Identity Discourses and Canadian

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Taylor Robertson Mcdonald
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CANADA AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

Identity Discourses and

Canadian Foreign Policy in
the War on Terror

Taylor Robertson McDonald

 Canada and International Affairs

Series Editors
David Carment, NPSIA, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Philippe Lagassé, NPSIA, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Yiagadeesen Samy, NPSIA, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Palgrave’s Canada and International Affairs is a timely and rigorous series
for showcasing scholarship by Canadian scholars of international affairs
and foreign scholars who study Canada’s place in the world. The series
will be of interest to students and academics studying and teaching Cana-
dian foreign, security, development and economic policy. By focusing on
policy matters, the series will be of use to policy makers in the public and
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pendent analysis. As the anchor, Canada Among Nations is the series’
most recognisable annual contribution. In addition, the series show-
cases work by scholars from Canadian universities featuring structured
analyses of Canadian foreign policy and international affairs. The series
also features work by international scholars and practitioners working in
key thematic areas that provides an international context against which
Canada’s performance can be compared and understood.
 Taylor Robertson McDonald

Identity Discourses
and Canadian Foreign
Policy in the War
on Terror
Taylor Robertson McDonald
School of International Service
American University
Washington, DC, USA

ISSN 2523-7187 ISSN 2523-7195 (electronic)

Canada and International Affairs
ISBN 978-3-031-25850-3 ISBN 978-3-031-25851-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
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 To Alexandria,
who has enriched my life beyond articulation
 Acknowledgements

Reflecting on the years of work that have gone into creating this book
is a firm reminder of how far the project and its author have come. The
book is rooted in my dissertation research conducted during my years at
the University of Florida (UF) in Gainesville. At UF, I was privileged to
have learned from Ido Oren who opened my mind to so many insights
that informed the theoretical and epistemological basis of this book. I
thank Ido for his encouragement, guidance, and dedicated feedback over
many years. Likewise, this book would not have been possible without
Laura Sjoberg whose support and incisive commentary allowed me to
improve the project after each and every discussion. The same must be
said of M. Leann Brown, whose notes and encouragement helped me
steer the project out of the gate at its earliest embryonic stages. It was
not until I met Robert D’Amico that my interest in language games was
sparked and our many vibrant philosophical discussions have aided this
book immensely. During my years at UF, I was lucky to have many excel-
lent mentors who have all contributed to my sharpening of the project at
various stages of its development, including Dan O’Neill, Les Thiele, and
Zach Selden.
This project developed substantially during my time at The Jagiel-
lonian University (UJ) in Kraków, Poland. As a post-doctoral fellow, I
found an incredibly welcoming and vibrant community of scholars at the
Taube Centre for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. I am grateful to
the entire Taube Centre board, in particular Paweł Laidler and Zdzisław

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Mach who supported me and this book from our first meeting. The
opportunity to join such a historic and intellectually rich institution as
UJ has been a true honour and an incredibly rewarding experience. I
must give a special thanks to the Centre’s coordinator Sylwia Fiałkiewicz
who immensely aided my transition to life in beautiful Kraków. I am
forever indebted to my brilliant colleagues Ivan Kozachenko and Tore
Bernt Sorensen for their camaraderie and chats about all things identity,
but most importantly for their continued friendship across continents and
time zones. While scholarly research and writing can be an isolating expe-
rience (especially during a global pandemic), I am more grateful for moi
przyjaciele than they know.
Various parts of this book, in both early and later stages, benefitted
immensely from my participation in conferences and meetings, including
the 2019 Association for Canadian Studies in the United States (ACSUS),
2021 International Studies Association (ISA), and The Jagiellonian Inter-
disciplinary Security Conference meetings. In presenting what would
become the basic framework of this book, I received especially invaluable
feedback, encouragement, and enduring inspiration from the Interpretive
Methodologies and Methods Conference Group at the American Political
Science Association (APSA) conference in 2017.
I also acknowledge my colleagues at the School of International Service
at American University in Washington, DC, who warmly welcomed me
into their community during the latter stages of this project. This book
has also benefitted greatly from two anonymous reviewers who provided
excellent feedback for which I am extremely thankful. I would also like
to thank the Palgrave Macmillan editorial and production teams for their
assistance throughout this process.
I thank my parents, Charlotte and Mark, for being my greatest cheer-
leaders and for always keeping questions of what it really means to be
Canadian at the top of my mind. Last but certainly not least, I thank my
partner Alexandria, to whom this book is dedicated. Alexandria has been
an unwavering source of support and inspiration. She has been my top
interlocutor and confidant over all these years and this book reflects her
incredible patience and ceaseless confidence in me. Tackling life together,
with all its exciting twists, unexpected turns, and incredible triumphs has
been my greatest joy.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 Identity and Foreign Policy as Discursive Practices:
A Framework 43
3 Won’t You Be My Neighbour? Discourses of Canada’s
“Neighbourly Relations” and the War on Terror 73
4 Crusading Saviour and Condemning Onlooker:
Discourses of Canada the Protector and the War
on Terror 117
5 All for One, One for All: Discourses of Canadian
Multilateralism and the War on Terror 163
6 Re-imagining Canada? Foreign Policy Discourses
in the Age of Trump, Putin, and Pandemic Politics 193
7 Conclusion 233

Index 245

ix
 About the Author

Dr. Taylor Robertson McDonald is a scholar-in-residence in the School

of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C. He
is a former Post-doctoral fellow at the Taube Centre for Advanced Studies
in the Social Sciences at The Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.
He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida in
Gainesville, Florida.

xi
 Abbreviations

BQ Bloc Québécois
CA Canadian Alliance Party
CAF Canadian Armed Forces
CPC Conservative Party of Canada
FIAP Feminist International Assistance Policy
GWOT Global War on Terror
IR International Relations
LP Liberal Party of Canada
MNCH Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health
MP Member of Parliament
NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NDP New Democratic Party
NORAD North American Aerospace Defence Command
ODA Official Development Assistance
PC Progressive Conservative Party

xiii
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Historical discourses of “Canada as America’s neighbour” 86

Table 4.1 Historical discourses of “Canada as protector of foreign
civilians” 136
Table 5.1 Historical discourses of “Canada as champion
of multilateralism” 170

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In late August of 2021, much of the world watched, stunned by

increasingly grave scenes emerging from the Kabul airport. The American-
spurred NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in a chaotic
and deadly fashion. While Canada had ended its formal military opera-
tions in the country in March of 2014, the Canadian government was
nevertheless embroiled in the pandemonium. Canadian citizens, perma-
nent residents, military personnel, and interpreters were among the
thousands on the ground in Kabul, with the government scrambling
to organize their evacuation. The heart-breaking images, the precipitous
collapse of the Afghan government’s military forces, and what appeared
to be a total lack of anticipation and coordination on the part of Canada
and its NATO allies, brought an unimaginable conclusion to a seemingly
never-ending war. After twenty years, the Taliban had returned to power
in Kabul.
Despite the inconceivability of these tragic events, the Justin Trudeau
government’s rhetorical response was entirely predictable. In the days
preceding and immediately following the summer’s frantic withdrawal
efforts, Trudeau and his cabinet members relied on all-too-familiar narra-
tives of Canada and the direction of its foreign policy to make sense of
the chaos and response. The message from the government was consis-
tent: Canada would remain steadfast in doing what it has supposedly

