Abstract
This issue of International Journal represents something of a departure, with our usual assortment of scholarly essays complemented by an unusually high number of policy briefs, which focus more narrowly on timely and indeed urgent topics.
We open with Tsuyoshi Kawasaki’s imaginative take on Canada’s emergence as a “peninsula state,” whose strategic choices are framed by climate change in the far North and the increasingly threatening presence of China as a “polar power.” Then, Basar Baysal looks back at the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, taking a close look at how the George W. Bush administration framed Saddam Hussein’s putative nuclear ambitions as a security threat. Elena Dück uses the ongoing conflict in Syria to frame an exploration of Canadian identity and foreign policy, focusing on manifestations of “civilian power” such as multilateralism, the rule of law, and institution-building. Sandra Biskupski-Mujanovic turns our attention to peacekeeping, where she questions the claim that greater employment of women leads to more effective peacekeeping operations. And finally, Lee-Anne Broadhead and Sean Howard contend that the Trudeau government’s lack of support for an international convention to ban nuclear weapons undercuts its claims to pursue a feminist foreign policy.
In our first Policy Brief, David Welch points to the shared challenges and values of Canada and Japan, and argues that these countries should accelerate their tentative steps in the direction of security cooperation, ultimately moving to a formal alliance. Then, Achim Hurrelmann and his co-authors canvass the prospects for a bilateral trade agreement between Canada and a post-Brexit United Kingdom, identifying possible political flashpoints and offering some suggestions on how to navigate them. Georgi Buzaladze and Andrew Defor assess the role of global health diplomacy in pursuit of the Millennium Development Goals, in order to spotlight its usefulness in the context of the more recent Sustainable Development Goals. And finally, David Webster scrutinizes the bilateral relationship between Canada and Indonesia since 1953, detecting grounds for closer cooperation than has existed to date.
Our books editor, Brendan Kelly, has curated another selection of timely book reviews, with contributions from scholars like Charles Burton (on Jonathan Manthorpe); Kim Richard Nossal (on Fen Hampson); John Kirton (on Daniel J. Fiorino); and Andrew Cooper (on John Kirton and Marina Larionova). As in the past, these reviews are a good place to start in choosing your International Relations reading for the fall.