Southern (Over) Exposure? Quebec and the Evolution of Canada’s Grand Strategy, 2002–2012

ABSTRACT

One of the most persistent themes in the debate on Canadian foreign policy over the past few decades concerns the influence Quebec is thought to possess over the design and implementation of Canadian foreign and defense policy. Our purpose in this article is to situate this general debate within a more specific context, of Canada’s grand strategic choices as they principally involve the country’s security and defense relations with the US. To do this, we adopt somewhat of a “counterfactual” tack; to wit, we inquire whether, in the absence of Quebec from the Canadian confederation, we should expect to have seen a fundamentally different grand strategy fashioned by Ottawa, one with different significance for relations with the US. We focus on two specific cases, both of which have figured prominently in recent Canadian–American strategic relations: the war in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq. We conclude that while there is something to the claim that Quebec can and does boast of a certain “specificity” in the matter of Canada’s grand-strategic preferences, it is hardly the same thing as arguing that the country without Quebec would have adopted policies on both Afghanistan and Iraq that were fundamentally different from the ones it chose to follow.     

Wrapped in Two Flags: The Complex Political History of Nunavik

ABSTRACT

During the first half of the twentieth century, northern Quebec was under federal jurisdiction. Tired of English Canadian supremacy and increasingly aware of northern Quebec’s considerable natural resources, which could provide a solid basis for future moves toward independence, the Quebec government began to take over responsibility for its northern territories in the 1960s. It established a regional administration to take charge of its northern affairs and sent officers to northern Quebec’s remote communities. For two decades, both governments administered the region and imposed two political systems on the local Inuit. This article is based on lengthy fieldwork and archival research. The historical background is described to show how Nunavik has developed as a political and social entity through its relationships with the Quebec and Canadian governments. This conflictual situation has created tensions in the Inuit community, resulting in political dissensions over the goal of self-government. Finally, this article details how the Inuit have exploited federal–provincial tensions to further their own interests.     

Governing from the Border? Quebec’s Role in North American Security

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on Quebec’s role in cross-border security governance. It exposes the challenges Quebec is facing in this area and what cross-border activities fall within its jurisdiction. The supported hypothesis in this article is that security is subjected to an increasing politicization from the Quebec government in a post-9/11 context, which contributes to the edification of an embryonic “multilevel governance.” If this politicization was noticeable in political statements and international agreements, it seems that it was more driven by conjectural imperatives than a real desire to make Quebec a leader in transnational security. Therefore, there were no diplomatic and financial commitments to make security part of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine and develop a similar paradiplomacy as in other fields. However, on different technical and bureaucratic levels, transgovernmental relations between certain Quebec governmental organizations, including police corps, and their American counterparts were created. Consequently, they contributed to make continental action more effective, at least in a certain measure.     

The Changing Circumpolar World for Canada,Quebec, Nunavik,and the Arctic Council

ABSTRACT

Arctic Quebec is one piece of the puzzle comprising the Circumpolar World. In fact, almost one-third of Quebec’s territory lies within the Canadian Arctic. This geographic fact places Nunavik and its people squarely in economic and political affairs swirling around the Circumpolar World, but so far their political involvement has been minimal. This article explores three main themes: the Arctic nature of Nunavik; Nunavik’s place in the political corridors of the Arctic Council, Canada, and the Circumpolar World; and global warming as a link between these topics, because of its impact on the Arctic environment and peoples and because of the growing interest of non-Arctic nations in the Arctic.     

The exiles of the Risorgimento: Italian volunteers in the Portuguese Civil War (1832–34)

Abstract

Between 1832 and 1834 during the civil war against the partisans of absolutism in Portugal about a hundred Italians fought as volunteers in the Portuguese liberal army. These Italians were motivated to participate by a Romantic culture of war that was strongly rooted in the liberal nationalism of the Italian Risorgimento, but above all, the decision to fight as a volunteer abroad was the result of an international movement of political solidarity with Portuguese liberalism in the early 1830s with which the Italian liberals came into contact during their political exile in France and in Belgium. For the Italian, fighting as volunteers in Portugal proved to be a decisive political experience which deeply shaped their own political ideas of the nation that the volunteers would subsequently draw on in their different political and professional roles in Italy where they became ministers, diplomats and generals of the Kingdom of Italy.     

