Abstract
Reviewed by: David M. Malone (malone@unu.edu ), United Nations University, Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
Gareth Evans was one of the defining foreign ministers of the post-Cold War era, completing this book, fittingly, as chancellor of the Australian National University, Canberra. He characterizes his early trade as that of an academic lawyer, and that he remains, although added to those descriptors might be political pugilist, international idealist, take-no-prisoners activist, and any number of others.
What I had not known is how well Evans writes, including the entertaining barbs he aims at past antagonists he despises, as opposed to the somewhat surprising encomiums addressed to those he respects. He had the gift of gathering supporters to his side and fighting the good fight, first as Australian attorney-general, and, following a range of political avatars, as foreign minister for an exceptional eight-year tenure, from 1988 to 1996.
He followed this up internationally with nearly a decade as president of the International Crisis Group, the high-quality international research and analysis non-governmental organization specializing in the conflicts and stresses within (mainly) developing countries and regions. Its coverage of policy research orphans such as North Africa and the Caucasus countries has been particularly valuable, as has its exceptionally acute country analysis of, for example, Pakistan and Indonesia.
Evans came to be identified internationally with the humanitarian imperative and the struggle against nuclear proliferation, on both of which he played a major role. There is a Canadian angle to his close identification with the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect principle, eventually endorsed by both the 2005 United Nations’ (UN) Summit and, some months later, the UN Security Council.
Evans overlapped briefly in 1996, as foreign minister, with a new Canadian counterpart, Lloyd Axworthy—his polar opposite in personal style but soul-mate on many issues of substance. Axworthy, hitherto perhaps best known for his left-leaning ministerial work on Canada’s economic policy and social programs, in his last ministerial portfolio morphed into a determined norm entrepreneur at the international level. His most kinetic success was the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention, signed in Ottawa in December 1997, against the wishes of several UN Security Council permanent members, and negotiated outside of the UN. It was only subsequently imported into the UN system of treaties.
But Axworthy championed many other causes, some of which flourished. Others, such as his activism on better corporate behaviour by some Canadian economic actors operating in the developing world (oil and mining industries, are your ears ringing?) withered on the vine, under the glare of hostility by his cabinet colleagues to encumbrances placed in the path of Canadian international economic activity, a prequel to intra-cabinet disagreements on the SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. that bedevilled Canada’s government in 2019. He set many hares running, but one that must have provided him with considerable satisfaction after he left office in the year 2000 was the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which he created and Canada funded, and which was co-chaired by Gareth Evans.
It was this Commission that gave birth to the Responsibility to Protect concept. That concept was further promoted and somewhat circumscribed to fit with a high degree of UN deference to national sovereignty by a subsequent UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change convened by the then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on which Evans also sat. Arguably, the concept would not have survived in its final form at the UN without the deft hand of Evans in countering the arguments of more cautious or outright naysaying voices on the panel, drawing on his legal, political, and rhetorical skills, supplemented whenever necessary, with gusto doubtless, by his often highly effective if sometimes bruising bullying tactics. Good on him, as my Australian cousins would say.
The book is a memoir, organized not so much chronologically, although it does fall into broad chronological phases of his life, as by substantive headings such as “Conflict,” “Atrocities,” and “Weapons.” It is much better written than most such victory-lap accounts; indeed, it is a truly ripping yarn. It is also very good at telescoping individual issues and political struggles into the wider sweep of Australian life and political strife (on domestic issues) and international relations (on global ones).
The man himself virtually leaps off each page, with withering (and most often accurate, as far as I can tell) judgments raining down on inferior opponents. That said, Evans, like Axworthy, in person and in his writing after retirement, shares credit generously with public officials and others who supported his campaigns and the adoption of his party’s legislation, and those who shaped his own views.
In sum, this is a lively read that canters through broad swathes of post-Cold War international manoeuvring and leaves the reader with a strong argument in favour of activism and commitment—in his case, total commitment shading into close combat—in whatever walk of life one happens to be.