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
T. R. McDonald, Identity Discourses and Canadian Foreign
Policy in the War on Terror, Canada and International Affairs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25851-0_1
2 T. R. MCDONALD

always done—work with the United States and its closest allies, continue
to defend the rights of the most persecuted, namely Afghan women and
girls, and support multilateral efforts to hold the Taliban accountable. In
other words, Canada would be who it has always been, and act accord-
ingly. One could easily mistake the words of the current Prime Minister
with those of a former Prime Minister uttered almost exactly twenty years
prior. In the first sitting of the Canadian Parliament following the 9/11
terrorist attacks in New York City in September 2001, Jean Chrétien
declared that Canada would “stand with the Americans as neighbours,
as friends as family. We will stand with our allies,” and reminded the
House that Canada “will continue to offer refuge to the persecuted”
while addressing the collective “threat terrorism poses to all civilized
peoples and the role that Canada must play in defeating it.”1 Twenty
years later, with Trudeau’s government playing the same old tunes, these
narratives appear to have outlived the very war they were first deployed
to legitimate.
This book is about how politicians talk about Canadian identity when
discussing Canadian foreign policy. It begins by asking a central ques-
tion: despite shifts in political leadership, geo-politics, and security threats,
how can we understand the Canadian government’s continued reliance
on these same parochial representations of Canada and Canadian foreign
policy? As times change, how are the same old tunes still at the top of the
charts? The main argument that unfolds is that a limited set of narra-
tives of Canadian identity dominate foreign policy discussions among
Canadian politicians in the House of Commons. So much so, that the
legitimacy of foreign policies relies on politicians’ ability to convey them
within the terms of these basic narratives, regardless of the actual partic-
ulars of the policy. Stated differently, the invocation of a set of familiar
narratives of Canadian identity is so indispensable in the process of Cana-
dian foreign policy becoming politically possible that politicians habitually
and inescapably filter their preferred policies through the prism of these
limited narratives. Key to this argument—standing contrary to domi-
nant approaches to the study of foreign policy in International Relations
(IR)—is that the pictures politicians paint of who Canada is are integral to
pursuing how Canada acts internationally. Political representations make
certain foreign policy possibilities more realizable than others. This is not
because politicians are attuned to a fundamental or “true” Canadian iden-
tity to guide Canada’s foreign policies. Nor is it because politicians are
merely “selling” feel-good stories to pacify the populace while pursuing
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

policies necessitated by Canada’s middling position within the global

order. Rather, it is because foreign policies rely on narratives of iden-
tity that articulate “who we are” and “who they are” to legitimize “what
we must do.” Canada’s initial involvement in Afghanistan does not occur
according to an automatic “logic.” It relies on narratives that articulate
a Canadian Self facing certain threats that must be addressed, “good”
and “bad” actors involved, and Canada’s interests at stake. Responding
to the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City requires an
understanding of who a terrorist is, whether such terrorist attacks are
isolated incidents or perpetual threats to all of “Western Civilization,” and
appropriate state-sanctioned responses. Foreign policies, in other words,
need a story about the problems they aim to address and those stories
require leading characters or identities.2 Identities do not, however, exist
as objective and unmediated “facts” one can simply uncover to reveal a
“true” Canadian or American identity “as it really is.” On the contrary,
the framework developed in this book approaches identities as narra-
tives under constant construction, negotiation, and articulation. This is
in line with IR research that embraces discursive approaches to the rela-
tionship between state and national identity3 and foreign policy and
stresses the more fluid character of identities as various narratives compete
for hegemony. According to these discursive approaches, identity is not
discovered, but (re)articulated, it is not revealed, but negotiated, it is not
stable, but constantly contested.
These insights, however, only get us part of the way to understanding
the familiar chorus of Canadian foreign policy that seems consistently
sung in the same tunes. Insights drawn from discursive approaches in
IR and applied to Canadian foreign policy episodes may aid our under-
standing of how a certain narrative came to dominate within a particular
foreign policy debate. But these approaches offer little to enhance our
understanding of how it is that certain specific elements of these narra-
tives persist over different foreign policy episodes across multiple years.
For this, a novel theoretical framework is required. Understanding the
dynamics of this innovative yet also repetitive rhetorical process is imper-
ative not only to elucidate why these parochial representations seem so
inescapable but how Canadian identity and foreign policy will be defined
in an increasingly turbulent world.4
Thus, this book makes two main arguments, one theoretical and one
empirical. Theoretically, I introduce a novel framework for analysing the
interplay of the political rhetoric of Canadian identity and Canadian
4 T. R. MCDONALD

foreign policy. I argue that politicians, in the heat of parliamentary debate,

engage in a rhetorical performance, one that engages both the power
of discourse and practice. Discourses, and in particular discourses of a
state’s identity, have the power to shape foreign policies based on how
they represent allies, enemies, the self, and others. The ways in which
we talk about who we are, what we stand for, and who we stand with
and against inevitably inform the actions we pursue. As Foucault noted,
“[w]e must not resolve discourse into a play of preexisting significations;
we must not imagine that the world turns towards us a legible face which
we would only have to decipher; the world is not the accomplice of our
knowledge; there is no prediscursive providence which disposes the world
in our favour.”5 Language, in other words, mediates the complex world
around us that unavoidably requires interpretation to be made sense of.
In the forum of foreign policy debate, then, identity discourses compete
to have their representation of actors and events become dominant,
making certain policies more realizable than others. If the United States is
represented as Canada’s “brother,” rather than a “bully,” for example, a
policy of partnership with the United States may be more readily realized
than one of isolation. While the study of foreign policy through discur-
sive approaches is not a new phenomenon in IR, the substantive study
of Canadian foreign policy through such approaches has been widely
neglected. To overlook the power of discourse in Canadian foreign policy
in favour of traditional focuses on material capabilities is to overlook the
very narratives through which these material elements are made sense of
in the first place so a fitting response can be pursued. It is to relegate,
as most studies of political rhetoric and Canadian foreign policy have,
discourses of identity to secondary stature—seeing this rhetoric as mostly
inconsequential to foreign policy decision-making, rather than worthy of
analysis in its own right.
Yet, as mentioned at the outset, Canadian politicians’ construction and
deployment of identity discourses have not, at first glance, been particu-
larly wide-ranging. While their rhetorical performances can be discursively
innovative in the absence of any “prediscursive providence,” the fact is,
their post-9/11 representations appear considerably narrow. The field of
IR is flooded with various approaches as to why politicians say what they
say in attempting to have their messages convince, persuade, or resonate
with an audience. But these approaches, which lean heavily on the inten-
tions of the speaker, under-theorize the key element of political rhetoric
this book is focused on: repetition. Regardless of the intentions of the
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

speaker or how persuasive the audience finds the words,6 Canadian politi-
cians habitually invoke the same set of narratives even when debating
very different foreign engagements and arguing for opposing foreign poli-
cies. This is what they do, over and over again. Invoking these frequently
deployed words is so pervasive a habit that all sides of debate inescapably
articulate their preferred policies by invoking these same basic stories even
to represent opposing portraits of Canadian identity. Focusing specifically
on these repeated practices, the “doings ” themselves, attunes us to the
power of these habitual utterances in their own right, their stickiness and
ability to somehow stay relevant, rather than the usual focus of simply
being outcomes of the intentions of the performer.
Theorizing exactly how the role of repetition factors into discursive
articulations of identity and foreign policy has proved to be an illusive
goal in IR. Repeating representations of identities appears to be conse-
quential for how foreign policy decisions are ultimately developed, but
there remains an absence of theorizing how exactly repeated rhetorical
practices matter. To remedy this absence, I draw insights from a segment
of scholars in IR who have taken practices seriously as their conceptual
focal point, practice theorists. The key insight offered by theories of prac-
tice in the study of IR is that everyday behaviours matter beyond the
intentions or beliefs of those engaging in them. Practices engage a form
of power, “not only because habit engrains standard ways of doing things,
but the need to engage one another forces people to return to common
structures.”7 Falling back on common tropes, narratives and stories to
discuss novel events is simply “what one does.”
In light of these theoretical insights, grasping the interplay of discourse
and practice—what I refer to as discursive practices —is crucial to under-
stand how certain Canadian foreign policies are realized over others.
Deploying narratives of Canadian identity anchored by specific words and
containing attributes of often-repeated narratives is key to legitimizing
one foreign policy over another. Yet, because the habitual repetition of
the words is necessary to provide one’s preferred policy with legitimacy,
politicians on all sides of a debate channel their preferences through the
same limited set of narratives. The result being that Canadian foreign
policy debate is not only a battleground of differing policies but a
battle of differing conceptions of Canadian identity as discourses compete
to anchor their meanings to these familiar narratives. Because specific
elements of these narratives are constantly repeated and live on through
successive debates, even though the meanings attached to them differ over
6 T. R. MCDONALD

