A foreign policy review for Canada – is Global Britain a model to emulate?

Foreign policy reviews are major undertakings putting demands on the political leadership and the bureaucracy alike. Their published outcomes are invariably going to serve as targets for the critics of the governments that produce them. These factors may explain why Canada has not undertaken one for over 15 years. Such reviews have been more common in the United Kingdom and the perceived need to set out a new foreign policy course for the country post-Brexit led to the launch in February 2020 of a review under the heading Global Britain (a term first employed by Prime Minister Theresa May in a speech to the Conservative Party conference in 2016). The review culminated in the release in March 2021 of Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy (Government of the UK, 2021).

Whatever one’s opinion about its specific contents and recommendations one has to be impressed with the product and the thought and organization that lay behind it. Notably, the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy revealed an understanding of foreign relations as an integrated effort by government drawing upon all of its assets in order to promote the nation’s interests and values abroad.

In reading the UK policy document one is struck by the clarity and accessibility of its language as well as the logic of its structure. It begins with a foreword by the Prime Minister that outlines the main themes and puts his own imprimatur on the policy (a useful endorsement for future bureaucratic disputes over its implementation). Next comes an account of the strategic environment, projected out to 2030, in which the policy is to be carried out. The core of the document is a strategic framework that sets out the four chief goals of the policy (each goal accompanied with 2–3 supporting objectives). This displays a necessary discipline in identifying the principal goals rather than generating a myriad of “priorities” that makes achievement of any of them problematic.

Adding to the credibility of the overall conclusions of the review are two annexes. The first links the various aims to specific spending allocations (i.e. matching policy aims to the resources necessary to carry them out). A second annex on Evidence and Engagement describes the extensive consultations undertaken with representatives of over 20 countries plus meetings with experts, academics and even a session with youth from 14 countries in order to glean the perspectives of young people. All this in addition to soliciting inputs from the public which resulted in over 450 submissions from individuals and organizations. Collectively, these steps help explain the year long period required to produce the review, but they impart a certain legitimacy to its findings and serve to counter potential criticism that the review was simply a self-interested product of the denizens of the Foreign Office.

The four principal goals identified in the strategic framework are: (i) sustaining strategic advantage through science and technology; (ii) shaping the open, international order of the future; (iii) strengthening security and defence at home and abroad and (iv) building resilience at home and overseas. To implement these broad goals, the review acknowledges that the UK begins with some assets: the fourth largest diplomatic network “with 281 posts in 178 countries”, “a nuclear armed power with global reach and integrated military capabilities”; the third “most powerful cyber nation” and a substantial mix of “hard and soft power”(p. 9). The review confirms a resource shift from development to defence and support for emerging technologies. Official Development aid is to be reduced from .7% of GDP to .5% although the review promises a return to the higher figure “when the financial situation allows” (p. 5). Spending on defence however is to reach a level of 2.2% of GDP, well ahead of NATO’s 2% target for increased defence spending by its members.

The review identifies the chief change in the global environment in which the UK is to pursue its goals as the shift from “the post-Cold War ‘rules based international system’” to a situation of “systemic competition” in which “the international order is more fragmented, characterized by intensifying competition between states over interests, norms and values” (p. 11). The policy asserts that “A defence of the status quo is not sufficient for the decades ahead” (p. 11). This claim could have benefited from some elaboration as presumably the UK is not going to abandon its defence of that “rules-based international system” which it has helped to create. Perhaps the formulation had more to do with imparting a sense of new directions rather than signaling a de-emphasis of defending global rules. Indeed, elsewhere the UK’s support for “multilateralism” is reaffirmed and it is stated: “We will sit at the heart of a network of like-minded countries and flexible groupings committed to protecting human rights and global norms” (p. 6).

In this challenging environment of “systemic competition” a new “creative diplomacy” is called for and one that places stress on the emerging technologies related to cyber and space capabilities. Shaping the international order of the post-Covid future will be a key aim including in “the future frontiers of cyberspace and space and protecting democratic values” (p. 21). Recognizing that this reshaping of the international order cannot be achieved alone, the UK will “use our convening power and work with partners to reinvigorate the international system” (p. 18) while “leading by example where we have unique or significant strengths” (p. 19).

