TOM KEATING
Tom Keating is a professor of political science at the University of Alberta, where he teaches Canadian foreign and defence policy and international politics. He has published widely in these areas, including Canada and World Order and Canada, NATO, and the Bomb (with Larry Pratt).
UNLIKE HIS PREDECESSOR, Lester Pearson, Pierre Elliott Trudeau had little experience in the area of foreign policy when he became Canada’s fifteenth prime minister. As he wrote in his Memoirs, he was “neither fascinated by the study of foreign policy nor especially attracted by the practice of it.” He had travelled to exotic shores before he entered federal politics, and, on occasion, he had written critically about foreign policy issues such as Canada’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. When he assumed the top office on April 19, 1968, he had no experience in hands-on management of foreign policy and little contact with foreign service officers. “I knew the world at large rather well, but I knew the world of diplomacy scarcely at all,” he reminisced. He also lacked exposure to discussions of foreign policy during his time in the cabinet in the mid-1960s, when foreign policy matters were largely resolved between Pearson and his foreign minister, Paul Martin. Expertise in foreign policy is not a prerequisite for party leaders, but, given his record, Trudeau might have been expected to adopt a cautious approach to international affairs. He did not.
As soon as he became prime minister, Trudeau criticized the style and content of previous governments’ external relations and announced that his government would first review and then reform the entire process of making and conducting foreign policy. In his first significant foreign-policy speech delivered in May 1968, Trudeau proposed a series of foreign-policy initiatives, including diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic of China, reassessment of Canada’s NATO commitments, and review of Canada’s assistance to Third World countries. He also launched a review of Canadian foreign policy to find ways to serve Canada’s current interests, objectives, and priorities more effectively.
The review lasted nearly two years and involved extensive consultations with parliamentarians and academics. The results of the review, which Professor Peyton Lyon labelled the Trudeau Doctrine, were published in 1970 in a set of six pamphlets. It was the first public reassessment of the country’s foreign policy ever undertaken by a Canadian government. The review can be summarized in two major objectives. First, it would provide criteria against which future policy could be developed and assessed. Foreign policy would be less reactive and more proactive in planning rationally for Canada’s best interests. Canada’s international activities would be linked more explicitly with domestic priorities, to make foreign policy “the extension abroad of national policies.” The review identified six main themes that reflected Trudeau’s concern that foreign policy should serve both domestic interests and universal principles: economic growth, sovereignty and independence, peace and security, social justice, quality of life, and a harmonious natural environment. It also recognized that there were some areas much in need of attention, such as the promotion of Canada’s francophone traditions in its foreign policy. As a result, Trudeau revised the country’s aid policy and made efforts to establish a community of francophone states.
Second, the review informed members of the Department of External Affairs that a new leader was in charge, one with very different ideas about how policy should be made and carried out. Trudeau entered office with reservations about the department, suspicions about its tendency to control policy making, and dislike of its apparent resistance to change and innovation. The review, alongside the appointment of Ivan Head as Trudeau’s principal foreign policy adviser, sent a clear message that external affairs officials would be relegated to a supporting role in the making of Canadian foreign policy. The review led to a fundamental and permanent restructuring of the foreign policy-making process in Canada.
As a first step in the reform process, Trudeau increased the work of the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office in the foreign policy-making process and delegated a significant role to Head. Unlike previous foreign policy advisers, Head had no connection to the Department of External Affairs. Trudeau also appointed a succession of secretaries of state for external affairs who were either little known or closely connected to domestic concerns. Throughout successive Trudeau governments, the department lacked a minister who had an independent source of power and wielded effective control over policy. Instead, whenever he was inclined, Trudeau controlled foreign policy. The professional foreign service, once the most distinguishing feature of Canadian foreign policy, was weakened.
The most persistent foreign policy theme during Trudeau’s sixteen years in office was the reorganization of the bureaucracy. External affairs, international trade, immigration, and development assistance were all integrated in a single structure renamed the Department of External Affairs and International Trade. Although Trudeau introduced these bureaucratic reforms to foster a more rational decision-making process, their overall effect has been to force the foreign service to work more closely with other departments in formulating policy. The emphasis has moved from politics to trade, and from ideas to selling goods. Of all Trudeau’s initiatives in the foreign policy field, few have had such far-reaching effects as this institutional reform. He tried to curtail what he saw as the power of the foreign service and to upset its inherent conservatism, but he replaced the old department with an entity that is both more powerful and more conservative.