time, there is an impression that certain features of Canadian identity are

essential and enduring over time, but as this book will argue, they are
actually the lightning rods of contestation.
So what are these narrative anchors that seem so indispensable when
discussing Canadian foreign policy? How should we think about these
constantly repeated words that various representations of Canadian iden-
tity seem to always be channelled through? This book draws insights
from social psychologist John Shotter to think through the role of discur-
sive practices of identity in foreign policy debate. In particular, Shotter’s
conceptualization of “commonplace” rhetoric or “rhetorical common-
places.”8 Shotter’s conceptualization of rhetorical commonplaces is useful
precisely because it theorizes the juxtaposing nature of discursive prac-
tices: the habitual, practice-based repetition of certain central words
alongside the discursive innovations that fill in the meaning of these words
in various ways. Rhetorical commonplaces, frequently repeated words and
concepts that are familiar and appropriate in a given situation, act as
the raw materials out of which diverse meanings of those situations are
articulated and re-articulated. Bringing repeated practices and discursive
innovation to the forefront, Shotter conceptualizes these commonplaces
as rhetorical resources, the deployment of which is necessary if one seeks
to make their actions appropriate for or fitting to the given circum-
stances but as resources, they act as the building blocks out of which
diverse representations can be rhetorically erected. Shotter theorizes that
individuals speak through these familiar resources without fully conscious
knowledge of why they are doing this, but rather, a tacit acknowledge-
ment that one is “‘speaking into’ a context not of our own making.”9
And while we invoke rhetorical resources appropriate to fit the context,
individuals work within an “order of possibilities” established by previous
social activity within which one can innovate. Thus, Shotter’s theorizing
of rhetorical commonplaces is helpful to grapple with Canadian parlia-
mentarians’ repeated invocation of and discursive innovation on familiar
discourses of Canadian identity. These points are elaborated in Chapter 2.
Empirically, this theoretical framework is mobilized to offer insights
into how Canada became involved in what would become the centre-
piece of Canadian foreign policy for nearly a decade and a half: the
so-called “Global War on Terror.”10 This book offers a systematic analysis
of the House of Commons debates over Canada’s two most impactful
foreign policy decisions following the 9/11 terrorist attacks: Canada’s
“yes” decision to the Afghanistan War in 2001 and “no” decision to the
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Iraq War in 2003.11 Scholarly attempts to explain these decisions from

various perspectives began almost immediately following the decisions
themselves. Further attempts persist even today, especially in the shadow
of the tragic withdrawal efforts in Afghanistan, as questions surrounding
how exactly Canada became involved in this protracted war in the first
place have once again rose to prominence.12 While many have explored
what led to Canada’s decisions on these two foreign engagements, few
have explored precisely how these decisions became a matter of Canadian
identity. While Canadian parliamentarians debated Canada’s involvement
in Afghanistan and Iraq by discussing issues of alliance obligations, inter-
national law, and national security concerns, they did so by making these
issues a matter of identity. Canada’s role in these wars could have been
discussed in various ways, yet parliamentary debates consistently framed
these issues in terms of how they did or did not reflect who Canada is,
what Canada stands for, and therefore what Canada must do. In short,
extant examinations of Canada’s two most impactful foreign policy deci-
sions in the early twenty-first century have paid little attention to how
the language of identity came to matter to these foreign policy decisions.
Without accounting for these rhetorical factors we are left to assume that
discourses of Canadian identity, which were at the centre of these parlia-
mentary debates over whether and how Canada should or should not
join these military efforts, matter little to the decisions themselves. This
book argues quite the opposite: these foreign policies were not politically
possible without the stories told about them.
The empirical analysis of this book unfolds through charting the
historical development, articulation, and re-articulation of three domi-
nant rhetorical commonplaces of Canadian identity habitually deployed
by Canadian politicians in relation to Canada’s decision on Afghanistan
and Iraq. The three commonplaces, what I call (1) Canada as America’s
neighbour, (2) Canada as protector of foreign civilians, and (3) Canada
as a champion of multilateralism, were and continue to be, at the centre
of foreign policy debate over how Canada should behave in the inter-
national arena. While examinations of the discourses surrounding these
three commonplaces do not entirely exhaust every discursive variation
Canadian parliamentarians articulate at every moment, discussions of
an extensive range of political concerns do, however, occur with these
commonplaces at their centre, as the empirical chapters will demon-
strate (Chapters 3–5). Grasping the dynamics surrounding how identity
narratives function in relation to Canadian foreign policy decisions offers
8 T. R. MCDONALD

inroads to our understanding of two still salient questions, one from the
recent past and one for the future: first, how the Canadian government
could articulate Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan as necessary based
on these narratives yet only two years later deem it necessary to abstain
from coalition forces in Iraq while relying on the same narratives? Second,
how will these narratives impact the future of Canadian foreign policy
as Canada confronts an inflection point about its own identity in an
increasingly chaotic world?
The remainder of this chapter situates a discursive practice-based
approach to Canadian foreign policy analysis within the existing literature
of IR and Canadian foreign policy in particular. It discusses the absence
of such approaches in contemporary Canadian foreign policy analysis and
the importance of filling this gap before concluding with a summary of
the book’s chapters.

Identity and Foreign Policy in IR

Identity rhetoric and foreign policy are no strangers. Invoking concep-
tions of “who we are” and “who they are” has long gone hand-in-hand
with politicians’ pronouncements of foreign policies. George W. Bush’s
2002 State of the Union address infamously cast America and its allies as
members of the “civilized world” prepared to take preemptive measures
against an “axis of evil” states (Iran, North Korea, and Iraq).13 In his
first trip abroad after becoming Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper
used a March 2006 speech in Afghanistan to reinforce his commitment
to Canada’s continued efforts in the region by famously proclaiming the
calls of some to “cut and run” were “not the Canadian way.”14 More
recently, during a surprise visit to Kyiv in May 2022, Justin Trudeau reit-
erated Canada’s unwavering support of Ukraine against invading Russian
forces, proclaiming Ukraine to be a “friend” standing with Canada on
the side of democracy and against Russia and “enablers in Belarus.”15
These seemingly simple identity “codes”16 appear inescapable in discus-
sions of foreign policy. Yet, the field of IR in general, and the study of
Canadian foreign policy in particular, have historically paid relatively little
attention to the relevance of identity to foreign policy. Moreover, despite
many theoretical and analytical insights offered by more recent studies
of the relationship between identity and foreign policy, IR continues to
lack a systematic account of how certain rhetorical elements of identity
endure across various conflicts while others fade away.17 As this section
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

elucidates, in failing to grasp the interplay of narrative endurance and

change, IR research is unable to capture exactly how recurrent elements
of identity narratives function and the power they exert on foreign policy
decision-making.
Prior to the 1990s, scant research in IR considered the relevance
of the concept of identity to foreign policy analysis. So the often told
(though not uncontested18 ) story goes, the sudden collapse of the Soviet
Union and the unexpected end to the Cold War laid bare the short-
comings of “traditional” theories of IR, namely variants of neorealism
and neoliberalism, that appeared ill-equipped to account for this abrupt
turn of events. Riding a broader wave in the social sciences, construc-
tivist approaches, positing a now popular notion that reality is socially
constructed,19 received an unexpected “thrust”20 into the scholarly spot-
light as a viable alternative to “traditional” IR approaches. Whereas
“traditional” approaches considered states’ foreign policy a product of
the anarchic system, objective self-interest, and the distribution of mate-
rial resources in the international arena, a basic tenet of constructivist
approaches is that identities, and in particular identities of states, shape
state behaviour. Regardless of a state’s material capabilities, whether they
are deemed an “ally” or “enemy” matters to foreign policy. Likewise,
“national interests” to be pursed and “security threats” to be addressed
are not ready-made concepts with objective meanings state actors can
find in a preexisting “portfolio.”21 Rather, constructivist approaches posit
that these concepts are shaped through social processes of interaction
among states based on intersubjective meanings, rather than governed
by objective covering laws. The basic notion of “traditional” approaches,
that the condition of anarchy begets a self-help system, is challenged by
constructivist approaches positing that state behaviour is always mediated
through interpretation. Self-help is then not a natural “logic” inherent in
an anarchic system, but exists only insofar as the various social practices
and interpretations of actors and identities have made it so.22 Alexander
Wendt provides an illuminating and frequently cited example of the
social construction of the so-called “self-help system” in that the United
States would be less threatened by Britain’s possession of 500 nuclear
weapons than North Korea’s possession of 5 nuclear weapons. Despite
Britain holding far more material power and destructive capability than
North Korea, power that could be turned against the United States at
a moment’s notice, the intervening variable is that the United States,
through its various international interactions, considers Britain and North
10 T. R. MCDONALD

