External Affairs Research Articles

Craig Donald Burrell

Craig Donald Burrell, physician, Sandoz executive, and past president of the New York Academy of Sciences, died on 20 November 2009 at the Lutheran Medical Centre, Brooklyn, from a massive...

Fauziah Mohd Taib (ed.) - Number One Wisma Putra

Number One Wisma Putra celebrates more than half a century of service to Malaysia by the country’s Foreign Service. Its humble origins date back to July 1956 as External Affairs Ministry of the then Federation of Malaya, before Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra Al-Haj became the first Minister of Foreign Affairs in September 1957 - only ten days after independence from Britain. Today, No. 1 Wisma Putra happens to be the address of the Malaysian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the country’s new administrative capital, Putrajaya, which is only a short drive south of Kuala Lumpur, where the Ministry had its beginnings. As pointed out in the foreword by Malaysia’s former Prime Minister, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who from 1991 to 1999 served also as the country’s foreign minister, ‘Wisma Putra’ is the popular non-official name for the Ministry, thus fondly remembering its founder Tunku Abdul Rahman, the ‘Father of Malaysia’s Independence’.

From Periphery to Priority

No bilateral relationship between Canada and an Asian country has been as tumultuous as that ofthe Canada-India relationship. Sour memories of the fundamental divergences over Cold War security issues and nuclear nonproliferation that corroded ties between Ottawa and New Delhi have lingered until recently. The legacy of those divergences profoundly affected the depth of interaction between the two countries for the better part of three decades. Bilateral relations had been in decline since the late 1950s due to tension between Canadians and Indians serving on the Indochina commissions. During that era, politicians and a generation of young diplomats grumbled about what they interpreted as India's hypocrisy in pursuing a policy of nonalignment that appeared too heavily tilted toward Moscow. Other officials observed that at the United Nations the Indians were rarely easy to cooperate with on matters such as the law of the sea negotiations. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to follow through with the 1974 nuclear test that relied on Canadian nuclear technology intended strictly for peaceful purposes served as the capstone for many in the Department of External Affairs who were disillusioned with the Indian government and arguing that Ottawa must tone down its political relationship with New Delhi. Skeptics of India concluded that that country's suspension of civil liberties during the 1975 emergency confirmed the wisdom of their analysis that neither country had much in common in terms of political interests or common values. The fact that India's economy remained stagnant further subtracted from India's charms of old. India did have its champions in External Affairs, notably Geoffrey Pearson and David Reece, but its boosters were few, outnumbered the veterans of the Indochina commissions, who the 1980s filled the senior ranks of the department. The passage of time did little to soften their negative memories of Indian foreign policy. During the 1980s, neither government chose to divert resources and attention to overcome the malaise that had set in. India remained on the periphery of Ottawa's political and bureaucratic interest, much as it had been since the 1960s. This influenced the direction of the bilateral relationship profoundly, not least because precious few actors were engaged in building links between the two countries.However, a slow evolution is occurring that has led Canada to move India closer to the centre of its foreign policy agenda. India is increasingly considered a priority Canadian decision-makers. This article will assess how that transformation occurred, and in so doing, posits a few lessons from the past that may resonate in assessing the present state of bilateral relations. These lessons include the questionable influence of perceived common values; the need to consider the impact of the US-India relationship on Canadian policy; the need for a sustained and substantive political will towards India; and, finally, the need to consider how a lack of knowledge of the other has historically affected the state of relations.THE AFTERMATH OF POKHRAN: 1976-93Allan MacEachen was secretary of state for external affairs in March 1976 when the Trudeau cabinet agreed to suspend all nuclear cooperation with India. MacEachen strongly supported the decision and agreed with the assessment of his under-secretary, Basil Robinson, that for the foreseeable future Canada's relations with India would not be particularly close.1 Seven years later, MacEachen travelled to south Asia as part of Ottawa's attempt to emphasize ties with the Asia- Pacific region and he visited India. In doing so, MacEachen became the first secretary of state to visit India since Lester Pearson in 1955. News of the visit was warmly welcomed the Canadian high commissioner in New Delhi, John Hadwen, who had lobbied for such a visit, noting that there had been major efforts by our competitors, particularly [the] British, French and Germans to improve relations with India, involving more senior contacts. …