Trudeau’s record in world affairs must be judged in the context of the international and domestic environment in which he operated. Pressing domestic concerns not only distracted his attention but limited his options. His attempt to chart a new course for Canadain international affairs also encountered many conflicting signposts. In the late 1960s the threats emanating from the Cold War conflict that had dominated international security politics for nearly two decades had diminished, and East-West relations were moving to a less hostile phase. Despite the Prague Spring of 1968 and the brutal display of Soviet power that followed, the intense pressures for bloc solidarity were easing, NATO members were considering a renewed diplomatic dialogue with their enemies in the Warsaw Pact, and the Soviets and Americans were embarking on negotiations to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. In this environment, Trudeau had room to extend diplomatic recognition to China and to visit Moscow. By the time he returned to office for the last time in 1980, however, the world had reverted back to a more confrontational mode. American-Soviet relations had deteriorated as each side deployed a new wave of missiles against the others, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Washington cranked up its Cold War rhetoric. As the climate chilled there was renewed pressure for alliance solidarity, including pressure to test cruise missiles in Canada. By 1983, when Trudeau embarked on his peace initiative, he could not find a receptive audience.
Canada’s place in the world was also changing, partly because of what was happening in other countries. The European states had recovered from their wartime devastation and had emerged more powerful, economically and politically. In comparison, Canada’s position seemed to have declined, and the country appeared to be less needed than in the past. During the 1960s a number of newly independent states had dramatically altered the makeup and agenda of institutions such as the United Nations and the Commonwealth. New demands for justice, not charity, and for radical economic and political reforms challenged the comfortable views and practices of Canada’s paternalistic approach to the developing world. The United Nations was more crowded, and it became more difficult to distinguish Canada in the crowd. In these circumstances, it was essential for Canada to reassess its place in the world. When Trudeau visited Moscow in 1971 he refuted testimonials to Canada’s great-power status and reminded decision makers in the Kremlin that Canada was merely the largest of the small powers. It was a common theme in his early years. Canadian academics, however, took a different view. In 1974 James Eayrs, a noted observer of Canadian foreign policy, argued that Canada had become a foremost power, in part because it possessed natural resources that had become important in the international economy. In the early 1980s political scientists John Kirton and David Dewitt described Canada as a principal power, largely because of Trudeau himself and the way he had altered Canada’s foreign policy. At times, even Trudeau seemed uncertain of Canada’s position in the world. While he stressed the limits of Canadian diplomacy, he also launched initiatives designed to influence the great powers in areas such as global inequality and nuclear disarmament; while he reminded Canadians of their diminutive stature, he joined the world’s great powers in meetings and summits.
The 1970s were also a time when the agenda of international politics underwent significant change. The newly independent and economically disadvantaged states pushed economic issues to the top of the globe’s agenda, and, in the early years of the decade, two special sessions of the United Nations were devoted to considerations of a new international economic order. Commodities, and especially oil, highlighted by the Arab oil embargo of 1973—74, became a source of power, and many Third World states saw their influence rise. By the end of the decade, North-South relations deteriorated, as negotiations broke down on economic reforms and disparities increased. Economic issues remained prominent, however, as industrialized nations fixed their gaze more narrowly on domestic needs. The plight of poorer nations was relegated to speeches delivered to humanitarian groups. The declining importance of security issues during this period brought a new set of problems to the forefront, in areas such as the environment, human rights, and economic interdependence. These issues had more direct implications for many domestic constituencies in Canada, and they reinforced demands from within the government for a closer integration of foreign and domestic policy.
Amid the conflicting political, security, and economic trends, it was difficult to find signs of progress or even stability. Foreign policy became less predictable and more difficult to manage. Any Canadian leader would have found it difficult to devise a coherent policy in the shifting contours of the international environment. What created particular difficulties for Trudeau, however, was his deliberate attempt to achieve a more coherent foreign policy and to work from an explicitly defined set of principles. Although Trudeau often criticized Canada’s past policy as being too reactive, it quickly became clear that there was often little choice.