Korea to be of very different identities. Hence, the possession of these

weapons is read differently, one more adversarial and threatening than
the other.23
The social construction of the identity of states has informed a diverse
range of constructivist research on foreign policy analysis. So wide-
ranging, in fact, that attempts to encapsulate the various constructivist
camps, their affinities, and fault lines is itself an ever-expanding litera-
ture.24 Acknowledging the many fissures and nuances among construc-
tivist approaches to foreign policy analysis at the outset, a major division
within this literature of particular relevance to this study are opposing
perspectives on the relationship between the material and the ideational
and how this relationship informs the relative stability or instability of the
identities of states.
Two major constructivist camps are usually cast as standing opposite
one another on these issues—a group of “conventional” constructivists
on one side and “critical” constructivists on the other.25 The hallmark
of “conventional” constructivisms26 usually exemplified by Alexander
Wendt’s seminal monograph Social Theory of International Politics,27
has been demonstrating the utility of “identity as a variable.”28 As vari-
ables, ideational factors like identities, norms, and culture, are considered
distinct from material factors and are often measured against them in
examining competing explanations of state behaviour.29 Focusing on the
causal powers of identity on state behaviour, conventional constructivist
contributions have been frequently cast as more agreeable to tradi-
tional rationalist theories of IR like neo-realist and neo-liberal variants
which much of this constructivist research engages with directly.30 More-
over, many conventional constructivist approaches assume that material
factors ultimately ground and (relatively) stabilize processes of the social
construction of identity,31 suggesting that world politics is not “ideas
all the way down” but is anchored by material forces with some powers
existing independent of any ideas about them.32 Hence, by embracing the
social construction of states’ identities while still falling back on a “rump
materialism,” conventional constructivisms have been cast as “seizing” the
“middle ground” between rationalist approaches on one side and those
of a poststructural bent on the other.33
“Critical” constructivist approaches, on the other hand, take issue with
the assumed distinction between the ideational and the material and
emphasize the instability of identity, its need for constant (re)articulation,
and the central role of language in this process. Housing wide-ranging
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

insights drawn from poststructuralism, critical theory, semiotics, and

other approaches,34 critical constructivisms approach the material and
ideational as having no “meaningful presence separate from each other.”35
Certainly, the material components of what we call a nuclear weapon
actually exist: the uranium, the metal casing, the launching system,
and so forth. But their very existence as a “nuclear weapon” is reliant
upon various discourses that give those individual material components
meaning. Discourse “delineates the terms of intelligibility whereby a
particular ‘reality’ can be known and acted upon”36 and understanding
a nuclear weapon as a nuclear weapon relies on discourses of national
security, who is and is not to be targeted, and the level of destruction
such a weapon can cause versus traditional weaponry like grenades and
rifles.
This is not to suggest that critical constructivists argue physical objects
either do not exist or that there is no way of knowing if such objects exist
“out there” in the real world. It is instead to concern oneself with what
those material objects are and the possibilities these understandings make
more realizable. Are cats “sacred and revered deities” or “overbreeding
pests?”37 Is an earthquake a “natural phenomenon” or an “expression of
the wrath of God?”38 Was the Bosnian War inevitable as a product of
ancient hatreds about which no external actor could hope to prevent or
was it a genocide perpetrated by Bosnian Serb forces that Western coun-
tries could have stopped?39 If critical constructivisms can be accused of
advocating for “discourse all the way down,” it is insofar as their commit-
ment that there is no extra-discursive realm from which one can view the
world. In other words, there is no analytical vantage point from which
one can view an earthquake or the Bosnian War and perceive these events
as they “truly” are, unburdened by the discourses that make these events
knowable to us in the first place. In short, “there is nothing outside of
discourse.”40
Given this assumption, critical constructivisms tend to be unconcerned
with uncovering any static essence or “true” nature of a state’s identity.
On the contrary, these approaches can be seen as primarily concerned
with states’ perpetual processes of becoming rather than being.41 If a
state’s identity cannot be separated from the discourses that articulate
that identity, meaning one cannot locate the objective source of the state’s
identity—like in its peoples’ “character” or popular attitudes—then states
are perpetually under construction—every assertion of identity is ulti-
mately fleeting, requiring a re-assertion, and the cycle continues. Given
12 T. R. MCDONALD

this condition, the state is very much a paradoxical entity, perpetually

asserting the “reality” of its existence as more than just discursive practices
but only able to do so through these very practices that give it existence.
As David Campbell argues:

As a consequence, all states are marked by an inherent tension between

the various domains that need to be aligned for an ‘imagined political
community’ to come into being—such as territoriality and the many axes
of identity—and the demand that such an alignment is a response to (rather
than constitutive of) a prior and stable identity. In other words, states are
never finished entities…This paradox inherent to their being renders states
in permanent need of reproduction: with no ontological status apart from
the many and varied practices that constitute reality, states are (and have
to be) always in a process of becoming. For a state to end its practices
of representation would be to expose its lack of prediscursive foundations;
stasis would be death.42

Critical constructivist research tends to focus on these moments of

becoming, most often examining states’ representations of identity during
various foreign policy episodes. The main concern being more with how
certain foreign policy paths and outcomes are realized—the processes
that allowed them to come into being—rather than analysing which path
should have been taken or how any material force alone dictated some
automatic response.
Unsurprisingly then, language has played a central role for critical
constructivist examinations, in particular, those that embrace discur-
sive approaches to the relationship between identity and foreign policy.
Drawing on insights most often associated with Michel Foucault and
Jacques Derrida, discursive approaches situate the importance of language
through two main theoretical tenets: the productive power of discourse
and the relationship between Self and Others.43 These approaches
“emphasize the linguistic construction of reality”44 and the power of
discourses to constitute political subjects and objects. According to
Charlotte Epstein, discursive approaches to the study of identity in
international politics ask what states say when they “speak:”

This ‘talking’ is central both to what they do and who they are—to
the dynamics of identity. States, like individuals, position themselves in
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

relation to other states by adopting certain discourse and not others. More-
over, these discourses function as important principles of coherence for
statehood.45

Yet, discourses are not benign descriptions of subjects and objects in the
world, but systematically produce the subjects and objects they articu-
late. Power as productive draws our attention away from the common
notion of power as a coercive or repressive instrument that allows the
will of one to be imposed onto another and instead towards thinking
about power as a process based on relationships within dense networks of
meanings. Productive power does not preexist relationships but instead
emanates from them.46 The act of articulating Canada as a “brother”
to the United States or the Taliban as a threat to “the civilized world,”
constitutes the very terms in which foreign policies are enabled and
developed to respond. To articulate the Bosnian War as an unavoidable
product of ancient hatred is to simultaneously open avenues for particular
policies, like non-engagement, while working to exclude others, like an
intervention.
Such discourses are seen as not merely describing an event, but consti-
tuting the event. In foreign policy, these representations are mainly
articulated through Self and Others distinctions whereby the Self is
defined by its difference (whether subtle or radical) versus Others, and
not just as fixed binaries but complex and multidimensional identities
that may be activated differently in relation to different identities.47
As an example, Roxanne Doty’s Imperial Encounters 48 examines the
United States and Britain’s representations of the Philippines and Kenya,
respectively, that primarily cast these “Western” countries as “civilized,”
“mature,” and “nurturing” parents justified to intervene in the “global
South,” frequently represented as children in need of direction. Such
representations demonstrate the power of discourse at work, as Doty
argues they “enabled practices of domination, exploitation, and brutality,
practices that probably would have been considered unthinkable, repre-
hensible, and unjustifiable were an alternative ‘reality’ taken seriously.”49
Importantly, the personal motivations, interests, or intentions of
“speakers of discourse,” like presidents and ministers of trade, take a back-
seat to what the language actually does, the avenues that become available
and those that become cordoned off. Therefore, discursive approaches
are concerned not with which competing narrative is most “true,” but
how certain representations of actors and events are taken as “truth,”
14 T. R. MCDONALD

and what outcomes they make possible. This book adopts and seeks to
enhance these insights.

