The aspiration for power is a permanent force of human nature and the very essence of political reality at the individual, national and international levels. The war in Ukraine, for example, is part of the broader struggle for power on the international stage. Yet escaping this reality is precisely what Canadian governments, including that of Justin Trudeau, have attempted to do.
This behavior worked best in the years immediately following the Cold War, when the power of the US-led West was still dominant and discontent with its world order could still be suppressed or contained. Those days are over. Canada must face reality.
A Canada Apart
Canada has long believed that it could participate in international affairs without engaging in power politics, that is, without engaging in the struggle for power. Even today, the Trudeau government likes to think that Canadian foreign policy is intrinsically good because it is rational and galvanized by no interest other than that which all states rationally want: peace, prosperity and freedom.
According to this view, rationality, international law, international organizations, and free trade will prevail in international affairs and ultimately pacify them. Power politics, on the other hand, results from bad or confused strategies or principles carried out by equally bad or confused states. This policy based on irrational antagonisms of interests and rooted in obsolete aristocratic (today we might say “autocratic”) traditions and practices, including aggression and war, is a disease that must be cured.
Several decades ago, political scientist Hans J. Morgenthau, among others, dismissed these ideas of classical liberalism as a doomed attempt to turn international affairs into a type of science. His arguments remain relevant today and are widely used as the basis for this text.
Unfortunately for Mr. Trudeau, who would clearly prefer it otherwise, the global political transformation is shaking the intellectual and ideological foundations of the foreign policy tradition in place since Canada’s independence. When it comes to the war in Ukraine, Canada adopts sanctions against Russia and welcomes new NATO allies — Finland, Sweden and potentially Ukraine — but the substance remains the same. General, abstract liberal ideas about interdependence and negotiation continue to be emphasized, as if international affairs could be perfected and no real tension existed except with certain autocratic states.
Change the way you see the world
As a small power, Canada cannot have much direct impact on the war in Ukraine. But he can change the way he sees the world. The essence of international politics is that states struggle to define the meaning and value of things and to assert their definition of positive social identity—in short, to achieve psychological domination over the minds of others. . Canada must begin to reframe international events, such as the war in Ukraine, according to these principles.
Russia and the United States know this is a war for power. The symbolic object they are trying to define is Ukraine itself. Will Ukraine be in the Russian or Western sphere of influence, what will Ukraine’s political direction be? This is what the war is about.
The Trudeau government should better explain the seriousness of international conflicts and tensions. There are major tensions, even within the West. But Canadians do not perceive them. In Canada, these questions are generally framed in terms of defense (and Canadians feel safe) rather than in terms of power. Therefore, the Canadian people were not moved by the call made by US President Joe Biden a few years ago to prepare for the “battle”, democracies versus autocracies.
However, Canadians share with the United States and its allies disbelief and dismay at those parts of the world that persist in not being liberal. The recognition that the international order envisioned by liberalism cannot be achieved any time soon highlights this aspect. In the harsh light of the erosion of US-led order and power, we can detect resentment, even anger, toward non-Western rivals, particularly Russia and China, who seem to feel ready, willing, able, even entitled, to change the dynamics of international and global politics.
This could be at the heart of a new foreign policy tradition, in which Canada, alone or as part of the US-led West, engages in power politics. It must be so, or in a similar way, because the aspiration to power cannot be suppressed.
A new, more relevant approach to Canadian foreign policy requires recognizing that power politics is neither good nor bad. Interest defined in terms of power incorporates moral, legal, normative, ethical, ideological and other elements. The prudence and sagacity—or lack thereof—with which a state vies for power may also accord with liberal and progressive policies. It depends on agency, social context and history. Canada has a solid liberal foundation on which its power-based approach to foreign policy can develop.