To Know and Be Known

In winter of 1989, five years after his department led effort to establish Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada (APFC), secretary of state for external affairs, Joe Clark, met with foundation's board of directors in small meeting room just off reception area on ninth floor of Pearson Building in downtown Ottawa. minister's comments were upbeat and supportive. He was very pleased with foundation's progress. He understood frustrations that accompanied its lonely task as a catalyst for others, and difficult challenges it faced wrestling with an imprecise mandate and uncertain funding.1 In private, however, his advisors were less kind. The jury is still out on foundation, they wrote. Its staff worked in isolation and at cross-purposes and its programs suffered from lack of urgency and too much dispersed activity. foundation's progress, they concluded grimly, was disappointing and has not met expectations.2The department's disillusionment with APFC was unfortunate but understandable, and perhaps even predictable. foundation concept emerged as an important initiative of Asian and Pacific bureau of Department of External Affairs in late 1970s. At time when department was searching for new roles and new ways to relate to Canadians, prospect of foundation that would unite policymakers with crosssection of Canadians interested in Asia was novel and exciting. As Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau' s government sought to demonstrate the reality that Canada is Pacific country, foundation idea emerged among its main bureaucratic supporters as potent symbol of Canada's future Asian destiny.3 Promoting foundation as vehicle to underscore Canada's maturing political commitment to Asia, they confronted officials and politicians who continued to define Canada's stake in Asia in traditional terms as largely, if not exclusively, economic. However satisfying, victory in this struggle was short-lived. As department sought public support it needed to transform its vision of foundation into reality, it was forced to cede some control to its outside partners. Led by John Bruk, Vancouver businessman and mining executive recruited to study foundation's feasibility, department's collaborators increasingly forced pace, naturally determined to create an independent voice on Canada's relations with Asia- Pacific world. tension that emerged during final round of activity leading to establishment of APF hinted at unsatisfactory partnership to come.In spring of 1979, Tom Delworth settled into his new job in Department of External Affairs as director general of bureau of Asian and Pacific affairs. Like many foreign service officers recruited in 1950s, Delworth was more familiar with Asia and Canada's stake there than most of diplomats who had joined department in 1930s and 1940s. Steeped in prewar North Atlanticism, this fading generation had been inclined to see Asia as foreign territory - rich certainly, but often dangerous and politically treacherous. D el worth' s views were different. Since joining department in 1956, he had been extensively exposed to Asia and its challenges. He cut his diplomatic teeth on peace commissions in Indochina, managed department's Vietnam desk from 1964 to 1970, and served as Canada's ambassador to stirring Indonesian giant from 1970 to 1974. Indelibly shaped by Asian Cold War, Delworth was convinced that Canadian interests in Pacific went well beyond economic issues and included broad range of military, security, and political ties.From Delworth' s perspective, Canada had still failed to acknowledge these interests. Indeed, by late 1970s, Trudeau's early efforts to engage Asia were badly stalled. Relations with India had ruptured over New Delhi's nuclear tests in 1974, while Commonwealth ties with Australia and New Zealand had been allowed to fade until it seemed that like Alice's Cheshire Cat, nothing [would] remain but smile. …

The Poor Cousin?

It may surprise Canadians to know that 50 years ago when their government looked across the Pacific, the primary focus of attention was every bit as much on key countries in southeast Asia as it was on other parts of the continent. However, 25 years ago, when the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada was founded, the rapid economic maturing of Japan and South Korea was already beginning to eclipse southeast Asia as a region requiring Ottawa's attention. Since then, the remarkable post-Cold War ascent of the economies of both China and India - and Canada's recent commitments to security in Afghanistan - have continued to push Canada's relations with southeast Asia further and further down the list of its Asian priorities. But for any number of reasons, including the personal bonds and political and economic relations that tie Canada to southeast Asia as well as the centrality of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to the process of regional community building in east Asia, Canada should not underestimate the importance of working on specific issues so as to maintain a strong and enduring engagement with the region.A LEGACY OF LINKAGESCanada does not have a high profile within southeast Asia, nor indeed does ASEAN (whose members are Brunei, Burma/Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) have a high profile in Canada, but Canada's past relations with southeast Asia have left significant legacies. For example, Canada was the non-communist representative on the International Control Commission set up in 1954 to oversee the Geneva accords that ended France's occupation of Vietnam. Canada's role on the commission lasted until 1973. Significantly, the part the Canadian government played in officially monitoring events in Vietnam during a very turbulent period in its history meant that a generation of External Affairs officers were cycled though the commission. They, therefore, had experience of southeast Asia even if, by most accounts, it was not always a very pleasant one.More positively, Canada has had a longstanding interest in the development of various societies of the region. As an original member of the 1950 Colombo plan, Canada established a series of development projects in the two Commonwealth countries in southeast Asia - Malaya/Malaysia and Singapore - during the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, Indonesia replaced Malaysia as the main recipient of Canadian development assistance and Canada also began providing assistance for a number of ASEAN regional development projects. Indeed, Canada's current development assistance program allocates around $12 million a year to its southeast Asia regional program. Over the years since then, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) have maintained a strong interest in the ASEAN region, implementing, most recently, significant development cooperation projects in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Overall, Canada has contributed more than $2.8 billion to development cooperation in southeast Asia since 1977.ASEAN was formed by the Bangkok declaration of 1967 and was essentially a product of the Cold War. Faced in particular with threats from communist subversion, the five original members - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand - all saw the promotion of social and economic development as a way of countering these internal threats. Indeed, the idea of national social and economic resilience was then translated into ASEAN's commitment to fostering resilience in the region. It was in this context that contributions to the region's economic development from all quarters have been seen as especially valuable. In the association's early years, Canada's contributions of development assistance were particularly welcome.Canada's decision in 1975 to provide developmental assistance for a number of regional ASEAN projects led to important advances on other fronts. …