Repetition and Practice in Examining

Identity and Foreign Policy
A notable absence becomes apparent at this juncture. With their emphasis
on the process of becoming, discursive approaches to the relationship
between identity and foreign policy are particularly adept at capturing
discursive changes in states’ identities. As Campbell reminds us, “stasis
would be death” for the state, hence, the necessity for constant articu-
lation and re-articulations of identity that the likes of Campbell, Doty,
and others have all impressively captured in their research. Yet, what have
these approaches offered on discursive endurance? With a major focus
on the fluidity of discourses of identity, what can be said of the aspects
of identity discourses that continually re-emerge and persist over days and
years, time and time again? In fact, those embracing discursive approaches
have said very little about how repetition matters to the relationship
between identity and foreign policy, despite frequently acknowledging the
central role repetition occupies in the articulation of the identity of states.
For example, in Writing Security, Campbell invokes Judith Butler in
stating that a discursive conception of identity is “tenuously constituted in
time…through a stylized repetition of acts,” and achieved, “not [through]
a founding act, but rather a regulated process of repetition.”50 For Camp-
bell, it is not the mere articulation of dangers to America that comes to
constitute American identity, rather, “each episode has elements specific to
this location and participants, but in these various historical moments we
witness the repetition of certain techniques of differentiation rather than
the creation de novo of concerns, prejudices, and figurations.”51 Like-
wise, Doty’s “imperial encounters” between North and South rest also
on “repetition and [not just] dissemination that give representations their
power, not an inherent stability and closure.”52 But how exactly does this
repetition function and matter? If discourses are constantly being articu-
lated and adjusted, why do specific words, phrases, or tropes continue to
be repeated and how are they significant to the power of discursive repre-
sentations? At best, those adopting discursive approaches to examining
states’ identities and foreign policies have offered a mostly unsatisfactory
answer: repetition is significant because it helps “give life” to a partic-
ular representation. Not unlike a rumour that appears to become more
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

plausible the more it is spread, it is the frequency with which particular

representations are articulated that solidifies their power.53
The issue with these responses is that they do not indicate why or
how repetition occurs. They say only what repetition helps achieve. While
discourse-based approaches have mostly avoided any thorough discus-
sions of the role of repetition in examination of identity and foreign
policy, this task has been taken up by a number of other recent research
programmes in IR, most notably those inspired by the so-called “prac-
tice turn.” A relatively new phenomenon in the field, the early 2010s
“turn” of the “practice turn” in IR birthed a concerted focus on the
“everyday” individual performances that, taken together, constitute the
large-scale concepts IR has long been concerned with like diplomacy
and war. The study of practices, the often menial, routine performances
people carry out “neither because they want to nor because they feel
they should…but because it is ‘what one does,’”54 extend to linguistic
practices, or speech acts as well. Contrary to traditional notions of
power as coercive, the power of practices lays in their “taken-for-granted-
ness,” the assumed normalcy of their regularities and the meanings
attached to their patterned deployment. The practice turn has inspired
a serious concern for the role of repetition in everyday discursive prac-
tices related to foreign policy analysis, including the role of habits,55
rituals,56 routines,57 and rhythm.58 With their focus on the recurrent,
practice theories, particularly when merged with insights from discursive
approaches to identity, offer fruitful avenues to explore how aspects of
narratives of Canadian identity change and endure over time and their
relevance to foreign policy decision-making. This merger forms the basis
of the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2.

Why Not in Canada? The Study of Identity

and Foreign Policy in Canadian IR
Surprisingly few of these discussions and debates on identity discourse and
practice have made their way into mainstream IR research on Canadian
foreign policy. Even less so when it comes to examinations of Canada’s
involvement in the “Global War on Terror.” This is particularly puzzling
for two reasons. First, recent innovative discourse-based approaches to
the study of identity and foreign policy have blossomed in the subfield
of IR and have incorporated a wide range of case studies including
the United States,59 Britain,60 Australia,61 Bosnia,62 China, and African
16 T. R. MCDONALD

states.63 Canada, however, has conspicuously received almost no attention

from these approaches. Second, the absence of any systematic approach
taking Canadian identity discourses and practices seriously is particularly
odd given that identity is such a popular conceptual vehicle for scholars
in analysing Canadian politics, domestic and international. Michael Hart
attests that Canadians have a renowned obsession with national identity
concerns claiming that “in no other country in the world can citizens lay
claim to so vigorous a debate as to who they are and why they matter.”64
Yet, these debates have scantly appeared. To be sure, there is no shortage
of research providing explanations of Canada’s foreign policy decisions
related to the “Global War on Terror” that one would expect from
mainstream IR approaches—as a product of alliance politics,65 personal
calculations of individual political leaders,66 and the role of public senti-
ment67 —most of which brackets out serious considerations of identity
discourses and practices.
So how is identity discussed in examinations of Canadian foreign
policy? While the study of Canadian foreign policy houses a relatively
diverse set of approaches swept up, at different times, in various theo-
retical fads,68 examinations of Canadian foreign policy that take issues
of identity seriously are narrower in scope. These examinations are often
implicitly, though sometimes explicitly, undergirded by a central ques-
tion: does any (relatively) stable feature of Canadian identity exist to
guide Canadian foreign policy? The study of Canadian foreign policy and
identity has long been bifurcated into competing approaches and perspec-
tives on this question, most of which downplay the analytical utility of
discursive practices of identity to Canadian foreign policy in favour of
examining the beliefs of Canadians. On the one hand are approaches
that rely on some conceptual focal point said to capture a relatively stable
element of Canadian identity and therefore attempt to explain a relatively
stable history of Canadian foreign policy. Studies relying on the popular
notion of Canada’s strategic culture and security imaginary are particu-
larly notable members of this camp. A limiting factor of these approaches,
however, is that the explanatory power of these concepts usually resides in
analysing the beliefs of Canadians via public opinion surveying. The argu-
ment that the “Canadian historical experience,” usually linked to being a
former British colony, geographic location in North America, and neigh-
bour to the United States, has produced a penchant for Canadians to
support and pursue certain patterns of foreign policy is well-established.
Despite being subject to significant definitional contestation,69 strategic
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