The review is careful in describing the “state threats” the UK faces. It bluntly specifies Russia as “the most acute threat to our security” (p. 18) possibly reflecting an enhanced animus towards Putin’s regime flowing from the Skripal and Navalny poisoning episodes, repeated cyber attacks and sustained military actions against Ukraine.

The review is far more cautious in characterizing the threat posed by China. China is described as a “systemic competitor”, whose “increasing power and international assertiveness is likely to be the most significant geopolitical factor of the 2020s” (p. 26). The review also acknowledges the challenge posed by China as “an authoritarian state, with different values to ours” although its impact is confined by the review to the economic sphere, described as representing “the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security” (p. 62). That said, the review elsewhere notes that “the distinction between economic and national security is increasingly redundant” (p. 19) as the current surge of what has been described as “techno-nationalism” seems to bear out. China is however still depicted as a promising trade destination and an important partner on climate change policy. As one analyst has put it: “Regarding China it [the review] performs a delicate balancing act” (Smidek, 2021).

The strategic goals of the review are couched in functional versus geographical terms that might have been the dominant framing of past reviews. The only significant geopolitical move presaged in the review is the self-described “Indo-Pacific tilt” with the UK promising to establish in the region “a greater and more persistent presence than any other European country” (p. 62). This “tilt” has come with a form of “gunboat diplomacy” in the dispatch of the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to the Indo-Pacific region. Although this is not presented as a counter to China’s growing influence such an augmented regional presence by the UK will be welcomed by allies such as the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia and many ASEAN states.

The UK intends to increase overall effectiveness through the integration of the various components of its foreign policy. The merger of the Development Department into the FCO (Foreign & Commonwealth Office) to produce the admittedly awkward four letter acronym FCDO is touted as one example of such integration as is the establishment of the National Cyber Force and the focus on space power. The UK is making up for past neglect of the outer space sector via several near-term measures including the issuance for the first time of a National Space Strategy, the establishment of a military Space Command and the development of an indigenous launch capability to be sited in Scotland. Similarly, the review gives prominence to the growing importance of “cyber power” stating “There will be a struggle to shape the global digital environment between ‘digital freedom’ and ‘digital authoritarianism’, which will have significant implications for real-world governance” (p. 35). The UK intends to play a leading role in “establish[ing] norms in the future frontiers of cyberspace, emerging technologies, data and space” (p. 18). This accords with the review’s general emphasis on the UK “building and sustaining a durable competitive edge in science and technology” (p. 35).

While the review overall sets out well-grounded findings and provides an “actionable” guide to the future foreign policy course the UK will follow, one can certainly take issue with certain elements of the review. Perhaps most egregious is its announced 40% increase in the UK’s nuclear weapons which lacks a strategic rationale and sends the worst of signals to the already shaky Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the leadup to its 10th Review Conference this August. The review also gives scant attention to relations with the EU and ties with Africa and the Middle East are largely overlooked. Whatever the objections might be to certain elements of the UK review it is refreshing to have a peer allied government articulate its foreign policy with such vision and high-quality analysis.

A model for Canada?

In assessing the UK’s Integrated Review, Canadian cannot help but make comparisons with our own government’s record in reviewing its foreign policy and sharing the results with the public. It has been many years since a Canadian Government undertook a comprehensive review of foreign policy. This resulted in Prime Minister Paul Martin’s International Policy Statement: A Role of Pride and Influence in the World (Government of Canada, 2005). Initially launched in early 2001, the review was meant to set out a foreign policy agenda for the third mandate of the Chrétien Government which had been elected in November 2000. This document apparently had a difficult gestation with the Prime Minister turning to an expert outside the bureaucracy to complete it when he was dissatisfied with what the officials had generated. In any event, the effective shelf life of the document was cut short when the Conservatives under Stephen Harper defeated the Martin Liberals in the election in January 2006, and formed a government that had scant interest in foreign relations let alone in the musings of the prior Liberal government.