Pierre Elliott Trudeau's Peace Initiative

It's useful to express non-conventional truths about non-conventional subjects. - Pierre Elliott Trudeau1From politicians with the gifts necessary to inspire and mobilize others behind causes, much is expected. In return, they receive little patience and little understanding when, almost inevitably, results fall short. Former United States Vice President Al Gore, not known for such gifts while in office, was co-awarded the 2007 Nobel peace prize for his ability to draw attention to the inconvenient truth of climate change. If only, some critics said, he had demonstrated such leadership on this issue while in office. During his last term as prime minister of Canada from 1980 to 1984, Pierre Elliott vowed not to be a politician who waited until he was out office, as if planning a retirement project, to speak out and act on what he deemed nonconventional, inconvenient truths. With Quebec's sovereigntists in disarray following a referendum and a charter of rights and freedoms enshrined but also with significant national economic woes and tumbling popularity, turned the waning political capital of his last months in office to the non-conventional: a personal international in scope, focused on nuclear nonproliferation.The Trudeau peace initiative, as it came to be known, saw the prime minister tour capitals, including Washington, London, and Moscow, to encourage east- west dialogue when the threat of nuclear war seemed great. In the history of Canadian foreign relations it made little splash, and it been treated - in the media and the history books alike - as an insignificant and unimportant episode. That the protagonist - a man with a reputation for demonstrating sporadic interest in foreign affairs, whom pundits suggested was either grasping at legacy narratives while nearing retirement or hoping for another term - was sinking in the polls had something to do with the treatment, then and now.According to one senior official who helped craft them, Trudeau' s five disarmament proposals were a dog's breakfast that muddied his message and created a public checklist that was impossible to complete,2 and the man who wrote Trudeau's house of commons speech said the mission went on past its best-by date.3 But Robert Fowler, who was Trudeau's Privy Council Office foreign and defence policy advisor, a different perspective:You know the old story of the Lunenburg fisherman who's coming up from the dock with two pails of lobsters, and he meets his buddy on the way down, and they walk by each other and the buddy looks down and shouts, 'Hey, watch it! Your lobsters are crawling out... escaping!' And the guy doesn't even turn around - he just shouts over his shoulder, 'Don't you worry about that, they're Canadian lobsters, and as soon as one gets part way up, the other guy will pull him back down.4Fowler suggests that the legacy ofthe peace initiative is a victim ofthe Canadian complex that discourages lofty goals. The he said, has got rather historical short shrift, and a little unfairly. The events of 1983-84 were chronicled extensively in the media and in numerous scholarly works, the vast majority written in the decade following the events. Trudeau's alleged disdain for the Department of External Affairs; the reaction of officials in the United States and their labelling of Trudeau's behaviour as that of a marijuana-consuming leftist; and revelations about the motivations behind, and results of, the initiative occupy many pages.Twenty-five years later, through access to official archives, interviews with key players, and the benefits of distance and much collective national reflection on Trudeau's legacy, one can discern more enduring themes. The initiative reflected a personalized style of diplomacy seeking to escape the constraints of traditional diplomacy, layers of bureaucracy, domestic politics, and the national press in an age of summit diplomacy and an insatiable demand for news. …

Showdown on the Subcontinent

Research Article| September 01 2009 Showdown on the Subcontinent Megha Bahree Megha Bahree 1Megha Bahree is a staff writer at Forbes, specializing in Asia and the India-Pakistan region. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google World Policy Journal (2009) 26 (3): 41–49. https://doi.org/10.1162/wopj.2009.26.3.41 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Megha Bahree; Showdown on the Subcontinent. World Policy Journal 1 September 2009; 26 (3): 41–49. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/wopj.2009.26.3.41 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsWorld Policy Journal Search Advanced Search Issue Section: ARTICLE You do not currently have access to this content.

The United States, India, and Global Governance: Can They Work Together?