culture has been considered a useful concept in Canadian foreign policy

analysis in referring to “the habits of ideas, attitudes, and norms towards
strategic issues, and patterns of strategic behaviour, which are relatively
stable over time.”70 Canada’s strategic culture(s) is said to be a histori-
cally developed set of “persistent ideas” about Canadian identity in the
world,71 usually related to Canada being a liberal internationalist,72 reli-
able multilateral actor,73 and friendly, though markedly independent,
relations with the United States.74
Strategic culture has been relied on to explain away some seemingly
“irrational” and “inconsistent” behaviours of the Canadian government
related to the “Global War on Terror,” most prominently the Chrétien
government’s decision to forgo participation in the Iraq War in 2003
after participating in the Afghanistan War in 2001. According to Justin
Massie, it was persistent elements of “…identity, not relative power,
sentiments, not utilitarian calculations, [that] govern Canada’s interna-
tional behaviour. A tale of three strategic cultures best captures the realm
of Canada’s international security motivations…”75 Likewise, Brendon
O’Connor and Srdjan Vucetic have argued that Canada’s “no” to the
Iraq War, versus Australia’s “yes,” is best explained through a combina-
tion of strategic cultural factors, namely, Canada’s longstanding history
of multilateralism and dedication to demonstrating independence from
its American neighbour. As the Iraq War received neither formal UN
nor NATO approval, abstention allowed Canada to fulfill two of its
longstanding cultural principles: refusing to partake in unilateral interven-
tions and choosing an opposite path from its American neighbour.76 But
where does strategic culture emanate from? Contemplating the existence
of multiple regional Canadian strategic subcultures and their effect on
Canada’s stance towards the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, Massie consults
survey data to investigate the existence of regional cultural differences
pertaining to the international use of force, concluding that Quebec and
Alberta show distinct strategic subcultures based on attitudes on support
for each war.77 O’Connor and Vucetic remain “agnostic over the domi-
nant site of the construction of strategic cultures—the elite, the mass
or both,” and consider the effects of public opinion against the effects
of strategic culture on Canada’s foreign policy decisions, assuming the
two can be separated. Yet, they consider strategic culture to be defined
as “a nationally specific system of communication made up of historical
analogies, similes, and metaphors, which tend to solidify public preferences
in the domain of foreign and defence policy”78 and, in fact, strive to
18 T. R. MCDONALD

demonstrate that Canadian multilateralism and symbolic “independence”

from the United States was not merely a historical pattern, but a popular
opinion among Canadians in the lead up to the Iraq War and months
after.
The same can be said of much of the research on Canada’s security
imaginary, where the collective sense of self of Canadians provides the
basis for producing analytical insights. As Jutta Weldes defines it, a secu-
rity imaginary is “quite simply, a structure of well-established meanings
and social relations out of which representations of the world of interna-
tional relations are created.”79 In the study of Canadian foreign policy,
the Canadian security imaginary has primarily been invoked to assess
the resonance of political rhetoric encouraging Canadians to re-think
Canada’s place in the world versus the longstanding ideas Canadians tend
to have about themselves. Usually, these recasting efforts on the part of
the government are no match for the relatively stable attitudes of the
public.80 In perhaps the most comprehensive study of Canadian politi-
cians’ efforts to sell justifications for Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan,
Boucher and Nossal’s The Politics of War 81 argues that successive govern-
ments failed to offer the Canadian public a justificatory claim that “made
sense” within their security imaginary. They conclude that “neither the
Chrétien or Martin Liberal governments nor the Harper Conservative
government—was able to offer Canadians a convincing or persuasive set
of reasons why Canada was in Afghanistan or why Canadian soldiers
should be dying there”82 and hence, public support throughout much
of the war remained tepid.
On the other hand, examinations of Canadian foreign policy and
identity have increasingly featured those approaching Canadian iden-
tity not as something innate or essential, but as a set of shifting myths
about who Canada is to which Canadians widely subscribe. While promi-
nent Canadian myths are frequently invoked by political elites to justify
foreign engagements, this camp argues that this mythological language
is just that: rhetoric without any causal connection to Canadian foreign
policy. Rather than point to the presence of some consistent strategic
culture or deep-seated Canadian values that supposedly guide a consistent
record of foreign policy, this camp emphasizes the disparity between what
Canadians believe about themselves and how the country actually acts
internationally, evidencing the gulf between rhetoric and reality. Edward
Said suggested that “nations are themselves narrations,”83 noting the
propensity for groups of people to formulate ideas about themselves as
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

different from other groups. Relatedly, Canadian historian Daniel Francis

has argued that a nation is merely “a group of people who share the
same illusions about themselves” and members of the Canadian nation
“depend on this habit of ‘consensual hallucination’ more than any other
people.”84 To be clear, this distinction between long-held values and
myths does not imply that the population believe in these myths any less
than they would if they were actually deep-seated principles of an essen-
tialized Canadian character. The very function of the myth is that the
population believes it to be essentially rooted and a fundamental truism,
though it is not. This distinction does, however, serve to highlight that
since a myth is unattached to any essential root of Canadian character or
distinctly “Canadian historical experience,” both the content of the myths
and the foreign policies they supposedly inform can vary drastically over
time.
Myth-based approaches have focused particularly on the growing
“rhetoric-reality gap,” supposing Canada’s foreign policies have become
so varied and disconnected from the popular beliefs about what Canadian
identity is, that seemingly any foreign initiatives are possible, so long as
Canadians remain more interested in the stories of who they are rather
than what the country is actually doing internationally. Contemporarily,
prominent Canadian myths tend to cast Canadians as global do-gooders,
responsible international citizens, the world’s leading proponent of toler-
ance and multiculturalism, and dedicated to protecting those who cannot
defend themselves, often through peacekeeping rather than war-making.
Canadian philosopher William Kymlicka suggests that Canadians mythol-
ogize themselves as being “good citizens of the world” who like to believe
they have “played a useful and constructive role in international affairs, as
UN peace-keepers, as ‘honest-brokers’ in various international negotia-
tions or conflict resolutions, and as supporters of virtually every important
international legal or political initiative… In Canada, to be indifferent
to our obligations as citizens of the world is seen as ‘unCanadian.’”85
And yet, Canada’s relatively low contributions to foreign aid compared
to Western European countries and peacekeeping forces routinely subject
to drastic budget cuts have left “this idea of ‘Canadians as good citizens
of the world’ [as] more mythology than fact.”86 Moreover, Canadians’
self-image as a “virtuously superior” peoples whose foreign policies reflect
the country’s distinct values, often claimed to be freedom, diversity, and
human rights, is hardly a set of values unique to Canada. Noting these
20 T. R. MCDONALD

discrepancies, Denis Stairs encapsulates a prominent sentiment among this

camp in suggesting “Canadians need to get a grip on themselves.”87
Some, including Stairs, argue this seemingly obvious disconnect
between myth and reality is dangerously unnoticed in Canadian society,
driving identity and policy even further apart. For Kim Richard Nossal,
whose research spans both theoretical camps discussed here, Canadians
are so consumed by their own myths “…that in contemporary Canadian
foreign policy, what matters is not what one does, but only what ones
says.”88 In an analysis of the evolution of Canadian foreign policy towards
the humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan from 2003 to
2005, Nossal finds that parliamentary rhetoric surrounding these policies
was so self-congratulatory to the Canadian people regarding their valiant
sacrifices that the public cared little that their country had not actually
followed through on its promises. Political elites in Ottawa “appeal[ed]
to the preferences and prejudices of a population indoctrinated by its
own myths,” lacing the mission in rhetoric “so sweet-sounding to Cana-
dians that…their government was actually doing something worthwhile in
their name.”89 And even though the mission stalled at many points and
was vehemently criticized by foreign policy experts for failing to achieve
the outlined goals, polls demonstrated that the public was convinced far
more by the words of many in Parliament that they had done something
worthwhile than the actual evidence that the mission was failing miser-
ably. Hence, Nossal concludes in 2005 that “in contemporary Canadian
foreign policy, rhetoric and reality operate in discrete spheres, so long as
the Canadian public is routinely treated with such ‘ear candy.’”90
Sandra Whitworth further demonstrates just how removed the actual
“realities” of foreign policy are from what Canadians believe about their
national identity that supposedly informs it. Even after a proven murder
of a local Somali teenager during Canada’s peacekeeping mission in the
region in 1993 at the hands of two Canadian soldiers, the general public
and investigators themselves dismissed the crime as merely “the act of a
few bad apples.”91 The gulf between self-image and policy being so wide
that the supposedly unwavering commitment to keeping peace around
the world seemed to have survived direct empirical evidence against
its mythologically untarnished record. As Sherene Razack summarizes,
“Canadian naivety and passivity as a nation constitute a narrative of inno-
cence that blocks accountability for the violence in Somalia…A nation so
gentle could not possibly have participated in the acts of violence reported
by the press.”92
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

