Jennifer Welsh

Globalization is in free-fall. This is the conclusion of two prominent public intellectuals—one a historian and the other a philosopher. If they are right, there will be egg on more than a few faces. A large cadre of politicians, CEOs, management consultants, journalists and academics have staked their policies, fortunes, strategies, slogans and careers on the idea that the future is increasingly…

On December 30, 1941, as part of his wartime visit to Canada, British prime minister Winston Churchill addressed an extraordinary joint session of the Senate and House of Commons in Ottawa to thank our country for its steadfast commitment to the Allied cause—through troops, equipment, food and finance, and through its indispensable Empire training scheme for pilots from across the…

In the midst of the open and flat plain in southern Saskatchewan, a gravel road three kilometres long leads down into the lush green of the Qu’Appelle Valley. I have travelled this road many times during my lifetime, as it also meanders down to the Welsh family’s summer cottage—which evokes warm memories of saskatoon berry picking and late-night Scrabble…

Barack Obama’s victory speech in Chicago on the night of November 4th left a lump in the throats of many observers of U.S. politics: the touching account of the country’s past, as seen through the eyes of Ann Nixon Cooper, a 106-year-old African American. The clarion call to make the promise of change a reality. While Americans now consider what Obama’s election means for…

A subtle but important shift is taking place in the language used to describe the mission of the United States in the contemporary world. Two years ago, the mantra driving the Bush administration, and U.S. foreign policy more generally, was the “freedom agenda.” Autocrats were put on notice: the U.S. would no longer blindly support them in the interest of strategic…

The recent summer season witnessed an important development in the post–Cold War history of Canadian democracy. Whereas much of the political theatre in our country over the past two decades has been dominated by the themes of national unity, the state of our healthcare system or resource sharing between the feds and the provinces, international affairs has at best played a supporting…