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgements This article has been excerpted and adapted from her new book, The United States and India in the 21st Century: Reinventing Partnership (CSIS, June 2009). Notes 1. N. Ram, “We Anticipated Global Slowdown, Our Fiscal Stimulus Is In Place: Manmohan,” The Hindu, November 17, 2008, http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/17/stories/2008111756730100.htm. 2. “Voting Practices in the United Nations, 2007,” Bureau of International Organization Affairs, U.S. Department of State, May 5, 2007, 89–98, http://www.state.gov/p/io/rls/rpt/c25867.htm. 3. United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations, “Monthly Summary of Contributors of Military and Civilian Police Personnel,” 2009, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/contributors/; Ministry of External Affairs, India, “India and the United Nations: U.N. Peacekeeping,” http://www.un.int/india/india_and_the_un_pkeeping.html; Current and retired officials from India's Ministry of External Affairs, interviews by author, February and September 2008. 4. Center for UN Reform Education, “The United Nations Security Council: Reforms Concerning its Membership–An Overview,” February 2007, www.centerforunreform.org/system/files/Security+Council_Overview.pdf. 5. IMF Members’ Quotas and Voting Power, and IMF Board of Governors, Web site, April 29, 2009, http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/memdir/members.htm#i. 6. For example, see the statement submitted by the finance minister of India, P. Chidambaram, at the annual meeting of the World Bank's Development Committee, October 12, 2008 (author has a hardcopy). 7. David H. McCormick, “IMF Reform: Meeting the Challenges of Today's Global Economy” (speech, The Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington D.C., February 25, 2008), http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp838.htm. 8. Ashok Chawla, Alternate Governor of the World Bank for India, statement on behalf of Hon. Mr. P. Chidambaram, Governor of the Fund and the Bank for India, at the Joint Annual Discussion, October 13, 2008, http://www.imf.org/external/am/2008/speeches/pr39e.pdf. 9. See Andrew F. Cooper and Ramesh Thakur, “Wishing on a Star for the G8 Summit,” The Hindu, July 7, 2008, http://www.hindu.com/2008/07/07/stories/2008070755351000.htm; Katharina Gnath, “Beyond Heiligendamm,” Internationale Politik (Fall 2007), http://www.ip-global.org/ip/autor/authors/2cff4c90f70511da8d52cbd5365c6aaf6aaf/1.html. 10. “Statement by the Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh, at the Summit of the Heads of State or Governments of the G-20 countries on Financial Markets and the World Economy,” Washington, D.C., November 15, 2008, http://www.indianembassy.org/newsite/press_release/2008/Nov/7.asp. 11. Bob Davis, “India Ready to Buy IMF Bonds,” Wall Street Journal, April 26, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124067299074156277.html. 12. See Jyoti K. Parikh and Kirit Parikh, “Climate Change: India's Perceptions, Positions, Policies and Possibilities” (Washington, D.C.: OECD, 2002) 7, http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/22/16/1934784.pdf. 13. See Subodh Sharma, Sumana Bhattacharya, and Amit Garg, “Greenhouse Gas Emissions from India: A Perspective,” Current Science 90, no. 3 (February 2006): 329, http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/feb102006/326.pdf. 14. Ministry of External Affairs, India, “PM's intervention on Climate Change at the Heiligendamm Meeting,” June 8, 2007, . 15. UNFCCC, “Report of the Conference of the Parties on its thirteenth session, held in Bali from 3 to 15 December 2007,” FCCC/CP/2007/6/Add.1, Bali, Indonesia, March 14, 2008, 3–8, http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2007/cop13/eng/06a01.pdf#page=3. 16. Emissions of carbon dioxide are growing by 1.1 percent per year in the United States. The growth rate in China is projected at 3.3 percent, and in India at 2.6 percent. China's emissions of carbon dioxide are expected to exceed those of the United States by 15 percent in 2010 and by 75 percent in 2030. See U.S. Department of Energy, “International Energy Outlook 2008,” DOE/EIA-0484(2008), Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting, September 2008, 93–94. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/0484(2008).pdf. 17. For example, see “Declaration of Leaders Meeting of Major Economies on Energy Security and Climate Change,” Hokkaido, Japan, July 9, 2008, http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/economy/summit/2008/doc/doc080709_10_en.html. 18. See Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, http://www.asiapacificpartnership.org/. 19. “A Year After the Japan Quake,” Nuclear Energy Insight (August/September 2008): 4, http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/documentlibrary/publications/nuclearenergyinsight/insightseptember2008; David Pumphrey, interview with author, Washington, D.C., August 2008 (former U.S. Department of Energy official). 20. WorldPublicOpinion.org, “Most Indians say India should Limit its Greenhouse Gases,” March 1, 2006, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brasiapacificra/169.php?nid=&id=&pnt=169&lb=bras. 21. WorldPublicOpinion.org, “McCain and Obama Supporters Largely Agree on Approaches to Energy, Climate Change,” September 23, 2008, http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/btenvironmentra/542.php?lb=brusc&pnt=542&nid=&id=. Additional informationNotes on contributorsTeresita C. SchafferAmbassador Teresita C. Schaffer is the director of the South Asia Program at CSIS

Knowledge, Trade‐Offs, and Tracking Truth

There are so many ideas in Roush’s dashing yet meticulous book that it is hard to confine oneself to a manageable menu of issues. Here I will reluctantly omit discussion of scientific realism, fallibilism, contextualism, and much else. My focus will be on one core part of Roush’s account of the ‘‘tracking’’ of facts, and the relation between tracking and knowledge. In approaching rival ‘‘theories of knowledge’’ it is helpful to distinguish three sets of facts. An imaginary complete philosophical theory in this area would have things to say on three different matters. First, there are facts about our ordinary concept of knowledge, and related concepts such as those of evidence and justification. The term ‘‘concept’’ might (should) be suspicious here, and I use it in a low-key sense. Perhaps it is better to imagine a complete account of how the words ‘‘knowledge’’ and ‘‘know’’ (etc.) are used, in both everyday circumstances and special ones. A second set of facts concerns how we human beings, and perhaps other organisms, are actually connected to the world with respect to epistemic matters. What sort of coordination and contact with external affairs do our perceptual states, beliefs, and theories achieve, when things go well and when things go badly? What sort of outcomes can be reasonably hope for, when we set out on the task of representing the world? Philosophers have to use some terms and concepts when developing this second body of theory, but they need not be familiar, everyday terms like ‘‘knowledge.’’ A third set of facts follows from, and concerns the relation between, the first two. How do the terms, concepts, and pictures that people ordinarily employ in this area relate to our actual epistemic attributes?

