Abstract
Reviewed by: Kim Richard Nossal (nossalk@queensu.ca ), Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada
This book, Fen Hampson tells us at the outset, was written to fill a particular void in the scholarly literature on Canadian foreign policy. On the one hand, there are numerous journal articles and chapters in books on different aspects of the foreign policy of the Progressive Conservative government that held office between 1984 and 1993. There is the Canada Among Nations series, in which Hampson himself was deeply involved: this series first appeared in 1984, the year that Brian Mulroney came to office, and since then has provided an indispensable annual survey of Canadian foreign policy. There is also Diplomatic Departures, the collection that Nelson Michaud of l’École nationale d’administration publique and I edited in 2001.
On the other hand, in the 25 years after Mulroney left the prime ministership, no single-authored book on his foreign and defence policy was written—a marked difference, as Hampson notes, from the number of single-authored books on the foreign policy of 20th-century Liberal prime ministers like Lester B. Pearson and Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Hampson notes this difference in treatment, but does not explore the possible reasons for the void—other than to suggest that it is more than an oversight. Whatever the reason, the absence of a single-authored, book-length treatment of the foreign policy of the Mulroney era is indeed strange, particularly since, as Michaud and I argued in 2001, many of the foreign policy decisions of the Progressive Conservative government he headed represented a substantial—and consequential—departure for Canada in world affairs.
This survey of Mulroney’s foreign policy fills the lacuna well. While this book falls into that liminal category of histories that are written after the passage of sufficient time for some digestion but before the release of the historical documents of the era, Hampson’s exploration does have the advantage of benefitting from the input of some of the key principals during this period, including Derek Burney, Mulroney’s chief of staff, and Mulroney himself.
The title of the book—Master of Persuasion—signals clearly that this is a book by a fan. It is, thus, not surprising that Hampson seeks to showcase the significant accomplishments of Mulroney and his government in foreign policy rather than try to cover every major foreign policy issue. Nor is it surprising, given the broad purpose of the book, that Hampson’s treatment of these issues is generally positive, though not uncritical.
It begins with the most historic—and most consequential—decision made by the Mulroney government: to take a “leap of faith” and negotiate a free trade agreement with the United States, and to later manage to trilateralize that agreement to include Mexico. There are chapters on the Ethiopian famine that confronted the new government in the fall of 1984 and on the active efforts to bring apartheid in South Africa to an end. There is a chapter on Mulroney and the Asia Pacific—more specifically, on the efforts of the prime minister to develop personal relations with Asian leaders. The historic efforts to establish a francophone summit and to join the Organization of American States are explored, as is Mulroney’s activism on the environment, both local and global. There are chapters on the profound transformations in the global order that occurred while Mulroney was prime minister: the end of the Cold War and the emergence of new patterns of global politics.
Hampson’s purpose goes beyond providing an historical survey of Mulroney’s foreign policy, however. The book explicitly seeks to provide broader lessons from this era—hence the “legacy” in the title. Thus, each of the substantive chapters concludes with a reflection on how Mulroney’s approach to that issue in the 1980s and early 1990s has ongoing relevance for Canadian foreign policy today.
The lessons are, in the main, what might be expected given the title: Hampson argues that Mulroney’s enduring legacy was his commitment to the process of persuasion in foreign policy, and to developing and maintaining the personal connections with foreign leaders that successful diplomacy required. Hampson’s account makes clear that much of Mulroney’s success in foreign policy stemmed from his good working relations with a range of other leaders. This was particularly true of his relations with two of the presidents of the United States that held office while he was in power—Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. The “special relationship” that Mulroney fostered with both Reagan and Bush were crucial ingredients in advancing foreign policy goals between 1984 and 1993.
But reading a paean to the importance of the art of persuasion for the successful pursuit of Canadian foreign policy objectives today begs a question: to what extent did Mulroney’s success derive from operating in a global environment that privileged diplomacy as a means of managing and resolving conflict between states? Today, by contrast, the environment seems deeply hostile to diplomacy at the leadership level. Vladimir Putin goes so far as to ban Canada’s foreign minister from even being able to visit the Russian Federation, even as his government pursued Russian global objectives by using internet troll farms and little green men rather than by diplomacy. Xi Jinping responds to conflict between China and Canada over an extradition case by refusing to even engage in diplomatic intercourse, and instead authorizes taking Canadian citizens in China as hostages. And, most importantly, in Donald J. Trump, the United States has a president who not only openly delights in trashing established diplomatic norms, but thinks nothing of mean-tweeting the Canadian prime minister and treating US allies as though they were adversaries. In such an environment, would any Canadian leader today be able to work the kind of persuasive magic that Mulroney did in the 1980s?