Re-Inventing Foreign Policy

Terrorists, Haiti, Darfur, Iraq, helicopters that won’t fly, trade restrictions, border controls, missile defence—Canada is confronted with a host of international problems these days. Like rockets falling in Baghdad’s Green Zone, they’re being lobbed into our headquarters on Sussex Drive, and some observers feel the Liberal administration isn’t responding properly, or can’t even figure out what’s going on. It is said that in Washington, Canada has become irrelevant. And it seems that this lack of direction is having an effect on the whole body politic. When one of our submarines is sent back to the garage for repairs, it’s interpreted as a symptom of sickness in the very spirit of the nation.

Jennifer Welsh, a Canadian professor of international relations at Oxford University, shares this bleak view of our situation and has some suggestions aimed at ending the confusion. She is interested in Canada’s foreign policy and has recently written an enthusiastic book on...