Trudeau had two reasons for moving control over foreign policy from the Department of External Affairs to the Prime Minister’s Office: personal interest and the trend towards summitry in international relations. Summit diplomacy—direct face-to-face meetings between heads of governments—has a long and checkered history. What was once considered an infrequent and noteworthy occurrence has now become common. And Trudeau liked it. He was frequently abroad, sharing a stage with foreign leaders such as Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, or Kenneth Kaunda; participating at sessions of the Commonwealth, the United Nations, or the Group of Seven; and tackling problems with Rhodesia, nuclear disarmament, or North-South relations. On every occasion, he tried to develop personal relations with foreign leaders as a means of promoting his foreign policy objectives. He encouraged Commonwealth heads of government to engage in a more extensive informal exchange of views, for example—a change that has made the Commonwealth a more effective association. In Trudeau’s words: “This is perhaps the greatest strength of the Commonwealth, this opportunity on a regular basis for men of goodwill to sit down together and discuss one with another the problems which affect them and the 850 million people whom they represent.”
Perhaps no summit was more important than the one to which Canada did not receive an invitation—the first meeting of what became the G7 at Rambouillet, France, in 1975. Despite his best efforts and a supportive push from the Americans, Trudeau had to wait until 1976, when the Americans hosted the event, to gain entry to this summit of summits. His subsequent performance in Puerto Rico secured a place for Canada at future meetings. This annual event became an important forum for Trudeau’s attempts to promote specific foreign policy initiatives: nuclear safeguards at the London summit of 1978, for example, North-South negotiations at Ottawa in 1981, and East-West security issues at Williamsburg in 1983 and again at London in 1984. The platform provided the necessary access to foreign leaders, but the results were usually disappointing. Whatever the merits of the club, it was not one in which members were receptive to Trudeau’s world views.
On occasion, Trudeau succeeded in getting other leaders to meet, as he did at Cancun in 1981 in a final attempt to reinvigorate North-South negotiations, but the lack of results again attests to the problems Trudeau’s initiatives encountered in his last years in office. First, they clashed with Margaret Thatcher’s and Ronald Reagan’s neoconservative philosophy, and, second, they highlighted the contradictions in Trudeau’s own performance. Unlike his early years in office when Canada’s record could be attributed to the previous government, by the early 1980s it was Trudeau’s own performance that defined the extent of Canada’s commitment to change. To argue, in spite of the record, that more needed to be done for the South, for the environment, for disarmament sounded hypocritical amid Canada’ discriminatory trade practices, energy consuming megaprojects, and cruise missile testing. If a principled power like Canada was not strong enough to undertake significant change, how could Trudeau argue that others should?
Part of the mystique surrounding Trudeau’s foreign policy comes from the initiatives he undertook in areas such as North-South relations and nuclear disarmament. They were highly visible and exceedingly personal, but they often lacked political and diplomatic support within his own government and in the international arena. His objective, it seemed, was to make a point or perhaps to educate. Unlike previous governments that had worked incrementally and behind the scenes to establish Canada’s credibility, Trudeau apparently saw his own credibility as most important. Perhaps for this reason he personalized Canada’s foreign policy in these areas and cultivated supporters abroad, while leaving undeveloped the necessary diplomatic, military, and financial resources at home to support his initiatives. The end result was often a gap between rhetoric and reality, between principle and practice. The gap was noticed more at home than abroad, but it threatened to undermine Canada’s credibility overseas. Nothing exemplifies this problem more than Trudeau’s foreign-policy swan song—the Peace Initiative of 1983—or relations with Europe. After Trudeau unilaterally halved Canada’s military deployments in Europe and curtailed defence spending, European governments were reluctant to respond to his personal pleas for a contractual link until he showed a greater tangible interest in supporting European security concerns. The result often was a foreign policy out of touch with the country’s capabilities, and capabilities out of line with the country’s interests.