Canadiana Abroad: The Department of External Affairs' Book Presentation Programmes, 1949–1963

This article examines one aspect of Canada's early cultural diplomacy. During the late 1940s, the Department of External Affairs frequently received requests for Canadian books from foreign libraries. At the same time, many officials were eager to promote Canadian culture abroad. The Annual Book Presentation Programme was inaugurated with the intention of creating “repositories of Canadiana” which might stimulate interest in Canada among foreign readers. Although the budget for the program was always modest, over the years the department's book gifts did fulfill their aim, creating a basis for the later growth of Canadian studies in universities abroad.

Canada and NATO

LORD ISMAY, CANADIAN-STYLELord Ismay, NATO's first secretary general, famously summed up the purposes of the Atlantic alliance as keeping the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down. Behind this legendary bon mot was a stern reality that encapsulated NATO's grand strategic rationale. It was first and foremost about security. Security meant holding the Soviet Union militarily and politically at bay so that behind the shield afforded by American power, western Europe, with West Germany firmly entrenched a liberaldemocratic market-economic community, could recover, flourish, and never threaten anyone again. And so NATO did all three things, making it one of the most successful alliances history.Canadian diplomats and politicians who heard Ismay's formulation no doubt agreed with it. Canada had a fundamental interest European security. During the 20th century, Canada saw as vital to its interests the prevention of any single power from dominating Europe - first Germany, against which Canada went to war twice, and then the Soviet Union. Today, Canada has a fundamental interest defeating Islamist terror. To this end, Canada is playing a leading role NATO's efforts Afghanistan.Canada was a founding member of the alliance and, at the time of its establishment, deeply committed to it. At the Department of External Affairs, Escott Reid, who as assistant undersecretary of state for external affairs was heavily involved the negotiations leading up to the North Atlantic Treaty, noted, [t]his link across the North Atlantic seems to me to be such a providential solution to so many of our problems that I feel we should go to great length and even incur considerable risk order to consolidate our good fortune and ensure our proper place this new partnership.1 From such a superheated level, Canadian enthusiasm for NATO could only cool subsequent years. Indeed, Canada sometimes struggled with being entangled with nuclear weapons the service of the west's collective defence, doubted whether any direct Canadian military contribution to European defence made sense, and even worried that participation NATO was overwhelming its foreign and defence policies. Yet no Canadian government ever gave any serious consideration to leaving the alliance entirely favour of neutrality.NATO provided Canada, addition to security, with a trio of useful extra services. First, involvement the alliance meant that Ottawa was in. It had a seat at the most important allied table the world. Second, because of the very character of the alliance, with its wide membership, its political acceptance of any level of contribution on the part of those members, and its reliance on nuclear deterrence, Ottawa was able to keep its defence costs down for most, albeit not all, of the history of NATO. Finally, NATO allowed Canada's leaders to keep out criticism of its defence policy from multiple quarters. Governments were largely insulated against charges from the left that Canada had simply become a partner to behemoth or powder monkey to the United States, and from the right that it was not doing enough for collective defence.Canadians, it is fair to say, have obsessed for nearly 60 years over being in has meant and how much it has paid off. While Ottawa emphasized the influence it had allied quarters as NATO struggled with the great issues of defence, deterrence, peace, and security, Europe and now Afghanistan, Canadian scholars and journalists debated endlessly over exactly how influential it really was. It would have been far better simply to have settled upon a conclusion Peyton Lyon reached 1963 that what can scarcely be questioned is that Canada has gained more influence over western defence and foreign policies by being inside NORAD and NATO than if she remained on the outside.2 But even Lyon could not do so, going on later years to administer surveys to international decision-makers that seemed to indicate that Canada had more influence than Italy. …

