Little Canada?

Canada’s core foreign policy objective is rather straightforward: stay on the good side of the American government in order to keep the border open and exports flowing

Dec 27, 2023

Over the past couple of years, Canada has been noticeably agonizing over its visible loss of influence and prestige in international politics. The anxiety has become particularly acute since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2021, but the problem goes back much longer, at least to the end of the Cold War, but there were signs of this even before, as Canada under contributed to the NATO effort during the Cold War, and faced periodic accusations that it was not important enough geopolitically to warrant being a member of the G7 process. In addition to the issue of Canada not spending the NATO target of 2% of GDP on defense (it actually spends 1.3% just two-thirds of the target), Canada’s problems have been particularly acute with its inability to deal with China and India, both diplomatically and in keeping them from interfering in Canadian elections. A recent article in the Financial Times by Demetri Sevastopulo has brought this to the center of Canadian discussion.

The article goes beyond China and India to raise a more fundamental point. Canada is not just going through an isolationist phase in response to a spell of internal stress, especially as it recovers from pandemic economic and social dislocations that form part of a general post-Great Recession malaise that has roiled domestic politics. Canada has historically become involved in international affairs when it wanted to, but it has usually been by choice, something that was in a sense optional. Canada’s involvement in the two world wars was significant, and one must not downplay the losses that Canada suffered, but even in the moment, Canadian participation was not in response to an immediate threat to North America, but a decision to take a role in conflicts involving the survival of the British Empire and the evolution of the international system.

Canada’s core foreign policy objectives are rather straightforward. Ensure economic growth through trade, especially exports to the United States, with a heavy focus on managing its near abroad, in other words, the United States. In the early years, the point was to ensure Canada did not get absorbed by an expanding United States, but in time it came down to staying on the good side of the American government in order to keep the border open and trade flowing. These are clearly worthwhile objectives for Canada, but over time they also create a bias against serious overseas commitments. For Canada, even NATO was as much a tool for managing the United States as one for prosecuting the Cold War. NORAD protected the North American continent, but also projected Canadian seriousness about continental defense in the hopes that it would win American goodwill elsewhere.

David DeWitt and John Kirton’s 1984 book Canada as a Principal Power described the problem well. Canadians felt a special draw to liberal internationalism, especially peacekeeping, since it made Canada an “international good guy” and distinguished it from the Americans. In time, it would lead to the popular domestic slogan (and bookstore marketing ploy) “the world needs more Canada.” The fear was that Canadian foreign policy would fall into peripheral dependence, in which it hid under American coat tails, unable to follow the national interest if it differed from that of the United States. Canada was not ready to come to terms with complex neorealism, under which it stood up and became a principal power in its own right, even though one could already see in the mid 1980s that American relative decline might make this necessary.

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Since the financial crisis, democratic societies have been under stress. Living standards for non-elites have become more precarious, and governments are debt riddled after numerous rounds of stimulus to fight economic collapse, stimulus that happened anew during pandemic shutdowns. There is little patience for money being spent on foreign affairs, and for governments focusing on anything beyond boosting domestic incomes. The populists who have captured the zeitgeist in recent years have been isolationists. This has been very clear in Trump’s United States, but it has also been visible only to a slightly lesser extent in Canada, including within both the Harper and Trudeau governments.

The current Canadian shyness toward international affairs began under Jean Chretien’s governments, when the imperative of cutting the deficit, alongside claiming the “peace dividend” at the end of the Cold War, caused huge cuts to budgets for military and diplomatic efforts. Harper continued them, even cutting public diplomacy efforts important to knowledge of Canada abroad, ending Radio Canada International shortwave broadcasts and ending financial assistance to foreign Canadian Studies academic programs, mostly because they served no domestic electoral constituency. The Trudeau government has viewed foreign policy as a tool of domestic politics. The goals have been to keep Canadian exports flowing south, keep the Trumpists at bay, and otherwise use foreign affairs to manage domestic constituencies in the suburbs of Toronto and Vancouver. Global Affairs Canada, the current iteration of the foreign ministry is in a state of lethargy. Ministers have entered the job with scant senior experience, they do not stay in the job for long. Influencing geopolitics is a luxury at best for early 2020s Canada, one that Canada cannot afford. Canada lacks the capacity to advance the national interest through engagement.

Even though the return of great power competition, and a potential struggle between democracies and authoritarian states in which Canada genuinely will want democratic countries to triumph, Canada is becoming all the more lost in its domestic politics. Federalism has once again grown difficult to handle for Ottawa Liberals, and the post-pandemic environment leaves too many domestic files that need addressing. The next federal election grows closer, and the Trudeau government trails badly in the polls to a populist opposition that seems to show even less interest in foreign affairs and has an even greater inclination to view every political issue as a mere tool to appeal for votes.

Throughout British history, there have been recurrences of what is called the “Little England” syndrome, in which Britain rejects the Empire and other foreign involvements. One such wave in the 1860s helped lead to Confederation in 1867. Brexit has been called a recurrence of the phenomenon. The corresponding Little Canada has existed since Confederation, and is about to be put to the test as isolationist politics come into conflict with the need to protect the national interest by becoming more involved in geopolitics.

References:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/opinion/sunday/from-great-britain-to-little-england.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/from-little-englanders-to-brexiteers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/11/little-englanders-david-cameron-immigration

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1846260

https://www.google.com/books/edition/British_Businessmen_and_Canadian_Confede/nzumalaEe40C?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA24&printsec=frontcover

https://search.worldcat.org/title/9819433

https://www.mqup.ca/canada-in-nato--1949---2019-products-9780228008415.php

https://search.worldcat.org/title/1330579900

https://search.worldcat.org/title/1087881430

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/29354/while-canada-slept-by-andrew-cohen/9780771022760

https://search.worldcat.org/title/1091216499