Canada As a Selective Power. Canada's Role and International
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CANADA AS A SELECTIVE POWER SOCIETAS Marcin Gabryś CANADA Tomasz Soroka seria pod redakcją BOGDANA SZLACHTY AS A SELECTIVE POWER 100 Canada’s Role and International Position after 1989 Kraków SOCIETAS Marcin Gabryś CANADA Tomasz Soroka seria pod redakcją BOGDANA SZLACHTY AS A SELECTIVE POWER 100 Canada’s Role and International Position after 1989 Kraków © Copyright by Marcin Gabryś and Tomasz Soroka, 2017 Reviewer: prof. Patrick Vaughan Proofreading: Michelle Atallah Artur Zwolski Cover design: Paweł Sepielak The project was funded by the National Science Centre on the basis of the decision no. DEC-2011/03/D/HS5/01123 ISBN 978-83-7638-792-5 KSIĘGARNIA AKADEMICKA ul. św. Anny 6, 31-008 Kraków tel./faks: +48 12 431 27 43, +48 12 421 13 87 e-mail: [email protected] Online bookstore: www.akademicka.pl Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................... 7 1. Canada’s power in international relations: major theories .................................................................................... 19 Canada as a satellite ............................................................................... 19 Canada as a major/foremost/principal power ......................................... 28 Canada as a middle power ..................................................................... 39 2. Canada as a selective power ................................................... 59 3. Canada as a selective power under Stephen Harper ........... 77 Economy and the environment ............................................................. 88 Trade ............................................................................................... 92 Energy resources ............................................................................. 102 Keystone XL ................................................................................... 113 Environment ................................................................................... 115 Arctic sovereignty .................................................................................. 123 China .................................................................................................... 136 A value-based approach ......................................................................... 144 Freedom of religion ......................................................................... 149 Respecting the territorial integrity of others .................................... 154 6 Table of contents Middle East ........................................................................................... 158 Arms sale......................................................................................... 166 Official development assistance ............................................................. 170 International organizations .................................................................... 179 The United Nations ........................................................................ 184 Institutions of global governance ..................................................... 188 The military, security and peacekeeping ............................................... 193 4. Canada in international relations under Justin Trudeau ......................................................................... 207 Foreign policy in the 2015 Liberal campaign platform .......................... 208 “Responsible conviction”: Trudeau’s foreign policy doctrine .................. 215 Return to multilateralism ...................................................................... 219 Peacekeeping and military missions ....................................................... 221 Immigration policies and refugees ......................................................... 228 Environmental and energy policies ........................................................ 244 The economy ........................................................................................ 257 Conclusion .................................................................................. 275 Bibliography ................................................................................ 281 Abbreviations ............................................................................... 319 Index of names ............................................................................. 323 Introduction Canada’s role in world affairs, its international position – but also the perception of the country by other states and international organizations – have long been matters of political and academic discourse. Such debates, however, have mostly been Canadian discussions, which, strictly speaking, have rarely gone beyond Canadian borders and never really managed to involve large numbers of non-Canadian scholars or discussants. The point here is not that Canada’s international position is immaterial or irrelevant. In fact, it is important, not only because of the role Canada played historically as a co-creator of the institutional and legal framework upon which the postwar world order was built, but also because Canada matters today when it, for instance, vocally supports and promotes worldwide such progressive social values as: gender equality, LGBTQ rights, inclusiveness, an open society, tolerance, etc. Canada, thus, and its external policies should be interesting and inspiring topics of research for outsiders. However, one can find relatively few academics from outside Canada (except the ones from the U.S. and perhaps Britain) who would make Canadian foreign relations, not to say Canadian international identity, the main object of their scholarly explorations. One explanation for this can be Canada’s limited international influence. In general, countries with a lower global “impact factor” would typically attract less attention of analysts and researchers than those which have military and political power. Constraints on Canadian global influence constitute a familiar and in some cases a self-evident phenomenon: Canada’s population is relatively low, its military potential is limited, and the economy has long been ailing from the lack of diversification of trade partners. Sharing the border with the United States 8 Introduction – Canada’s only neighbour by land, ten times larger demographically and economically – with all its advantages (for security and trade), also restricts Canada’s international impact. In fact, being a neighbour of the only remaining post-Cold War global superpower puts Canada in a paradoxical position, where the country with the second largest area in the world cannot even play the role of a regional power, remaining incessantly in the shadow of the military, economic and political might of its much stronger next-door partner. As Michael Hart puts it, Canadians cannot deny – even if they so desired – “the incontrovertible fact that geography makes Canada an American nation” (83). All these constraining factors – demography, economy, geography (United States) – affect the ways non-Canadians tend to perceive Canada’s global role and position. This perception is far different from what is viewed by the Canadian international relations experts. The approach of the latter, as Maureen Molot observes, would rather reflect “a fixation with either [Canada’s] power or the lack thereof which needs some rethinking” (qtd. in Haglund and Onea 61). While Canadians have a tendency to make “a cult out of a perpetual national crisis, seeking to be a European nation, an Atlantic nation, a Pacific nation, and even an Arctic nation” (Hart 83), non- Canadians, according to Nik Hynek and David Bosold, are stereotypically inclined to either perceive Canada through the prism of its dependence on the United States for most of its decisions in foreign policy or associate Canada, despite its oil sands in Alberta, with the “splendid nature of untouched forests and lakes, especially in Canada’s North” (xv). Another explanation is that Canada’s role and position in contemporary world affairs is particularly difficult to define for outsiders unacquainted with the intricacies and subtleties of the Canadian debates over Canada’s international identity. For an outsider, the position of Canada on the global forum, at first glance, appears to be profoundly puzzling and ambiguous. On the one hand, Canada with its vast territory, abundant natural resources, economic importance is too big a player to be ignored or disregarded. Its membership in the G7/G8 and G20 clubs, in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Organization of American States (OAS), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the Arctic Council, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Commonwealth or La Francophonie puts it in a unique position of a state involved in a multitude of international Introduction 9 forums, which, in consequence, extends the potential influence of Canadian diplomacy to almost every corner of the world. On the other hand, the U.S. demographic, military and economic dominance makes it virtually impossible for Canadian politicians either to discount or overlook “the American factor” in the process of the formulation and implementation of a foreign policy. When we started to examine the position Canada occupies in the complex global system and the perception of this northern country in international politics, it was 2010. Although the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper won the federal election for