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

Reviewed by: Kit Kirkland, University of St. Andrews, UK

Warner’s Unsettled Balance was “prompted by a wave of international changes over the last few years that have profoundly influenced Canada’s international relations” (3). For Warner, the growth of social media and democratization has made us all more globally aware, while the “ethical turn” of international relations has focused our attention toward transnational issues from climate change to gender issues, human rights, and the responsibility to protect (R2P). Warner’s book “carries on [this] discourse [on] a relatively neglected dimension of Canada’s international relations: the relationship between ethical concerns and security concerns … the ‘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 the ethical arguments surrounding “rights, obligations, norms, values and the national interest” in four parts (9). Part 1 looks at Canada’s humanitarianism and military security; part 2 explores security across borders and the contemporary ethics of Canada’s anti-terror policy, as well as law and order; part 3 explores Canada’s approach to “freedom from want issues” through the frames of poverty, gender, and the environment; and lastly, part 4 compares Canada’s relations with Colombia and the continent of Africa. Due to its unusual case selection, part 4 seems a little disconnected from the rest of the book; so readers will likely focus on parts 1 and 2, which are the most salient to Canada, its ethics, and international relations.

Warner gives a fine overview of how Canada’s ethical perspectives, through documents like the Canadian Charter, have made it an international leader;

Canada had become a charter member of what we might call the ‘moral minority,’ that distinguished (and self-styled) group of states … whose moral multilateralism is predicated … on the enunciation of a new set of global norms that will lead inexorably to the creation of a just and more equitable international order. (13).

Examples of Canadian leadership include “the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the Anti-Personnel Mine Convention [the Ottawa Treaty]” (12). Through the “Axworthy doctrine” of the late 1990s, the 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, the War on Terror and Great Recession have since reinforced the traditional national security paradigm, and whether domestic responses to these issues form a “lasting departure from Canada’s storied historical commitment to liberal internationalism remains an open question” (18). ¹

In part 2, Barbara Falk’s discussion of the post-9/11 “home” and “away” game, and the process of “verticalization”—how events at home have implications for Canadian actions abroad and vice-versa—was insightful. Through numerous cases from the Air India Flight 182 bombing, to the rendition of Maher Arar, the repatriation of Omar Khadr, and the prosecution of the “Toronto 18”, Falk reviews how the law has had to catch up to the contemporary reality of terrorism that presumed one was either a combatant or a civilian (122–123). Falk notes that the success of prosecuting terrorists for association and plots lies in the growing conjunction of foreign and domestic efforts; however, Falk also highlights that these capabilities should not sacrifice Canadians’ civil liberties under the charter, and that terrorist “false positives” can and have been costly (115). ² Falk underlines the need for careful consideration of the ethics surrounding the prosecution of terrorists at home and away (123–125): the “questions balancing ethics with security cannot be ignored in either ‘game’ and … have never been more serious.’” (126–127).

Equally fascinating is Veronica Kitchen’s analysis of mega-security events. Discussing Toronto’s 2010 G20 summit, Kitchen notes how mega-events’ “exceptionalism,” the deterritorialization of space outside of Canadian law, and the security dilemmas these processes produce violate the civil liberties of protesters (even citizens) in order to “privilege the security of certain groups (visitors)” (137). Kitchen’s examples focus on how extraordinary policing and security at mega-security events suddenly become ordinary, with techniques and practices frequently trickling down into everyday security and policing routines. Such events are a product of our time, developed by the contemporary climate of fear in the West, terror-laden rhetoric, and our collective need for reassurance. “[These] events, are viewed as unpredictable … they become testing grounds for new security and surveillance tools, they civilize military weapons … they frame all protesters as violent” (139–140, 145). Moreover, because so much is at stake, these events commonly have a ratcheting effect on subsequent meetings, as “security officials begin to rely on the ‘precautionary principle’ of taking drastic security measures against improbable but devastating threats.” (141) Subsequently the management of these events not only disrupts our understanding of Canada’s social contract but also “serves as a foreign policy tool to transmit expectations … of how [Canada] manages the balance between ethics and security” (142). Kitchen’s discussion leads us to consider how these exceptional circumstances—these mega-events—affect Canada’s operational ethics and more broadly Canadians’ daily affairs.

Overall, Warner’s review raises stimulating and often confrontational ethical discussions in the vein of Coker and Ignatieff: on the ethics of Canada’s internal and external security and the tradeoff between security and freedom; on whose ethics is privileged and enforced; on whether militarized efforts can achieve humanitarian ends; and whether Canada’s hard-power reflects her citizens’ preference for “neutral” peacekeeping over the “reality” of combat (122). ³ Throughout Warner’s collection one senses that Warner and her contributors, like constructivists Finnemore and Wendt, want to see Canada revisit the global engagement of the Axworthy era, of Canada as a norm entrepreneur developing the world’s human security paradigm (274–277). Whether this happens is, as the title suggests, “in the balance.” ⁴ This valuable collection nonetheless helps us examine in more detail the intersection of Canada’s contemporary security, ethics, and international relations.