As one observer of Harper’s foreign policy has noted: “The Harper Government has sought to distance its approach to Canadian foreign policy from the multilateralist liberal international tradition of its predecessors, asserting a ‘principled foreign policy’ in line with its ideological world view and partisan electoral calculations” (Schmitz, 2014). Furthermore, the lack of interest in articulating a foreign policy reflected an attitude that the government: “ … already knows what is the right thing to do in the conduct of foreign affairs. As a result, the process of foreign policy development has been closely guarded and kept largely internal to government” (Schmitz, 2014).

The election of the government of Justin Trudeau in 2015 would have been a natural opportunity to engage in a review of foreign policy as the Prime Minister’s slogan that “Canada is back” would have suggested. Instead, the Trudeau government chose to forego a full review of foreign policy in favour of proceeding with two sectoral reviews.

As a result in 2017 Trudeau’s government issued distinct reviews of Defence policy – Safe, Secure Engaged (Government of Canada, 2017a) and Development policy – Feminist International Assistance Policy (Government of Canada, 2017b) without the benefit of a prior foreign policy review to provide context. This action ran counter to the traditional view that defence and development should be the servants of foreign policy and not the reverse. Although this discrepancy was little remarked upon at the time, the Liberal government eventually made a gesture to the normal order by having then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland make a statement to the House of Commons on the eve of the release of the defence policy review (Hansard, June 6, 2017). This brief statement while replete with homages to prominent Liberal statesmen of the past and broad assertions, failed to provide concrete guidance on a wide spectrum of international issues as relevant then as they are now.

The absence of a foreign policy review in its first mandate, could have been rectified as the Trudeau Government entered its second mandate. As one commentator (who had personally been involved in the Martin review) concluded: “Given the deep issues at play, a full foreign policy review would seem warranted, if not prior to the 2019 election then early in the new government’s mandate” (Mank, 2019). Despite several calls by other foreign policy experts that the time for a review had come, the government again chose not to pursue that option preferring a foreign policy that was heavy with rhetoric and the affirmation of values and light on transparency and the detailing of specific activity and objectives. In practice, this resulted in a foreign policy “report card” that some analysts considered only rated an overall “C” with a “D+” grade for the diplomacy component (Carment, Fraser, & Stewart, 2021).

Critical commentary by domestic foreign policy experts did not appear to discomfort the government which continued to rely on an ad hoc and largely reactive approach to its foreign relations. In eschewing a formal foreign policy review, the Trudeau government may simply have decided that there was little electoral benefit from foreign policy activism (which comes with considerable costs and risks) and it was more prudent to concentrate on its domestic agenda. The government has committed itself to producing a Feminist Foreign Policy statement and has undertaken consultations with relevant civil society groups on this theme, but no final document has yet to be published. In the absence of one, it is impossible to know whether this appealing concept will be manifested in a form that provides substantive strategic and operational guidance for the country’s foreign relations.

In the absence of a published outcome of a foreign policy review there is no authoritative, comprehensive statement on what the government’s intentions are on the international scene. Similarly, there is no reference policy against which parliamentarians and the public can hold the government to account for its actions (or inactions). It is noteworthy that one prominent NGO, the Canadian International Council, is not waiting upon a government-led review, but has launched its own “Foreign Policy by Canadians” deliberative process engaging hundreds in the identification of key priorities to guide future policy (Warren, 2021).

Militating for a review is also the basic truth that the international context is dynamic and the situation pertaining back in 2005 is not the same as that existing in 2021 (just think “pandemic”). Geo-political changes plus the impact of emerging technologies, climate change and new trading practices have transformed the international scene in many ways and a foreign policy review provides an occasion for re-calibration of governmental premises and priorities in a comprehensive manner. In a democracy the government pursues a foreign policy in the name of its citizens, and it is incumbent on it to regularly inform the public as to what that policy consists of.

Almost two decades after Ottawa’s last attempt at a foreign policy review the UK’s Integrated Review is a product the government of Canada might wish to emulate.

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This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Paul Meyer

Paul Meyer is Adjunct Professor of International Studies and Fellow in International Security at Simon Fraser University. Prior to taking up his university appointment in 2011, Meyer had a 35 year career in Canada's Foreign Service with a focus on international security policy. He is the current Chair of the Canadian Pugwash Group. His research interests include nuclear and conventional arms control and disarmament, outer space security and international cyber security.