Unsettled Balance: Ethics, Security, and Canada’s International Relations by Rosalind Warner, ed.

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kit Kirkland, University of St. Andrews, UKWarner's Unsettled Balance was prompted by a wave of international changes over last few years that have profoundly influenced international (3). For Warner, growth of social media and democratization has made us all more globally aware, while turn of international relations has focused our attention toward transnational from climate change to gender issues, human and responsibility to protect (R2P). Warner's book carries on [this] discourse [on] a relatively neglected dimension of international relations: relationship between ethical concerns and security concerns ... 'practical politics' involved in decision-making in a rapidly changing global context (8). Warner argues that although Canada's scope for action is sometimes viewed as circumscribed by its size and structural position, relative to other actors, [Canada's] policies are not made in an ethical vacuum[;] rather, decisions in a democracy call for elaboration and justification (4). Accordingly, her edited volume tackles ethical arguments surrounding rights, obligations, norms, values and national interest in four parts (9). Part 1 looks at humanitarianism and military security; part 2 explores security across borders and contemporary ethics of anti-terror policy, as well as law and order; part 3 explores approach to freedom from want issues through frames of poverty, gender, and environment; and lastly, part 4 compares relations with Colombia and continent of Africa. Due to its unusual case selection, part 4 seems a little disconnected from rest of book; so readers will likely focus on parts 1 and 2, which are most salient to Canada, its ethics, and international relations.Warner gives a fine overview of how ethical perspectives, through documents like Canadian Charter, have made it an international leader;Canada had become a charter member of what we might call 'moral minority,' that distinguished (and self-styled) group of states ... whose moral multilateralism is predicated ... on enunciation of a new set of global norms that will lead inexorably to creation of a just and more equitable international order. (13). Examples of Canadian leadership include the Rome Statute for International Criminal Court (ICC) and Anti-Personnel Mine Convention [the Ottawa Treaty] (12). Through Axworthy doctrine of late 1990s, emphasis of Canadian security migrated from national security to wider ethical considerations that referenced human security, focusing on humanitarian action in keeping with Canada's historical role in peacekeeping--the classic blue-beret experience (122). Nonetheless, War on Terror and Great Recession have since reinforced traditional national security paradigm, and whether domestic responses to these form a lasting departure from storied historical commitment to liberal internationalism remains an open question (18).[1]In part 2, Barbara Falk's discussion of post-9/11 and away game, and process of verticalization--how events at home have implications for Canadian actions abroad and vice-versa--was insightful. Through numerous cases from Air India Flight 182 bombing, to rendition of Maher Arar, repatriation of Omar Khadr, and prosecution of Toronto 18, Falk reviews how law has had to catch up to contemporary reality of terrorism that presumed one was either a combatant or a civilian (122-123). Falk notes that success of prosecuting terrorists for association and plots lies in growing conjunction of foreign and domestic efforts; however, Falk also highlights that these capabilities should not sacrifice Canadians' civil liberties under charter, and that terrorist false positives can and have been costly (115). …