Studying Canadian foreign policy is a fascinating way to explore how a country often described as 'progressive' or even 'nice' actually contributes to the explicit maintenance of the status quo--and its resulting inequalities-- in global politics. Similarly, it also demonstrates how states like Canada use a positive image cultivated on the global stage to preserve domestic relations of hegemony that over-reward status quo interests.
Canadian Foreign Policy in Critical Perspective edited by J. Marshall Beier and Lana Wylie--both of McMaster University-- and published by Oxford University Press is one of the first volumes to analyze these dynamics in a systematic way. It draws upon a range of scholars and approaches to reveal and to challenge the often unstated assumptions about what Canadian foreign policy entails and means. In doing so, the contributing chapters reveal the relations of power underpinning and produced by Canadian foreign policy and the political role that it plays in constructing notions of Canadian national identity.
I was really honoured to have been asked by Marshall and Lana to contribute a chapter to this volume. It is called 'Clandestine Convergence: Human Security, Power, and Canadian Foreign Policy' and I examine how the human security debate that dominated discussions of Canadian foreign policy for a decade (1997-2006) fostered a shared set of assumptions whose political consequence was to drain any trace of progressive potential from Canada's human security agenda.
Anyhow, the entire volume will be of interest to those who want to learn more about Canadian foreign policy or anyone who is teaching courses on Canadian foreign policy and/or comparative foreign policy analysis.
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