The Middle Power Project: Canada and the Founding of the United Nations (review)

Canadians are much taken with the idea that our country has a mediating middle power tradition, with a consequent higher moral stature than more self-interested powers. The idea has been promoted in the press and in books that lament the decline of Canadian foreign policy since its 'golden age.' The figure of Lester Pearson stands above it all, a symbol of a more glorious time when Canada both did good, and did better than successor governments. This story also gives tremendous deference to an idealized United Nations.

Adam Chapnick's delving into the actual Canadian role in founding the un reveals this self-image as mostly imagined, contrasting pragmatic and deferential policymakers led by Prime Minister Mackenzie King with more idealistic figures like Pearson. The government of Canada took a reactive and limited role, while the Canadian public 'adopted a vision of their country in the world that was more perceived than real.' Chapnick zeroes in on a foundational moment in the Canadian 'middle power project,' the construction of the un system in the late wartime years and its formal creation at San Francisco in 1945. Careful archival research in Canadian records is supplemented by a close look at British and American records, allowing him to keep Canada at centre stage, while avoiding the common tendency to over-estimate Canadian influence.

What emerges is a very different picture from the popular image of an outgoing internationalist Canada. Chapnick grapples with the origins of the middle power idea by examining the 'functional principle' advanced by Canadian diplomats searching for enhanced status during the Second World War. With the war driven by an Anglo-American partnership that saw other countries as little more than compliant camp followers, Canadian policymakers sought more input. They resisted doing so as part of a Commonwealth represented by a single voice in London, and also sought a bigger say than minor allies. The solution was the 'functional principle,' in which countries were entitled to a voice in accord with their contribution to various functions. Canada thus campaigned (unsuccessfully) for more status at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in 1942–43.

There were those in the Canadian diplomatic corps, with Pearson featuring prominently among them, who saw a greater role for Canada as the leading 'middle power' – a term being defined at the time to include countries a level below the great powers, but with more to contribute than the small states. Yet diplomats operated in a severely constrained setting. Chapnick demonstrates that visions of Canadian policy as guided by 'enlightened diplomacy' were first enunciated not as a bold proactive vision, but as a defensive reaction to a British suggestion that there would be three postwar world powers: the us, the ussr, and the Commonwealth. That vision of Canadian dependence was anathema in King's Ottawa; the middle power project offered an alternative approach.

However, Canadian diplomats lacked the will or capacity to follow it through. They failed to act in concert with other middle powers. At the un founding conference, they went along with great power desires in most matters, abdicating the role of middle power leadership to a more spirited Australian delegation. Canadian aims for the un's structure proved mostly abortive, and Canada failed to secure election to the Security Council despite its economic and military pre-eminence. However, the public embraced the middle power project in a way policymakers did not. A nationalist myth was born. Chapnick suggests it was further reinforced by early histories of Canadian foreign relations, usually written by diplomats in the Pearsonian mould and their admirers. This has served Canada poorly, creating expectations that its government should behave in ways that, in fact, never guided policy.

Chapnick has effectively punctured a self-important myth about the years in which Canada first identified itself as a middle power. Yet his portrait of these foundational years is not all bleak. There were substantial Canadian contributions, he...