Europe's Place in Canadian Strategic Culture (1949-2009)

Abstract

International relations theory has a disturbing tendency to treat states as though they were homogenous entities. Thus, realists and liberals alike speak of a national interest determined by a state's geopolitical or economic situation. Constructivists, for their part, talk about a relatively stable national identity fashioned by a country's culture, history, and external relations. These labels are never innocuous: although they endow the international order with meaning, it comes at the expense of confining countries and their populations inside a normative cage. Further, they have the effect of obscuring the divisions and conflicts that create problems when a pronouncement must be made in the name of the state.Canada is no exception to this rule. The question of the country's proper place in the global system is at least as old as the Department of Foreign Affairs (going back to its original incarnation a century ago, as the Department of External Affairs), and the national preoccupation with

Shedding Light on Canada's Foreign Policy Alignment

“…In the literature on international relations~IR!, transatlanticism refers to the close co-operation between North America and Europe over security, economic and political issues~Anderson et al, 2008;Fehl, 2012;Risse-Kappen, 1995!. Several scholars have emphasized the fact that the United States and Canada continue to maintain strong ties with the European continent, ties that were forged by colonialism and have been sustained by a transatlantic military alliance~NATO!~Haglund and Mérand, 2010and Mérand, -2011Pouliot, 2006!. According to this perspective, despite the end of the Cold War and the subsequent regionalization of issues, Canada and the US share close ties with this "community of values" and have retained a sense of collective identity with Europe.…”

“…As Joan DeBardeleben and Patrick Leblond argue, “Canada shares with European countries many key values, including those relating to social welfare, international law, and human rights” (2010–2011: 2). Proponents of this second version of transatlantism, which is also known as Europeanism, point out that Canada has supported most EU resolutions that were submitted to the UN General Assembly (Long, 2003; Mérand and Vandemoortele, 2011). Some analysts also emphasize the fact that the European Union is currently Canada's second largest trading partner after the United States and that Canada is currently embracing a strategy of increasing trade relations with the EU in order to stimulate growth and reduce its economic dependency on the United States (Deblock and Rioux, 2010–2011: 55).…”

EU-Canada Strategic Partnership: Ups and downs

“…On the European side, the first two decades, internal European integration was more developed in the area of agriculture, commerce, and trade matters rather than on security and defence matters. Thus, in addition to not having a clear sense of its strategic goals, the EU did not yet 'speak with one voice' on these more external political matters (Potter, 1999;Long, 2003;Barry, 2004;Bernard-Meunier, 2006;Croci and Verdun, 2006;Haglund and Mérand, 2010;Mérand and Vandemoortele, 2011). Second, there was also a lack of appreciation of the multilevel governance and federalist institutional set-up on both sides (Haglund, 2000;Benz, 2010;Verdun and Wood, 2010).…”

The EU-Canada Strategic Partnership: Challenges and Opportunities

“…On the European side, during the first two decades internal European integration was more developed in the area of agriculture, commerce, and trade matters rather than on security and defence matters. Thus, in addition to not having a clear sense of its strategic goals, the EU did not yet speak with one voice on these more external political matters (Potter 1999;Long 2003;Barry 2004;Bernard-Meunier 2006;Croci and Verdun 2006;Haglund and Mérand 2010;Mérand and Vandemoortele 2011).…”