ID: |
HARP-424 |
Title: |
Canada and the security problem: implications as the millennium turns |
Source: |
International Journal , v.54(3) Summ’99 pg 386-403 |
Parties: |
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Dispute Resolution Organ: |
|
Year: |
1999 |
Pages: |
0 |
Author(s): |
|
Keywords: |
globalization, human rights, military service, panel proceedings, politics, civil and political rights, security, Cold War, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Tr, liberty, national defence |
Abstract: |
The response to the demise of the cold war has been to run down the defence establishment to help balance the budget and spend money on other things. The response to the resurgence of the `old demons’ is a commitment to modest military interventions in all sorts of places in which Canada has no direct national interest but, precisely because of the defence run-downs, without the resources that are required to perform the task in reasonable measure, with reasonable safety, reasonably well. The response to the arrival of the new perils, or at least of our new perceptions of them, is to include every one of them in the official conception of what Canadian common security requires, and to promise accordingly to take a leadership role in dealing with them all. The response to globalization is to celebrate and encourage it on the one hand, while fussing a little about the company it puts Canada in overseas on the other. And the response to civil society is to keep it at a safe distance with the right hand (the hand that operates, for example, in the economic offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade), while warmly embracing it with the left hand (the hand that operates most visibly in the office of Lloyd Axworthy, Canada’s minister for foreign affairs). University students, among others, are constantly disconcerted by displays of inconsistency in Canadian foreign policy. There is only one thing to tell them by way of response: that consistency is not, in the end, a useful test of the calibre of a foreign policy. A more appropriate test is to ask whether it is effective in its context. In the light of the evidence, what else is there to say? |
Secured: |
False |
Download Article: |
Available here |
Keywords: civil and political rights, Cold War, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Tr, globalization, human rights, liberty, military/military services, national defence, panel proceedings, politics, security