Junior Partner of Empire: Why Canada’s Foreign Policy Isn’t What You Think
Canada is not what it appears to outsiders. It is not what it seems even to Canadians. The idea that middle-power Canada is a strong, upright guy who steps into the fight hesitantly and defends the little man is a myth of grandiose proportions. The claim that we are peacekeepers is shattered once you realize whose peace we have been and are currently keeping.
For a very long time Canada’s leaders have been deceptive and slithery about what we are up to on the other side of the world. We present our public face as nice guys, but in reality have been playing faithfully our role as junior partners of Empire for centuries.
Our actions in the world have not been very nice at all. Let’s peel back the happy face sticker pasted over our foreign policy. And let’s see how we really act in the world by learning from Yves Engler’s disturbing text, The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy (2009).
This book is packed with so much detail that my approach will simply highlight several examples where Canadians generally believe that “Canada has been a force for good in the world”: the Caribbean, the Middle East and South Africa.
Keep firmly in mind that Canada is a fragment-offshoot of two colossal Empires: the French and the British, and contemporary vassal-state of the US Hegemon, currently trying to reduce the entire world to rubble and ruins. Much of Canada’s early history is about the French and English battling it out for control of the land stolen from the indigenous peoples.
Burning cane fields in the Caribbean
Engler has an intense interest in the Caribbean and particularly in Haiti. Engler states forthrightly: “Canada has long been influential in the English-speaking Caribbean and, from our colonial past, it should not be surprising that this country’s role was usually one of supporting Great Britain.”
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