The United States and the Question of the Greco-Turkish War, 1919–1922

Abstract

In the post World War II era, the strain in the trilateral relation between the United States, Greece and Turkey is one of the most disquieting and vexatious elements to emerge from American foreign policy. The so-called southeastern flank of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is currently beset with tensions that threaten to impede its contributory role in NATO's overall defense strategy for southeastern Europe (if they have not already done so). In this political drama, the principal antagonists, Greece and Turkey, have a number of outstanding differences which on occasion have brought them to the precipice of war. As a result, the United States has intervened as the protagonist and consequently has become the recipient of the enmity of these two NATO allies for not recognizing their ‘special’ claims or interests. As in the characteristic classical Greek drama, the chorus of NATO partners offer a common chant: they are united in proclaiming that the current state of affairs seems to portend failure to the concerted effort to defend Western Europe.     

Body as weapon: the archaeology of a war victim’s narrative

ABSTRACT

The soldier's body is the most important subject of violence and destruction in war. Humans live primarily through their body in the material world, and when the body is destroyed, their whole existence is affected, both physically and non-physically. Therefore, the first locus on which we can observe the effects of war and violence is the human body, mainly soldiers. In modern wars, the soldier’s body is combined with weapons and machines of war, but is also the first target of killing whether in attack or defence. On the one hand it is targeted and killed, but on the other hand the body itself targets and kills. In warfare, bodies are trained to be the mechanism of killing and they are employed on battlefields according to the political objectives of their sovereign power. Thus, the soldier’s body becomes a weapon separated from the individual human body by the political authority.     

The European Family and Athenian Fatherland: Political Metaphors Ancient and Modern

Abstract

This article explores the role and modes of operation of metaphorical framing in ancient Greek and modern European and American political discourse. It looks at how concepts such as citizenship, ownership, family, morality, finance, sport, war, domination, human life, and animals are used to reframe political issues in ways promoted by the speaker, and how they may continue to be reshaped in the ongoing political discourse. The analysis of examples of ancient Athenian public rhetoric and of modern European and American political debates reveals the differences and some striking similarities in the ways political and civic values were expressed and reframed in antiquity and how they are used today. This essay also discusses the potential effects of such framing in antiquity and in more recent times.     

War museums as agonistic spaces: possibilities,opportunities and constraints

ABSTRACT

Following the theorisation of museums as agonistic spaces and drawing on a comparative analysis of war museums located in various European countries, this paper argues that these institutions play complex and multi-layered roles beyond their obvious educational function. These not easily reconcilable roles act as major constraints upon the form and content of exhibitions and work against the adoption of an agonistic approach. However, the paper also argues that war museums are especially apt to become sites of political contestation able to engage with agonistic memory and unsettling counter-narratives. This is due in large part to the nature of the subject matter they deal with, as war and conflict lend themselves to being represented in ways that emphasise patriotic consensus but can also highlight dissent, contestation, multiple perspectives and alternative visions of society. Agonistic practices emerge when windows of opportunity open through a combination of top-down and bottom-up agency able to take advantage of particular socio-political circumstances or cultural developments. The paper also discusses a new exhibition on war memory planned for late 2018 in Essen, Germany and conceived as a strategic political intervention, which aims to communicate in an agonistic fashion with its audiences.     

The Special Relationship Transformed. The Canada–Quebec–France Triangle after de Gaulle

ABSTRACT

Because of France’s unique role in Quebec’s international relations, any study of Quebec’s emergence on the international scene necessarily involves an analysis of this relationship. This article proposes an examination of Canada–France–Quebec relations in the decades following de Gaulle’s resignation in 1969. Several scholars focus on France’s implicit support for Quebec independence, considering that to be the essential ingredient of their “special relationship,” whereas I demonstrate that the foregoing interpretation overlooks the fact that France began to withdraw from the Canadian internal debate soon after de Gaulle’s resignation. During the last forty years, France’s abstention from interfering in Canadian internal affairs enabled both the flourishing of Quebec diplomacy and the deepening of the France–Quebec relationship.     

