Alliance and Illusion: Canada and the World, 1945 – 1984 (review)

Surveys of Canada’s external relations are few and far between, the last major work being C.P. Stacey’s two-volume study written in the 1970s. Professor Both well’s detailed overview of Canada’s postwar international presence will be welcomed by the declining number of Canadian foreign policy specialists, a field long overshadowed by the race, class, and gender enthusiasms of the modern academic world. At the time of writing, Canadian foreign policy history is no longer taught at Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia, or the University of Alberta.

Alliance and Illusion covers the years 1945 to 1984. In the eyes of the postwar Ottawa mandarins, Canada was the pre-eminent middle power and should take an activist role in pursuing a multilateralist agenda. Canada’s expectations may have been somewhat of an illusion, and by the late 1960s the country’s status consistently declined from identifiable middle power to one of many unrecognizable faces in the corridors of the United Nations. Some in the media and academic world have lamented this decline, but most outside international observers would agree that Canada basically got a ‘free ride’ through the twentieth century, and whatever identity problems the country faced were of little consequence in the larger world context.

The main postwar issues in the late 1940s – the un, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and alliance-making are covered with clarity and sophisticated understanding. One might wish for a more integrated discussion of how Canada’s 1947–48 balance of payments crisis was eventually resolved through the expansion of foreign investment and the demands of American cold war mobilization for defence production and strategic materials. This may have been Canada’s most significant early postwar success, defining the economic self-interest in relation to American security objectives.

The general Canadian foreign policy themes in the 1950s and 1960s were invariably defined by the cold war: how does the West respond to the communist challenge in Europe, the limited war in Korea, the insurgency in Vietnam, and the Soviet airpower threat across the Arctic? In addition to assuring peace and prosperity, what Ottawa officials really wanted was a voice and meaningful role in resolving the international issues of the day. This may have been somewhat of an illusion, as Bothwell suggests. There are many examples of Canada-snubbing by the 1960s, in particular the American indifference to the Diefenbaker government during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and the humiliating withdrawal of Canada’s un peacekeepers from the Sinai in 1967.

The turning point in Canada’s shift from ‘helpful fixer’ on the world stage to following a more narrowly defined national interest (the ‘new realism’) came in the Trudeau years. The author is more sympathetic to the Liberal Party internationalism of the 1950s and takes Prime Minister Trudeau and his advisors to task. Throughout the 1970s the formation of foreign policy descended into the abyss of bureaucratic politics and domestic political considerations, especially the role of Quebec.

The discussion of relations with the United States from 1945 to 1984 assumes much more importance than relations with Great Britain. Here the author does not reference the work of John Thompson and Steven Randall, which casts the American relationship in a larger cultural and social context. On this point Alliance and Illusion does not go much beyond conventional military and economic issues, overlooking the connection between foreign policy and immigration, environmental issues, the flows of mass culture, and modern tourism.

On a more positive note, Bothwell offers a compelling analysis of institutional history, the changing roles of Ottawa bureaucracies, and government welfare state priorities in the 1970s. There is also an insightful section on the personalities in key government departments, which is not an area offered in political science texts. For those looking to update their lecture notes there are several amusing anecdotes and asides. This reader particularly liked Henry Kissinger’s description of Pierre Trudeau as, ‘intelligent, foppish, and a momma’s boy...