Crafting a New Canadian Foreign Policy: Strategic Sovereignty for a “Leaderless World”

Abstract

Defining Canada's foreign policy has always been a conundrum for Canadian decision makers, torn between the desire to carve out a space of Canada's own, while recognizing the benefit and necessity of ties with the US. Today, this job has become much more difficult because America's global leadership role is changing in ways that are difficult to predict, but that will inevitably make it harder for Canada to navigate internationally. Canada has no choice but to develop greater strategic sovereignty. What Canada needs now, nineteen years after the last foreign policy review, is a national conversation about Canada's role in the world. The goal should be to encourage a sense of shared national purpose and craft a renewed foreign policy for an uncertain world. To do so, Canadian decision makers should ask five core questions: first, how should Canada's foreign policy prioritize Canadian values with ‘more pragmatism and less posturing'? Second, what balance should we seek between Canada's global role and its bilateral focus on the US? Third, how can we mitigate the risk to Canada of a more inward-looking, protectionist and unpredictable US? How should we adapt Canada's international engagement to take into account a less globally-engaged US? Finally, what specific Canadian interests, assets and vulnerabilities should our foreign policy prioritize? The article offers a framework for Canada to set about rebuilding its strategic sovereignty, launching a national conversation to rethink and rewrite its foreign policy narrative, redefine its international priorities and create a sense of common purpose around Canada’s role as a global actor.