Abstract
This, the final issue of our 75th year, features a special collection of issues in tribute to the life and work of Greg Donaghy, former IJ editor and highly regarded historian of Canadian foreign policy, who passed away this past summer. The issue has been co-edited with Susan Colbourn, the editor for IJ’s “Lessons of History” series, which is entirely fitting, as this collection of essays is both a celebration of the historian’s craft and the imprint of history on the present day.
We begin with a short but powerful essay celebrating Greg and his legacy, co-authored by three of the field’s most influential scholars: Robert Bothwell, John English, and Norman Hillmer. Their reminiscences into Greg’s personality and his scholarly development are also a fascinating window into the evolution of the study of Canadian foreign relations over the last thirty years. The next eight essays all deal with topics related to many of the core themes in Greg’s immense and influential body of work, from his closest friends, colleagues, and former collaborators.
The first, an overview of changing Canadian attitudes toward the United States in the Eisenhower era by Asa McKercher and Michael Stevenson, builds on a collaborative project they had been at work on with Greg when he died. We usually think of these years as quiet and generally amicable, and therefore rarely give them a second thought, but McKercher and Stevenson show that the enormous goodwill that Eisenhower brought with him only extended so far. Next up is Whitney Lackenbauer’s study of the Joint Arctic Weather Stations (JAWS) program from the late 1940s to the end of the 1960s. Lackenbauer explores this initiative through the prism of Greg’s “tolerant allies” thesis; he suggests that while Canadian officials did worry about the political risks of relying on US resources, ultimately the program was thoroughly successful for both partners. This is followed by Stephen Azzi’s account of Canada’s efforts to regulate foreign direct investment under the governments of Lester Pearson, Pierre Trudeau, and Stephen Harper. Azzi highlights some striking commonalities: these efforts all came under minority governments, all were undertaken somewhat reluctantly, and all were shut down as soon as it was politically expedient. Penny Bryden steps back to take a long view of foreign policy institutions, tracing the history of foreign policy advice from the Prime Minister’s Office from the 1930s into the 1990s.
In the collection’s fifth essay, Caroline Dunton takes us back to Canada’s first UN Security Council campaigns in 1946 and 1947. She argues that Canada’s ideas about what it was pursuing, and what for, were powerfully shaped by a broader quest for status in a fundamentally imperial order. Then David Webster picks up on Greg’s work on Canada’s relations with Asia to consider the role of “mental maps” in Canadian thinking about Asia. Canada has been held back, Webster argues, by its tendency to see Asia as the “Far East,” rather than a “New West,” just across the sea from western Canada. This is followed by David Haglund and Stéphane Roussel’s reconsideration of the debate over Quebec’s “strategic culture.” As in other societies, Quebec’s views on these questions are based on deeply-rooted historical myths—namely, the myth of the peaceful early settler and more recently the committed peacekeeper—which Haglund and Roussel happily knock down. And finally, Nelson Michaud, Stéphane Tremblay, and Frédéric Mayer look into the role of history in Canadian foreign policy guidance documents (i.e., white papers, etc.). They undertake a content analysis of four of these documents, and find that while they often feature references to history and past events, they only rarely draw out broad lessons or propose to “make history.”
Together, these eight contributions speak to the diversity of Greg’s interests and the enduring significance of his ideas. But more than that, the mix of historians and political scientists and plethora of co-authored pieces are fitting testament to a scholar who actively pursued interdisciplinary conversations and collaborative projects.
The issue is filled out with three other excellent essays. In the first of these, Rachel Schmidt reports on her research interviews with government and non-government counterterrorism experts and argues that their worldviews are (still) clearly marked by deeply-rooted race and gender stereotypes, undermining the effectiveness of their policy advice. In the second, Leigh Sarty considers Canada’s relationships with Russia and China. “By seeing these authoritarian powers as more fragile than frightening,” Sarty argues, “Canada can worry less about how engagement might be seen to reward bad behaviour, and more about beneficial outcomes in areas that serve Canadian interests.” And in the third free-standing article, Diana Panke looks at when and how states participating in international organizations choose to represent regional organizations of which they are members (rather than their own national positions).
We are also pleased to include two short policy briefs in this issue, both concerned with international cooperation on the problem of migration. First, Rosemary McCarney and Jonathan Kent survey the problem of climate displacement and the tidal waves of migration that will follow from it, arguing that ambitious new forms of global governance are needed. Then Tim Höflinger looks specifically at the Global Compact for Migration (GCM); he argues that while the GCM isn’t a formal treaty, with institutional “teeth” to enforce state compliance, it still holds promise as a vehicle for cooperation, based on its mechanisms for effectiveness and legitimacy.
The issue concludes with five excellent book reviews, brought together by Brendan Kelly. Among these are Colin McCullough’s review of Alex J. Bellamy's World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It), David Hornsby’s review of Nathan Andrews and J. Andrew Grant’s (eds.) Corporate Social Responsibility and Canada’s Role in Africa’s Extractive Sectors, and Brian Job’s review of Thomas Juneau, Philippe Lagassé, and Srdjan Vucetic’s (eds.) Canadian Defence Policy in Theory and Practice.