Forays into Canadian political branding similarly grapple with the

limits of the rhetoric-reality gap. As in the sale of sneakers and laundry
detergent, these scholars argue, governments brand their parties, leaders,
and country through corporate-style marketing campaigns. The goal
being to not only communicate clear messages about their interests and
goals domestically but to advance their interests internationally through
cultivating an emotional attachment to “the brand” on the part of “con-
sumers” (the public) at home and abroad with catchy slogans and logos.93
“Brand Canada” is said to have been adapted and re-branded through
various governments, perhaps never more prominently than under the
current government of Justin Trudeau. Yet, as leading experts on Cana-
dian branding suggest, Canadian identity cannot simply be branding all
the way down, with the public content to merely consume the messages
without worrying about the actual policies the Canadian government
pursues. “[S]uccesful and valuable brands emerge,” argues Richard Nimi-
jean, “because they deliver on their brand promises; they fail when they
don’t.”94
Feminist research on identity and Canadian foreign policy gets us
closest to the kind of discursive practice-based approach this book
presents and offers a solid foundation to build from. Feminist research
has been particularly incisive in illuminating the critical role gendered
narratives of identity have played in the realization and carrying out of
Canadian foreign policy. Such research has demonstrated how masculin-
ized narratives of chivalry and self-sacrificing Canadian goodness belie the
violence and racism experienced by those deemed needing protection as
Canada’s post-9/11 policies play out at home and abroad. The narrative
of Canada as fundamentally committed to multiculturalism obscures the
reality that Canadian officials and popular news outlets frequently cast
Afghan women as abject victims who could only be saved by the “knights
of civilization,” namely Canada and the United States.95 Furthermore,
“liberating innocent Afghan people,” and in particular Afghan women,
has been a popular rallying cry in Canada in justifying policies in the
Middle East, not least because it fits neatly into multiple myths of
Canadian peacekeeping, international stewardship, and protecting the
innocent. Yet, as Krista Hunt has pointed out, “[t]he hypocrisy of waging
war in the name of women lies with the fact that women will be the
greatest casualties in this ‘war on terrorism.’”96 Feminist research brings
to the forefront two key insights that bear on the approach offered in this
book: the productive power of discourses of Canadian identity and the
22 T. R. MCDONALD

connection of discourse and practice. Alison Howell’s analysis of promi-

nent discourses of Canada articulated in official Canadian government
documents and pronouncements succinctly encapsulates these insights.
Howell leaves aside the search for “actual” Canadian attitudes and
instead implores readers to “dispense with the task of defining Canadian
values…instead our interest in words should be directed at the multiple
effects of their use.”97 Hence, (following Roxanne Doty)98 Howell prior-
itizes how Canadian foreign policy is possible and what discourses it
rests on rather than why one policy is chosen over another. This anal-
ysis relies on understanding identity discourses as exhibiting productive
power: how representations of Canada as a “good” and “chivalrous”
international actor not only work to justify actions abroad but also craft
the terms for Canadian self-understandings at home, obscuring Canada’s
own history of oppressions and marginalizations within its own borders.
The effects of government discourses of Canada as peaceful, tolerant, and
orderly works to silence instances of gendered and racialized violence at
home while simultaneously amplifying discourses of “Canada the good”
throughout Canadian society that “incite Canadians to autonomously
self-govern” their ability to “live up” to these “standards.”99 Hence,
Howell makes the case that “the discourse of Canadian values in foreign
policy is seen as a practice” of its own in that “it enjoins Canadians to
understand and conduct themselves in accordance with a liberal model of
citizenship.”100 While the execution of foreign policy on the ground is
traditionally considered the practice of foreign policy, the articulation of
discourses that make these policies possible, including through the consti-
tution of what it takes to be a “good Canadian citizen” and living up
to the discourses of Canadian values, is equally implicated in foreign policy
practice on the domestic front.
“Collaps[ing] the distinction between discourse and practice[s]”101 of
Canadian identity and foreign policy is precisely the ontological “first
step” from which this book’s approach begins. But asking “how-possible”
questions requires not just an understanding of the role discursive prac-
tices of identity play in foreign policy decisions, but the internal dynamics
of these discursive practices, their features, and persistence over time. In
other words, this study pushes beyond the focus of discursive practices of
identity as integral to foreign policy to argue how it is that this integral
relationship functions, not simply that it exists.
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

Why Look to The House?

This study also differs from many extant explorations of Canadian iden-
tity and foreign policy in a particularly stark way: it looks to the Canadian
House of Commons. For many, this signifies the breaking of a cardinal
rule of sorts for studying Canadian foreign policy. Ample literature
suggests that Canadian foreign policy decision-making does not occur
within or substantively involve the House of Commons. As Canada’s
system of government does not require the executive to receive autho-
rization from the legislature to enact its foreign policy,102 the will of
the Prime Minister is widely considered a main source of policy, not the
Parliament.103 Though Prime Ministers have invoked the “Parliament will
decide” formula, inviting the House to debate and vote their approval
on foreign policies, this is usually considered little more than a polit-
ical tool for Prime Ministers to avoid pursuing undesirable policies or to
provide political cover in sharing (or “laundering”104 ) responsibility for
a policy that would have been pursued anyways.105 As Nossal, Roussel,
and Paquin remind us, when it comes to issues of foreign policy, Prime
Ministers “have always jealously guarded the prerogative to decide such
matters.”106
So why consider the discourses of the House of Commons at all
if the causal powers to enact foreign policies primarily rest with the
Prime Minister? Answering this question gets at the heart of the research
programme of this study. This book is ultimately concerned with how
Canada’s foreign policies towards Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003
became politically possible. As such, the focus is on the constitutive
elements that converge to make these decisions possible in the first place.
This positions this study opposite traditional rationalist approaches to
foreign policy analysis in the field of IR, a dichotomy Roxanne Doty first
articulated in the 1990s. Rather than asking the question of “why” one
decision was pursued over another, a question that assumes a set number
of foreign policy options unproblematically preexist the decision waiting
to be chosen from a universe of options, Doty proposed asking “how”
potential decisions became possible at all in the universe, an adjustment
that shifts focus to the ideas and identities that converge to enable the
policy to appear “reasonable, logical and ultimately imperative or even
inevitable” in the first place.107 For Doty, “why” questions “presup-
pose the identities of social actors and a background of social meanings.
In contrast, how questions examine how meanings are produced and
24 T. R. MCDONALD

attached to various social subjects and objects, this constituting partic-

ular interpretive dispositions that create certain possibilities and preclude
others…”108
Doty’s approach suggests we consider a conception of power beyond
what a Prime Minister wields in choosing to participate in a war or not.
Instead, Doty invites us to consider an element of power “why” questions
often neglect: “the way in which power works to constitute particular
modes of subjectivity and interpretive dispositions…[t]his is not the kind
of power that preexisting social actors possess and use. Rather, it is a
kind of power that produces meanings, subject identities, their relation-
ships, and a range of imaginable conduct.”109 In other words, rather than
asking why the Prime Minister selected a certain policy from a menu, we
ask how the menu came to be created in the first place and what ideas
and identities the menu’s existence relies on. Focusing on this kind of
power, Canadian Parliament is not relegated to the sideline, but rather
it takes centre stage. The House of Commons and its debates on Cana-
dian foreign policy are rich in what may be called Doty’s constitutive
form of power—acting as an arena where a background of assumptions
and social meanings are imbued within representations, understandings,
and interpretations of world politics that make certain paths realizable
over others. This is so for several key reasons. First, the forum of Cana-
dian parliamentary debate is used by politicians, particularly those in the
government, to justify their policies. In appealing to constituents, politi-
cians argue for a policy’s necessity based on representations of concepts
like “the national interest,” “national identity,” and “alliance obligations,”
all of which draw together various understandings in situating one policy
as superior to other policies. Politicians may, of course, lie, mislead, or
use ambiguous terminology in justifying a foreign policy; nevertheless,
they do so within certain intersubjective confines. Charting those confines
reveals the “intersubjective meaning that condition the social and political
possibilities within a given community, site, or field.”110 That Canadian
governments, for example, strategically framed the Afghanistan War as a
“mission” rather than a “war” to the Canadian public111 reveals part of
how Canada’s sustained involvement in the region became possible—in
appealing to preexisting assumptions about Canadian identity as peace-
keepers rather than war-makers—regardless as to what the Prime Minister
thought at the time.
 1 INTRODUCTION 25