Contact Africa

found Sam.1 This opening to a May 1977 telex helped further an intense and genuine foreign policy engagement in southern Africa by Canada and other western powers on the United Nations security council. Canada and West Germany were months into two-year temporary terms and were, along with the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, participating in a diplomatic contact (also called the five). Canada had been included by the others because of its council seat.2 The group, an initiative of President Jimmy Carter, had come together in March to find an internationally acceptable solution to the problem of Namibia, which South Africa was administering in defiance of world opinion - as defined by a 1966 United Nations general assembly resolution revoking South Africa's League of Nations mandate over the territory, and a 1971 International Court of Justice advisory opinion that found its presence to be illegal. The solution, embodied in council resolution 385, 31 January 1976, called Namibia's transition to independence and majority-rule after United Nations-supervised and -controlled elections.3 The group was not formally a part of the security council or the United Nations, but its members planned to ask the organization to deploy peacekeepers to handle implementation.To get to that point, the group needed to find Sam. The president of the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), Sam Nujoma had avoided meeting the group and could not be found in April or May when they sought to give him an initial working paper. Nujoma's support was crucial because SWAPO was Namibia's leading liberation movement. The general assembly had recognized SWAPO as the sole and authentic representative of the Namibian people.4 And suddenly, there he was, in the VIP lounge of Maputo airport, Mozambique. Nujoma was in Maputo the United Nations international conference in support of the peoples of Zimbabwe and Namibia, 16-21 May, and Verona Edelstein of Canada's permanent mission to the United Nations had found him. She received instructions from all governments to convince Nujoma to meet the group in Maputo. With the help of Salim Salim, Tanzania's ambassador to the United Nations, who took a great personal risk as a representative of a socialist state in encouraging the western initiative, she managed to do so. Nujoma told the conference delegates that he had no confidence in the gang of five (as the non-aligned movement tended to call it), but would participate for whatever it was worth.5That the group did not free Namibia during 1977-79, ^s three most active years, is not this article's main concern. (It argues that failure was the result of South Africa's wanting to delay as long as possible the moment when it had to surrender Namibia.) The article is largely about an examination of Canadian foreign policy towards Africa and southern Africa in the mid- to the late-i970s. Canada's Africa policy in that period has been dismissed as having been subject to its liberal-capitalist system and the western alliance, as improvisational and undisciplined by a clear sense of the national interest in Africa, and as hardly changing from 196 1 to the mid1980s. For most Canadians, the continent stirred only on the level of the imagination.6 In fact, Canada had significant political and security interests in Africa that the government was actively reviewing and pursuing in light of the change sweeping the continent. Just as important, the group forced the Department of External Affairs to learn an enormous amount and fully elaborate Canada's foreign policy towards Africa. This all meant that External Affairs was ready when Brian Mulroney began calling the imposition of sanctions against South Africa in the mid-1980s.Before the group's initiative, Africa and southern Africa received less attention from the Pierre Elliott Trudeau government than other files of comparable scope and complexity. …

The quest for ‘wriggle room’: Australia and the Refugees Convention, 1951–73

The extent to which the Pacific Solution and other refugee policy developments under the Howard government were contested within Canberra circles will not be known until cabinet files are opened many years hence. However, if recent research into the White Australia policy is anything to go by, the files may shed unappreciated nuance on the context and reasoning behind such developments. We cannot pre-empt this research, but we can explore documents to which we do have access to deepen insight into Australia's refugee policy foundations, and to prepare the ground for more informed assessments of recent developments. Using archived policy files, this article examines the internal debates that surrounded Australia's accession to the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees. The picture that emerges challenges simplistic assessments as to the motives of policy makers of the time. It also shows how different government departments—in this case Immigration and External (now Foreign) Affairs—can support policy changes for different reasons, at different speeds, and not always in the order that might be expected.

Welcoming address of the Vice-President (External Affairs) at the opening ceremonies of the 14th World Congress of Psychophysiology – The Olympics of the Brain – I.O.P. 2008

Research on visuospatial functioning has revealed cognitive challenges for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), nonverbal learning disability (NLD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These disorders are characterized by some overlapping symptoms, making their diagnosis a challenge.The study aims to clarify the role of visuospatial abilities in their neuropsychological profiles by investigating different visuospatial domains and their interplay with the local-global processing.Participants (N = 150) with ASD, NLD, or ADHD were compared with typically-developing (TD) children on visuospatial processing speed, visuo-perceptual abilities, visuo-constructive abilities, and visuospatial working memory. Generalized mixed-effects models were performed and receiver operating characteristic curves were estimated to express the usefulness of a local-global processing index in discriminating groups.The NLD group was impaired in all domains; children with ADHD revealed a heterogeneous profile, with greater impairments in visuospatial processing speed; ASD and TD groups were comparable. The local-global processing index had predictive power in discriminating among groups in visuo-constructive task.The study of visuospatial abilities of children with ASD, NLD and ADHD might help to understand strengths and weaknesses in their neuropsychological profile and to differentiate between them. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Much ado about Parties

