Ideology, ballots, and alliances: Canadian participation in multinational military operations

ABSTRACT

The decision to employ force abroad is often a contentious political decision, where partisanship plays a crucial role. Prior to military intervention, political parties usually make their ideologically distinctive preferences clear and seek to implement them once in power. What remains unclear, however, is how ideology affects the decision to use military force. This article contends that alliance and electoral calculations constrain the ability of political parties to implement their ideological preferences with regards to the use of force. It examines a “most likely” case for the partisan theory of military intervention, namely Canada’s refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq and its decision to commit forces to the war against the Islamic State. It finds that only in combination with alliance and electoral calculations does executive ideology offer valuable insights into Canada’s military support to U.S.-led coalition operations, which contributes to our understanding of allied decision-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Alliances
• foreign policy
• Canada
• Iraq
• Islamic State
• military interventions

Acknowledgements

We would like to specially thank Charlotte Duval-Lantoine for her research assistance. Authors are listed in alphabetical order.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest has been reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Stéfanie von Hlatky is an associate professor of political studies at Queen’s University and the former Director of the Queen’s Centre for International and Defence Policy (CIDP). Her research focuses on NATO, military interventions, and defense policy. She has held positions at Georgetown University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Dartmouth College, the Centre for Security Studies at the ETH Zurich, and was a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair at the University of Southern California. She has published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, International Journal, European Security, Asian Security, as well as the Journal of Transatlantic Studies. She is the author of American Allies in Times of War: The Great Asymmetry (Oxford University Press, 2013). She has also published two edited volumes: The Future of US Extended Deterrence (with Andreas Wenger) (Georgetown University Press, 2015) and Going to War? Trends in Military Interventions (with H. Christian Breede) (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016).

Justin Massie is an associate professor of political science at the University of Quebec in Montreal. He is also a senior fellow at the Canadian International Council, as well as at the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur les relations internationales du Canada et du Québec (CIRRICQ). He is the author of numerous works on Canadian foreign and defense policy, including Francosphère: L’importance de la France dans la culture stratégique du Canada (Presses de l'Université du Québec, 2013). His current research focuses on ideology and foreign policy, burden sharing in multinational military interventions, and allied defense policy in an emerging multipolar world.

Notes

1. Foreign Affairs Minister Bill Graham used the term “honest broker” as a way to define Canada’s efforts to compromise (Trickey, 2003).

Additional information

Funding

Research leading to the publication of this article received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2017-1206].