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The “Old Peacekeeper” Confronts the “New World Order”: Canadian Power and Purpose from Suez to Afghanistan

Published/Copyright: March 15, 2014
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Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik
From the journal Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Volume 59 Issue 2

Abstract

In 1956, when they devised a way out of the Suez crisis, Canadian diplomats were remarkably successful in advancing their nation’s interests by promoting its security, enhancing its global influence, and preserving the international order. Today, the Afghan experience highlights the apparent obstacles to the pursuit of comparable interests in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 world. It is against this background that the present article seeks to reveal the underlying factors that enabled Canada to be effective as a traditional peacekeeper at Suez but apparently impede its success as a peacemaker in Afghanistan. These factors consist of, on the one hand, external forces beyond Canada’s control, such as an ever more complex world order and the increasingly convoluted nature of contemporary crises. On the other hand, however, there is also the largely homemade problem of a widening ‘commitment-capability gap’: Ottawa is ready to enter poorly defined commitments which it does not have the resources to sustain. As Canadians now debate their post-Afghanistan role on the global stage they should take variations on all four dimensions of context, crisis, capabilities, and commitment into account and formulate a policy that applies the key lesson of its successful Suez diplomacy by linking credible operational commitment to convincing strategic leadership.

Online erschienen: 2014-03-15
Erschienen im Druck: 2011-04

© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Editorial
  4. Introduction: Crossroads – Canadian Cultural Intersections
  5. ‘And I Did Want to Pass’: Reading Canadian Second Generation Holocaust Memoirs as Migration Texts
  6. The Self and the City: Narrating ‘Glocal’ Spaces and Identities in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For
  7. The North Comes South: Seasonal Nordicity in Montreal in the Short Stories of Monique Proulx and Clark Blaise
  8. From Finding a Voice to Being Heard: Overcoming Current Challenges of Canadian Children’s Literature
  9. Official Languages and Multiculturalism: The ‘Other’ Languages
  10. The “Old Peacekeeper” Confronts the “New World Order”: Canadian Power and Purpose from Suez to Afghanistan
  11. Buchbesprechungen
  12. Die Autoren dieses Heftes
https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa.2011.59.2.177

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Titelei
  2. Inhalt
  3. Editorial
  4. Introduction: Crossroads – Canadian Cultural Intersections
  5. ‘And I Did Want to Pass’: Reading Canadian Second Generation Holocaust Memoirs as Migration Texts
  6. The Self and the City: Narrating ‘Glocal’ Spaces and Identities in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For
  7. The North Comes South: Seasonal Nordicity in Montreal in the Short Stories of Monique Proulx and Clark Blaise
  8. From Finding a Voice to Being Heard: Overcoming Current Challenges of Canadian Children’s Literature
  9. Official Languages and Multiculturalism: The ‘Other’ Languages
  10. The “Old Peacekeeper” Confronts the “New World Order”: Canadian Power and Purpose from Suez to Afghanistan
  11. Buchbesprechungen
  12. Die Autoren dieses Heftes
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