Conventional wisdom holds that governments matter - i.e., that a new government, particularly one of a different political party, will make substantial changes to the policies of the state it was elected to lead. The focus of this article is whether party affiliation matters in determining Canada's priorities and policies in its relationship with the United States. It will compare policy statements and performances of Liberal, Progressive Conservative, and Conservative governments from the advent of the Trudeau Liberal government in 1968 to the present and will argue that party affiliation has had little impact on Canada's US policy over this period. The analysis will proceed in three parts. In the first part, the Canada-US relationship will be discussed briefly. This will be followed by an overview of the economic priorities of Canadian governments concerning the US from 1968 to the present, as gleaned from major policy statements such as white papers and speeches. The final part of the article will set out some of the reasons why party affiliation has had little substantive impact on Canada's policy with the US over the last 40 years, including the limited electoral salience of issues with the Canadian public, the difficulty of packaging positions concerning the increasing complexity of issues in parties' electoral platforms, the private sector character of trade, and the increasing intrusiveness of agreements to which Canada is a signatory.CANADA-US TRADE: A BRIEF OVERVIEWCanada has always been a trading nation. International trade, especially bilateral with the US, is an increasingly important component of Canada's economic health and, therefore, a concern to all political parties. That matters to Canada has long been understood: in 1942, Hugh Keenleyside wrote that for Canada, trade and other economic factors are fundamental to ninety percent of all international relations.1 Almost 40 years later, these same sentiments were voiced by an official in the Department of External Affairs when he remarked that Canada's foreign policy is 90 percent oriented toward and commerce.2 In addition to the importance of international to Canada, it needs to be stressed that policy is not singular but rather plural in character. Each province and sector has different needs and expectations concerning Canada's economic relations with the US, as well as the rest of the world.Canada consistently leads the G8 states in terms of exports as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). What this means is that Canada more than any other member ofthe G8 relies on exports for its economic health. Access to the US market is of prime importance. Exports to the US over the 2001-07 period accounted for 84.5 percent of total Canadian exports, on average. This was an increase from 80.8 percent for the 1990-2000 period, from 73.5 percent over the 1980-89 period and from 68.6 percent over the 1970-79 period. Illustrating the importance ofthe American market as a source for Canadian exports, according to export data for 2007, eight American states would rank as Canada's top export destination if they were to be considered as separate markets and not part of the US.At the provincial level, Canadian provinces became increasingly dependent on international exports for their economic health over the 19972006 period. Ontario was the most economically integrated into the global economy, leading Canadian provinces in terms of percentage of GDP accounted for by the export goods and services (47.8 percent) over this period. Nova Scotia, conversely, was the least integrated province with an average of 25.6 percent of its GDP coming from the export of goods and services over this time.3 Examining provincial with the US, all provinces were exporting more to the US in 2007 than in 1998. This increase in integration with the American market was led by Ontario which sent an average of 90. …

Impact of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis on Russia’s Internal and External Affairs

This article examines how the global financial and economic crisis and the accompanying change in international oil prices have affected Russia’s internal and external affairs, especially the tandem system of governance and its foreign policy towards East Asia. Because this crisis was not foreseen when the tandem administration was introduced, at present, political stability is suffering from poor crisis management. While it cannot be said that the tandem system has been fundamentally damaged, judging from the fact that Prime Minister Putin is increasingly adopting a hands-on approach, the probability that he will be back as President in the coming presidential election is growing. Though not proved, Russia’s assertive foreign policy largely depended on the high international oil prices before the Georgian conflict. Whether Russia likes it or not, after the global financial and economic crisis, Russia has to tap East Asia to recover its economic growth by exporting more energy products to the emerging new markets there. However, we should not overestimate this trend as East Asia is not Russia’s top-most foreign policy priority, and Russia does not accord that much strategic importance to East Asia. Because Russia’s national goal for 2020, as stated in “National Security Strategy through to 2020 of Russian Federation,” is continued economic growth so as to become the fifth-largest economy in the world, it is much more important—after this crisis—to pay attention to the correlation between economic and political factors using the interdisciplinary method.

Editor's introduction: Thirty years of <i>Irish Studies in International Affairs</i>

In addition to having a strong focus this year on the concept of the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P), this issue of Irish Studies in International Affairs marks the thirtieth year of publication of the journal?something of a milestone and one that provides an opportunity to look back over the development of the journal itself and the wider study of international affairs in Ireland over that time period. A National Committee for the Study of International Affairs had been established by the Royal Irish Academy in 1977, and the first issue of this journal two years later published a series of papers from seminars and the committee's first annual conference. That issue, edited by Liam de Paor and Patrick Keatinge, had a focus that would not be out of place today?Ireland's relationship with the League of Nations and United Nations, Anglo-Irish relations, Ireland's development policy and the direction of Irish foreign policy. The committee that oversaw the launch of the journal included, in addition to the editors, some people who have retained a connection with the Academy's international affairs committee to the present day?Garret FitzGerald and Noel Dorr?and academics who went on to publish in the journal frequently in the following years. The demand to publish the journal reflected a wider sense that Ireland needed a greater level of academic reflection on foreign affairs. The low level of debate on foreign policy matters was also of concern to members of Dail Eireann at that time. In 1978, a future leader of the Labour party, Ruairi Quinn, speaking in the first debate on foreign affairs after Fianna Fail's overwhelming victory in the 1977 election, called for a public debate on the values that should inform foreign policy. In the course of his speech, Quinn said that 'there appears to be a lack of interest in foreign affairs' and that in the past, even during the period of external affairs minister Frank Aiken's high-profile activity in the United Nations in the late 1950s, the decisions made in relation to Ireland's foreign affairs activities were 'of concern perhaps more to the individuals [involved] and the parties rather than to the public'.1 He argued that this was set to change,

New Zealand Sovereignty: 1857, 1907, 1947, or 1987?