A Response to the Conference

Abstract

The question discussed in this article is whether Christian theology should influence contemporary political debates. The topic is discussed through two practical case studies: (1) technological advances in genetic engineering and (2) the just war tradition and the use of force. In the first discussion, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's unfinished Ethics is employed to demonstrate the importance of substantial theological categories to resist a reductionist technological utilitarian discourse about the body. Intrinsic human dignity is essentially God-given. In the second, Aquinas and Augustine add theological complexity and substance to secular discussions of war and peace. Human caring is more than the protection of the sovereign state. A peace that is only the absence of war can disguise many harmful situations. In conclusion, theological discussion brings nuance, richness and depth to secular political debates so long as theologians go beyond simplistic contributions such as ‘God demands’ or ‘The Bible forbids’.     

Promoting a Different Type of North–South Interactions: Québécois Cultural and Religious Paradiplomacy with Latin America

ABSTRACT

The historiography on Canadian–Latin American relations states that economic incentives, along with geopolitical concerns during the Second World War, have always been the chief reason behind Canadian interests in the region. This article argues that social groups from Quebec had other incentives to establish connections with Latin America. Quebec’s civil society became well connected with Latin American groups before the North American Free Trade Agreement facilitated economic and political cooperation, thanks mostly to the intensive Catholic missionary effort in the region, and positive representations of Latino culture in French Canadian sociopolitical circles in the 1940s and 1950s. As a result, Francophones’ interests diverged from Canada’s main objectives in the region; Quebec’s civil society’s engagement was distinctly more cultural and social in nature. Because of the difference of objectives, this article shows that social groups from Quebec attempted to influence Canadian–Latin American relations to suit their interests.     

The Injustice of Some Attacks: A Response to Stephen Strehle

Abstract

Despite Stephen Strehle's criticisms, the ‘just war’ tradition can be a useful and appropriate way of thinking through the ethical problems of war. If it remains grounded in the memory of human suffering, including the suffering of the enemy, then it is a flexible framework, open to new developments, which can guide ethical reflection. In fact, the just war tradition is a good example of the appropriate relation of religion to politics. Religious traditions must neither dictate political options directly, nor be separated from them entirely, but must engage the political sphere ‘indirectly’, via reasoned argumentation. Four elements of this indirect relation are described.     

Wars in refuge: Locating Syrians’ intimate knowledges of violence across time and space

This article examines the intimate entanglements of war and refuge. Situated within feminist political geography, I trace the ways in which war is at play in refugees' journeys for safety. Drawing on ethnographic research with Syrian refugees living in Denmark, my research shows the intimate contours of war in ways that disrupt conventional boundaries and definitions of war in two critical ways. First, I show how the war in Syria reverberates in Syrians' lives in refuge. Second, I unpack how Denmark -- a country that is purported to be a place of peace and protection from war -- is experienced by Syrians as a place of war. Taken together these findings call attention to how refugees themselves draw on and articulate geographical imaginations and knowledges of war, violence, and safety as they try to make new lives as refugees. I argue that the existence of war in refuge necessitates rethinking a broader set of questions about war; including where war is, what counts as war, and who decides. In doing so, this article contributes to feminist political geographers' and postcolonial scholars’ efforts to unsettle and decolonize conventional understandings of war.     

Turning Points in the Greek Resistance

Abstract

Resistance to enemy occupation has stood rather apart from the general history of the Second World War. Historians have been doubtful whether to treat it as a part of military and strategic history or a part of political and diplomatic history. Some have thought the less said about it the better, in any context. In the history of particular countries which suffered enemy occupation, the treatment of resistance has varied widely according to the outcome of the war. In some countries it has occupied a major place in their war-time history: Denmark and Yugoslavia, for quite different reasons, are important examples. In other occupied countries very little has been written about the occupation by professional historians: Greece is an outstanding example. Although Britain played a leading role in promoting resistance everywhere, the subject has not attracted, many professional historians, other than those who had a personal engagement in it during the war.     

President Obama,the Bible,and Political Rhetoric

Abstract

How has President Obama made use of the Bible in his political rhetoric, especially as it relates to public policy debates? This article addresses Obama's religious origins, his work as a community organizer in Chicago, his coming to Christian faith under the leadership of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the development of his understanding regarding the relationship between faith and politics. In particular President Obama has emphasized the notion that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. He also stresses the present generation of black Americans as "the Joshua Generation." The article considers President Obama's hermeneutics, as well as the important context of the black church for his own use of Scripture. The lenses of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr are also addressed as they relate to Obama's use of Scripture in political rhetoric.     