Sympathetic observers argue that Trudeau’s foreign policy was marked by a consistent and principled world view. Thomas Axworthy, for example, wrote that Trudeau’s policy in areas such as the environment, arms control, and relations with the Third World “provides [an example] of liberal idealism at work in a conservative age.” Trudeau and Head repeatedly rejected realist views of international politics. In their book The Canadian Way, they write: “The two of us were seized of the conviction that principle and interest—idealism and realism—were not necessarily inconsistent, and certainly not contradictory … Power was no longer subject to traditional measurements; security was no longer solely a derivative of military might. In the circumstances, decisions based on ethical considerations were not simply tolerable, they had become necessary.” Trudeau outlined these ethical considerations in an address he gave in 1975: “The role of leadership today is to encourage the embrace of a global ethic. An ethic that abhors the present imbalance in the basic human condition—an imbalance in access to health care, to a nutritious diet, to shelter, to education. An ethic that extends to all men, to all space, and through all time.”
Although Trudeau repeatedly invoked such principles, they did not represent his world view in full. As the long-serving minister Mitchell Sharp writes in his memoirs: “Eloquent as those speeches were, they did more to enhance the reputation of the Prime Minister than to influence the content of Canadian foreign policy.” Trudeau did not, for example, support the view that idealist principles should interfere with state sovereignty. He consistently supported the principle of non-intervention even in the face of human rights violations, and he seemed indifferent to the link between Canadian trade and violations in other states. His opposition to nationalism was also evident in his views on international politics, his response to the civil war in Nigeria, and his criticism of the West’s rush “to recognize every Tom, Dick, and Harry republic that decided to proclaim its independence” in Eastern Europe after the Cold War. In observing the radical changes that have transformed East-West relations, Trudeau emphasized the importance of “stability” in the midst of competing demands for free market and democractic principles. And, while championing the needs of others, he consistently argued that foreign policy must serve Canadian interests and national objectives. Trudeau’s world view, like the man and the world, was complex and multifaceted.
In the late 1960s, Trudeau charted a new course for Canadian foreign policy with considerable fanfare and a sizeable expenditure of political resources. His repeated references to new initiatives and a change in direction led people to think that Canada’s foreign policy underwent a radical revision during his sixteen years in power. In truth, however, continuity rather than change best describes Canadian foreign policy throughout this period. In 1973 Canada supported the American peace process in Vietnam by joining yet another face-saving truce observation mission. Later that year, the government demanded not to be excluded from the UN peacekeeping operation in the Middle East after the Yom Kippur war. And in 1983, against unprecedented public opposition, Trudeau allowed the testing of cruise missiles in Canada as part of the price that good allies pay to be members of NATO. There were many critically important achievements for the Trudeau government and the country during this period: Canadian efforts to ease East-West tensions while promoting liberal values during the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe; to protect domestic fishing and mining interests while promoting the principles of equity and environmental protection in the Law of the Sea negotiations; and to pursue a liberalization of foreign markets while retaining some measure of protection for Canadian manufactures. But these initiatives were undertaken largely by members of the Department of External Affairs and demonstrated the continued relevance of the foreign service in multilateral negotiations.
The degree of continuity in Trudeau’s foreign policy is especially evident in light of the more significant changes undertaken by his successor, Brian Mulroney. In areas as diverse as democratizing the foreign policy-making process, apartheid in South Africa, intervention in support of humanitarian objectives, openings towards Latin America and the Pacific, free trade with the United States, and establishing la Francophonie, the departures from past practice are more noticeable under Mulroney than Trudeau. This fact can partly be explained by changing external conditions. As Trudeau and Head point out in their book, they were frequently working against the tide, and especially against established interests at home and abroad. More important, however, it seems that Trudeau was more in tune with the traditions of Canadian foreign policy than was recognized or acknowledged. The Pearsonian tradition had not been so bad after all.
There is little doubt that in foreign as in domestic policy, the Trudeau legacy remains. Trudeau carried an image abroad that, in many respects, was more personal and public than that of his predecessors. He was an international figure, and his personality, along with his country, gave him a prominent place in the councils of global politics. It is also clear that his desire to question established truths and practices, as well as his invocation of principle and justice, continues to challenge Canadian policy makers. Yet, as Trudeau discovered, an effective foreign policy requires more than personality or principle, and Canada’s ability to contribute to a progressive resolution of global problems owes as much to established government departments as it does to its leader. In the end, and in spite of the rhetoric of innovation and change, it was Trudeau’s ability to work within the traditions of Canada’s multilateral foreign policy that accounts for the successes of his government.