Stephen J. Randall

Canada, Latin America, Colombia, and the evolving policy agenda

Although Canada has been involved in an active military role in Afghanistan since 2001 against the remnants of the Taliban, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the course of 2007 identified Latin America as one of its priority policy areas. That orientation was reflected not only in the prime minister’s brief but high profile official visits to Colombia, Chile, Haiti, and Barbados in mid-2007 but also in speeches the prime minister delivered on the theme. The prime minister’s stated objectives in his trip to Latin America were to “bolster Canada’s relationship” with the region, promote Canadian economic interests, including initiating free trade discussions with Colombia and Peru, and reinforce Canadian commitments to humanitarian assistance. This paper assesses the current direction of Canadian government policy toward Latin America, with specific focus on Colombia. The prime minister placed his government’s Latin American policy in a larger global context in his speech to the Council on Foreign Relations a few months after his 2007 regional visit (A conversation with Stephen Harper, 2007). In that address he noted the importance of multilateralism and the role of middle powers in addressing such challenges as terrorism, “stopping the spread of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; bolstering fragile states; helping rebuild societies shattered by chronic conflict; tackling climate change; sustaining and spreading economic growth and prosperity.” He also underlined the commitment of his government to renewing the Canadian military. On relations with the western hemisphere, he reiterated his commitment to “active and sustained re-engagement with the hemisphere to advance security, prosperity and democracy.” He again stressed the belief that he had advanced in Chile, that development should not be viewed as a choice between “unfettered capitalism” or “old socialist models,” and that Canada provided the alternative of “constitutional democracy and economic openness combined with the social safety nets, equitable wealth creation and regional sharing arrangements that prevent the sort of exploitation still seen far too often in the Americas.” With respect to Colombia specifically, he identified the negotiation of a free trade agreement as “in Canada’s own strategic trade interests.” “In my view,” he argued, “Colombia needs its democratic friends to lean forward and give them a chance at partnership and trade with North America.” In a comment that could only have been directed at US Congressional Democrats who have blocked the free trade agreement with Colombia, Harper stated that he was “very concerned that some in the United States seem unwilling to do that.... If the US turns its back on its friends in Colombia, this will set back our cause far more than any Latin American dictator could ever hope to achieve.” (A conversation with Stephen Harper, 2007). 29

The Tragedy of American Diplomacy Revisited: U.S. Relations with Latin America and the Caribbean

LATIONS SINCE 1889. By Mark Gilderhus. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Pp. 282.

Western hemisphere energy development: the continuing search for security

55.00 cloth,

United States Foreign Policy and the New World Order: A Historical Reflection

21.95 paper.) UNITED STATES-LATIN AMERICAN RELATIONS, 1850-1903: ESTABLISHING A RELATIONSHIP. Edited by Thomas M. Leonard. (Tuscaloosa and London: University of Alabama Press, 1999. Pp. 303.

A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

44.95 cloth.) THE FRENCH IN CENTRAL AMERICA: CULTURE AND COMMERCE, 1820-1930. By Thomas D. Schoonover. (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2000. Pp. 244.

The Americanization of Henry Kissinger

55.00 cloth.) THE DANGER OF DREAMS: GERMAN AND AMERICAN IMPERIAL-

Lessons of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy

This book examines the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), an ambitious venture in regional market integration which builds on the principles of the North American Free Trade Agreement. It assesses the long-term corporate and public policy measures to cope with the increased monetary, fiscal and structural interdependence that will be required if the benefits of the FTAA are to be realized.

The Caribbean Basin : an international history

The editors have focused the theme articles in this issue of International Journal on a consideration of recent developments in United States foreign policy. With the end of nearly half a century of Cold War between the Soviet bloc and the West, there is now little doubt that an old order has passed and that the international system is in transition though to precisely what form of new world order remains uncertain. As part of that transition, and perhaps in particular during a presidential campaign in 1992 that was remarkable for its neglect of foreign policy questions, there have been hints of a new isolationism in the United States, a collective turning of the American back on the world to concentrate on the extensive economic and social problems that beset their society. The passing of the old order, the transition to a new one, and the uncertainty over the direction in which United States foreign policy will travel provides the starting point for our examination of some aspects of that policy.

The diplomacy of modernization : Colombian-American relations, 1920-1940

In the United States the Cold War shaped our political culture, our institutions, and our national priorities. Abroad, it influenced the destinies of people everywhere. It divided Europe, split Germany, and engulfed the Third World. It led to a feverish arms race and massive sales of military equipment to poor nations. For at least four decades it left the world in a chronic state of tension where a miscalculation could trigger nuclear holocaust. Documents, oral histories, and memoirs illuminating the goals, motives, and fears of contemporary U.S. officials were already widely circulated and studied during the Cold War, but in the 1970s a massive declassification of documents from the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Department of Defense, and some intelligence agencies reinvigorated historical study of this war which became the definitive conflict of its time. While many historians used these records to explore specialized topics, this author marshals the considerable available evidence on behalf of an overall analysis of national security policy during the Truman years. To date, it is the most comprehensive history of that administrations progressive embroilment in the Cold War.

North America without borders? : integrating Canada, the United States, and Mexico

Bruce Mazlish. Kissinger, The European Mind in American Policy. New York: Basic Books, 1976. 330 + xiii pp. When one considers the plethora of terms — everything from isolationism to imperialism — which has been employed to describe United States foreign policy, it is interesting to notice that only one political figure has come to be synonymous with an American foreign policy tradition. That figure is, of course, Woodrow Wilson. Wilsonianism, as much as it may have seemed a dangerously myopic idealism to a George Kennan, has come to be viewed — and more accurately, one might add — as a quest for international stability and world order under United States leadership, safe from the extremes of revolutionary socialism and nationalism which Wilson and his closest associates perceived were tearing apart the interna- tional fabric.