A few days ago, the day after her swearing in as Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mélanie Joly said she wanted to draw inspiration from Lester B. Pearson in order to conduct Canadian diplomacy. “With its very strong power of influence, Canada is able to play, at the international level, in the big leagues,” she declared, citing the most illustrious of her predecessors.
Coincidence or calculated gesture, the declaration of Mélanie Joly was timely, because exactly 65 years ago, in November 1956, Pearson indeed played in the big leagues by proposing a diplomatic solution to the Suez crisis, while the great powers clashed around the famous canal. A year later, the Nobel Committee awarded him its Peace Prize in order to reward, he said, “the man who contributed more than anyone to save the world”.
Invoking Pearson’s name has been a ritual to which all foreign ministers have performed for decades, with the notable exception of Stephen Harper’s Conservative ministers who hated him. However, this sets the bar high for Canadian diplomacy, sometimes too high for some governments.
What makes Pearson an essential reference in Canadian foreign policy and the standard bearer of a certain conception of Canada in the world? His son, Geoffrey, himself a diplomat, revealed his father’s recipe for success and therefore that of Canadian diplomacy for a long time in a book whose title says it all: Seize the Day: Lester B. Pearson and Crisis Diplomacy, unfortunately never translated into French. Through a detailed analysis of the crises and initiatives in which Pearson participated between 1945 and 1956, he documents the incredible diplomatic activism of the former foreign minister.
Pearson’s strategy
Pearson has always been distressed by war. He had participated in the First World War and had witnessed, as a diplomat, the collapse of the security system born in the aftermath of this conflict. After the Second World War, well established in a position of power as ambassador and then as minister, he had one obsession: to avoid a third cataclysm. He was convinced that Canada had a say in rebuilding international institutions designed to create a more stable and secure world. Peace, for him, was too important to be left in the hands of the great powers. He therefore deployed a strategy allowing Canada to be a key player by committing intellectual, human and material resources to achieve this objective. From then on, Canada’s paw was found in the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the treaty creating NATO, the collective action of the United Nations during the Korean War and, of course, the outcome of the Suez crisis.
“Circumstances create opportunities,” his son wrote, and Pearson was able to use them “to take advantage of them for the good of Canada and the planet”. In a world where the Cold War forced each country to choose sides, he succeeded in retaining room for maneuver in Canada intended to influence world affairs. He calculated his blows well so as not to unnecessarily irritate his closest allies, but he still happened to collide with them, as during that famous Suez crisis where Canada broke away from the mother countries, the United Kingdom and France, which had attacked Egypt.
The Pearson method was born. It would mark the way in which Canadian diplomacy operated until the early 2000s. All the prime ministers, from John Diefenbaker to Jean Chrétien, including Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Brian Mulroney, were bold and took risks in order to polish Canada’s image and increase its influence in the world. This is how the country’s international identity was built. For the past fifteen years, neither Stephen Harper nor Justin Trudeau has succeeded in following this tradition.
Some analysts believe that the current situation is not conducive to a significant return of Canada to the international scene. The confrontation between the United States and China, the emergence of new powers, the loss of influence of the West, the rise of authoritarian regimes and the shaking of multilateralism would make it difficult to deploy an activist foreign policy. .
Is this picture so different from that of the Cold War? In certain respects, no doubt, but we forget a little too quickly in what environment of “cold” violence – the two crises in Berlin, the Cuban missile crisis and that of the Euromissiles – and of “hot” violence – East confrontation. West through the Vietnam War, coups in Congo and Chile, invasion of Afghanistan – we have lived. And it was during these troubled times that Canada demonstrated its creativity.
Pearson gave a method to Canadian foreign policy from which his successors drew inspiration. What opportunities will Mélanie Joly seize to restore luster and influence to Canadian diplomacy at a time when, according to her, “tectonic plates are moving in the world”?