War is its Own Justification: What Americans Think about War

Abstract

The authors deal with the morality of war in American culture. They argue that a war ethics that was characteristic of the Cold War has given way to a warrior ethics as it has developed in post-Vietnam America, in print media, popular sentiment, and film. According to this warrior ethics, the citizenry's support for soldiers, regardless of the justice of war, is understood to create social solidarity. Wars are easily justified because, at bottom, war is understood to be its own justification. It unites a country. This popular conception of war both props up more high-minded, political rationales for war and undermines traditional just war ethics. The article uses the war in Iraq as a case study. It analyzes the Bush administration's defense of the war alongside similar accounts of the just war theory given by Richard John Neuhaus, Michael Novak, and George Weigel.

"As a moral problem, war is ultimately a problem of policy, and therefore a problem of social morality." John Courtney Murray     

Linkage Politics: the Role of the European Community in Greek Politics in 1973

Abstract

The convulsions which began to shake the Greek military regime with the first student protests at the end of 1972 and which reached their climax in 1973 with the uprising at the Polytechnic in November, have been exhaustively analysed and discussed. However, they have always been viewed either through the prism of internal political developments or in the light of events in Cyprus. The international context remains largely unexplored.     

Editorial

Abstract

During this last century war has taken more lives and wrought more damage than in all of human history. Its persistence - with over a hundred armed conflicts on the scale of ‘war’ raging in the last decade - prompts a search for causes, since diagnosis comes before a cure. Many fingers point to the stress of poverty as a major contributing factor, but both anecdotal and modelling approaches reveal that poverty has not been and is not now a significant proactive or enabling factor: if poverty were to become a thing of the past there would be no assurance that wars would be eliminated or even significantly reduced. Poverty is associated with societal stress and with sporadic and endemic societal violence, but stress does not lead to war or play a major role in enabling the rise to power of war prone leaders and their associated elites unless other factors are at play. The causal factors conducive to war making are varied but all are characterised by tribal, religious, and ethnic rivalries that political leaders exploit to mobilise support for war, and/or by the lust for money or hegemonic power of the political leadership. It is exceptionally difficult to prevent the rise of leaders who, for various self-serving reasons, are able to gain power and are prone to pursue policies leading to war. The way to thwart these ambitions is to create conditions, nationally and internationally, that are inimical to the rise to power of such leaders and, if they do gain power, to make the realisation of their war bent policies too costly to them. At the national level of governance the essential elements of policies to create such war inhibiting conditions are education, especially at the primary level, a free independent media, and a guaranteed protection of political and civil rights - in a phrase, democratic governance. At the international level of governance the support calls for financial and other forms of assistance that would enable national governments to carry through the democracy enhancing programmes and projects related to education and to political and civil rights, and measures to strengthen democratic control of the system of international institutions and to constrain the exercise of national sovereignty in those areas where doing so enhances ‘the global common good’, one key element of which is the radical diminution of international and intrastate wars. Economic and social rights are the other aspects that comprise the concept of ‘human rights’, and, though they are mutually reinforcing, for tactical reasons the struggle to achieve these rights should be pursued on a separate track from the struggle to gain political and civil rights that appear to face less formidable obstacles and could thus, in the short and medium term, progress sufficiently to have a significant impact in reducing the occurrence and intensity of wars.     

Ben Quilty: the fog of war

ABSTRACT

This essay looks at the war paintings of Ben Quilty, who in October 2011 was stationed with Australian troops fighting against the Taliban in Afghanistan as part of Australia’s Official War Art Scheme. Quilty’s portraits, in fact made back at home in his studio after he returned, show soldiers naked, in pain, reliving traumatic episodes from their war experiences. They have been almost universally praised as providing a new and compelling image of war for those who have not experienced it themselves. We examine these portraits closely, arguing that they express a new post-modern ideology of “interpassivity”, allowing the spectator to exhibit signs of concern for soldiers, without actually doing anything to change their situation. In this we suggest that Quilty’s paintings contain a meaning that goes against the intentions of the artist and the understanding of their audience. Contrary to their dominant reading, they express something about our culture that our culture is unable to admit about itself.