal explanations that he advances for his conclusions are not always entirely satisfying. For example, he attributes, in part, the failure of the Canadian Department of External Affairs to develop coherent and effective ideas and positions on the collective security organization to fractiousness among leading civil servants, especially Norman Robertson, Hume Wrong, Lester Pearson, and Escott Reid. But many of their fundamental aims dovetailed, and their incompatibility is perhaps overstated. One also wonders whether the disagreements amongst them were inherent in the process of formulating a single national policy. Chapnick's effort to rectify self-aggrandizing and romanticizing tendencies in the writings on Canadian diplomatic history is a substantial undertaking. He has not been satisfied, however, simply to correct the record. He insists that there is good reason to study the un, but that is because of what it can reveal about Canadian history, rather than international or United Nations history. He asks why the Canadian self-image as an important, constructive, selfless, and leading member of the international community, dating to the 1940s and persisting to the present day, has taken root. This is an interesting and important question that has implications for the historian's craft. He advances several possible reasons for this enduring and appealing national self-image, including the effectiveness of Lester Pearson's assertions about Canada's role in the [End Page 690] world, over-reliance by historians on the writings of Canada's mandarins, as well as a tendency characteristic of new nations and nationalisms. These and other possibilities are interesting and thought-provoking but not definitive. We can hope that he tackles this second, but by no means secondary, theme in a subsequent monograph. This ambitious and thoughtful work touches on other aspects of Canadian foreign policy, principally its relations with Britain and the United States. The contrast he paints between a close and constructive working relationship with British officials and the undeveloped and sterile working relationship with members of the us State Department raises questions about the forked-road trope and the postwar reorientation of Canadian foreign policy away from Britain towards the United States. Questions raised but not answered do not detract from Chapnick's carefully constructed and persuasive analysis. They suggest possible lines for future research. Despite the critical perspective of The Middle Power Project, Chapnick finds much to praise in Canadian diplomacy. He shares the view of historians like John Holmes and John English that it was sensible for Canadian delegates to the San Francisco conference of 1945 to work above all to ensure that the un came into being and not allow particular quibbles to sidetrack them. He acknowledges that Canada made valuable contributions to the development of the Economic and Social Council of the un, contributions that suggest that Canadian influence could be felt more readily in some areas of policy (economic and social) than others (security). That...