This article1 provides a brief overview of some of the key dates inNew Zealand’s path to independence, with particular emphasis on New Zealand’s progression to gaining complete and formal sovereignty over its external affairs. The year 2007 marked the centenary of New Zealand’s transition from colony to Dominion, and also marked 60 years since New Zealand passed the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1947. In 1857 responsible government was consolidated and more than nominal independence from Britain achieved when the British Parliament passed the New Zealand Constitution Amendment Act. This gave the New Zealand Parliament authority to amend all but a few entrenched sections of the New Zealand Constitution Act 1852. Although the change in the designation of New Zealand - from the 'Colony of New Zealand’ to the 'Dominion of NewZealand’ - took effect on 26 September 1907, complete autonomy in New Zealand’s foreign affairs was not obtained. The Governor-General continued to: be appointed by Britain; act as both representative of the British Government as well as the sole official representative of New Zealand views to the Imperial government; be the only person to hold the official coding ciphers; exercise sole discretion over which material and despatches were to be passed to the New Zealand government. New Zealand acquired the right to conduct its own international trade negotiations independently of Britain in 1923. It exercised this right for the first time in 1928, when it signed a trade treaty with Japan.Before the Statute of Westminster Act 1931 — and arguably until the New Zealand Parliament passed the Statute of Westminster Adoption Act in 1947 - the New Zealand Parliament was not a sovereign parliament; it did not have the capacity to make all law (such as legislating extra-territorially), and there were some laws that it could not unmake. Full New Zealand sovereignty can be dated to 1947 - both in terms of gaining formal legal control over the conduct of its foreign policy and the attainment of constitutional and plenary powers by its legislature. In passing the Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January1987), New Zealand ‘unilaterally revoked all residual United Kingdom legislativepower’. New Zealand, as of 1987, had become a free-standing constitutionalmonarchy whose Parliament possessed unlimited sovereign power.

David M. Malone

David M. Malone' s appointment in February as president of the International Development Research Centre seems a natural step for a man whose career embodies the worldview of the crown corporation. Both Malone and IDRC, which aims to assist developing countries in nurturing local research groups to tackle social, economic, and political issues, are familiar with the problems facing such countries and the potential the global research community has to address them. Most recently, Malone was Canada's high commissioner in Delhi, where IDRC has a regional office, and his selection has been met with praise in the two worlds that he has known best - diplomacy and research.Malone was born in 1954 in Ottawa, the son of an Australian mother and Canadian father who was recruited by the then- Department of External Affairs. Thus began a childhood spent in the Netherlands, France, and Iran, a country he returned to in 2004 for the first time in 25 years. The early exposure to a cosmopolitan lifestyle appealed to the young Malone, who says his parents' frequent travels encouraged him to seek a job that would enable him to do the same.Kids often default into the sort of professional lives of their parents and think did that very much, having grown up internationally, says Malone. I think simply having moved around as a kid and lived in different societies, all of which I'd liked and had liked learning from, it was something wanted to continue to do during my life.He studied business at Montreal's Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales before following his father's footsteps by joining the Department of External Affairs for a career that would lead him to postings in Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait, among other countries. After completing a master's degree in public administration at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Malone returned to External Affairs to assist Ostry, then deputy minister of international trade and one of Canada's key players in international economic diplomacy.He credits Ostry with teaching him a thing or two about the delicate art of diplomatic negotiation. I learned a tremendous amount from working with her, both on the substance ofthe issues, but also on how much personal style can matter, says Malone. Sylvia had a tremendous personal style that was a major force in international economic relations.He would put those lessons to use while working for two of Canada's permanent representatives at the United Nations in the early 1990s, Yves Fortier and Louise Frechette, before becoming deputy permanent representative from 1992-94. He also took charge ofthe working group ofthe UN's special committee on peacekeeping during Canada's ill-fated deployment to Somalia, which partially contributed to the country's reluctance to participate directly in future missions. But there are other reasons for a decreased Canadian presence in UN peacekeeping operations in recent times, according to Malone. He points to Canada's participation in NATO operations in Kosovo and Afghanistan as part of a trend seen in many western countries, whereby increasing numbers of governments are bypassing the UN in favour of more practical and efficient regional organizations and coalitions ofthe willing. But a reduced ground presence in conflict- ridden countries hasn't stopped western nations from being the primary funders ofthe UN budget, including most of its peacekeeping expenses.Malone says that because Canada was actively involved in peacekeeping missions in Haiti and Somalia while he was at the the views of Canadian ambassadors were always sought out and held in high regard, allowing the country to speak authoritatively on those and other conflicts.Canada had the capacity to punch above its weight at the UN, says Malone. This was due in no small part to the influence of Fortier and Frechette. I concluded that personal engagement by Canadian ambassadors, their capacity to add value to UN processes, often by being rather critical of the way business was done, made Canada matter more than simply going with the flow. …

Senators Hear Call for New End-of-Life Policies

Senators Hear Call for New End-of-Life Policies