Second, representations articulated by politicians in the House of

Commons are informed, to varying degrees, by understandings and
meanings located in wider Canadian society. It is essential to support
discursive analysis of parliamentary rhetoric with analysis of discourses in
wider Canadian society, as this study does. While politicians do not always
“speak back” such understandings verbatim, they filter their foreign policy
formulations through popular narratives in Canadian society to legitimize
their own views to constituents.112 In this sense, parliamentary debates
reflect intersubjective meanings found in society without which foreign
policies would make little sense to the public. While politicians are free
to argue, for example, that Canada ought to mobilize troops in anticipa-
tion of an intergalactic war on Mars because Canadians have always been
defenders of the universe, such a policy and self-understanding are foreign
to Canadian society, and have little relevance to constituents and there-
fore little role in making a certain policy politically possible. Question
Period within the House is an especially vibrant period for the appear-
ance of such understandings as the argumentative nature of this period,
in giving opposition parties the opportunity to debate the government’s
justifications, often resulting in different policies, understandings, and
justifications competing in such an environment. In this sense, accounting
for how a foreign policy became politically possible requires not only
analysing the representations of the governing party, but also those of
all parties in the House as representations compete, develop, and adjust
through the dynamic and competitive interactions of debate.
While any analysis of societal and institutional discourses is inevitably
limited in scope, the historic downplaying of Canadian Parliament’s
significance to Canadian foreign policy has left parliamentary discourses
mostly unaccounted for when it comes to analysing Canada and the
“War on Terror.” This study contends that a full accounting of how
Canada became involved in Afghanistan and not Iraq requires attention
be directed to the rhetorical contests and discursive competition that took
place during these debates, including those emerging from dissenting
voices in the House who, while ultimately failing to have their preferred
policies adopted, played a vital role in contributing to the discursive
terrain through which the adopted policies took shape.
26 T. R. MCDONALD

The Purchase of Theorizing Discursive

Practices in the Case of Canada
and the “Global War on Terror”
This book offers a fresh perspective on the relationship between Cana-
dian identity and Canadian foreign policy and one that offers a fruitful
path forward through the theoretical impasse outlined in the previous
section. To navigate the divisions plaguing previous approaches, I present
an approach to analysing Canadian identity and Canadian foreign policy
that captures both the discursive articulations of parliamentarians that
produce diverse and even opposing representations of Canadian iden-
tity and the habitual rhetorical practices that structure such articulations
so we hear similar sounding words and phrases, even as they take on
different meanings. Such a framework approaches the “rhetoric-reality
gap” not as a gap at all, but as a feedback loop. Whereas previous studies
utilize political rhetoric of Canadian identity to measure how accurately
Canadian foreign policy reflects this rhetoric in a linear relationship, this
book approaches identity rhetoric and foreign policy as co-constitutive.
The very identity discourses relied on to articulate foreign policies, work
to shape the characteristics of the foreign policies themselves. Simulta-
neously, the articulation and execution of foreign policies provide the
grounds to re-articulate and even re-imagine Canadian identity. Rather
than identity rhetoric and foreign policy “reality” existing in discrete
spheres, the two are constituted hand-in-hand.
The purchase of this novel approach to Canadian foreign policy analysis
is demonstrated through the prickly case of Canada’s involvement in the
“Global War on Terror,” in particular, the Chrétien government’s deci-
sion to join the Afghanistan War in 2001 and abstain from the Iraq War in
2003. With the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal re-positioning Canada’s
involvement in the Middle East back to the forefront, many key ques-
tions surrounding not only Canada’s participation in the region in the
first place but how these wars relate to Canadian identity, remain unan-
swered. How is it that discourses of Canada as a “member of the civilized
world,” “protector of innocent women and children,” and “America’s
closest ally,” all political justifications for joining the Afghanistan War
repeated ad nauseam by government officials, were no longer relevant
justifications for joining the Iraq War just two years later? How is it
that these familiar rhetorical elements suddenly ceased to be appropriate
justifications? If Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan was discursively
 1 INTRODUCTION 27

articulated as necessary to uphold Canada’s identity, how could this iden-

tity be maintained by not joining the Iraq War that appeared to present
similar circumstances to compel Canadian involvement? Finally, moving
beyond the Middle East, why does it seem that political elites repeat the
same familiar discourses of Canadian identity to justify foreign policy deci-
sions towards dissimilar foreign policy episodes, then and now? This book
grapples with these difficult and perplexing questions head-on.

Plan of the Book

In what follows, I present Canada’s involvement in the “Global War
on Terror” through the lens of three popular narratives of Canadian
identity that, I argue, played key roles in two of Canada’s most conse-
quential foreign policy decisions in the twenty-first century: the “yes” to
Afghanistan and the “no” to Iraq. Through the reconstruction of parlia-
mentary debates in the House of Commons in the lead up to these
foreign policy decisions, I explicate the ways in which the narratives
of “Canada as America’s neighbour,” “Canada as protector of foreign
civilians,” and “Canada as champion of multilateralism,” became intro-
duced, adapted, and repeated as policies of active military participation
and non-participation became possible.
Weaving insights from theories of discourse and practice in IR,
Chapter 2 develops a novel theoretical framework to analyse the relation-
ship between identity and foreign policy. The framework is premised on
its ability to capture both the stable and fluid elements of identity rhetoric
emerging from parliamentary debate and implicated in making certain
foreign policies politically possible. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 as empirical case
studies, each focus on the deployment and re-imagination of a promi-
nent narrative of Canadian identity within foreign policy debates on the
“Global War on Terror.” Analysing the history of these narratives before
turning to their deployments in contemporary foreign policy debates,
these chapters explore the ways in which Canada’s position towards
involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq was articulated as a matter of iden-
tity. Moving beyond the “Global War on Terror,” Chapter 6 surveys the
current landscape of Canadian foreign policy in assessing the continued
relevance of these narratives to Canada’s navigation of world politics
28 T. R. MCDONALD

today. In exploring Canadian articulations of major events in world poli-

tics, from the presidency of Donald J. Trump in the United States, to
the COVID-19 global pandemic, to Russia’s war in Ukraine, this chapter
demonstrates the persistence of these three familiar narratives in contem-
porary Canadian foreign policy discourse. Finally, the concluding chapter
reflects on the consequences of their enduring place in Canadian foreign
policy visions.

Notes
1. Chrétien, J. (Prime Minister, Lib). (2001, September 17). House of
Commons Debates (Hansard), 37th Parliament, 1st session, 1110h–1120h.
2. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the
Bosnian War. Routledge, i.
3. Rather than using the phrasing “state” identity or “national” identity,
throughout this book, I elect to refer specifically to Canadian or Amer-
ican “identity” or “identities of states.” This choice is made to emphasize
“identity” as referring to rhetorical articulations of “identity;” basic state-
ments of “who we are,” and “who they are,” that draw together ideas
both from domestic society and the international sphere, rather than
referencing more formal notions of “state” or “national” identity that
generally emphasize one arena over the other. See Ashizawa, K. (2008).
When Identity Matters: State Identity, Regional Institution-Building, and
Japanese Foreign Policy. International Studies Review 10, 574–576.
4. For a review of contemporary challenges facing Canada, see Carment,
D. & Nimijean, R. (Eds). (2021). Political Turmoil in a Tumultuous
World: Canada Among Nations 2020. Palgrave Macmillan.
5. Campbell, D. (1992). Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and
the Politics of Identity. University of Minnesota Press; original Foucault,
M. (1984). The Order of Discourse. In Shapiro, M. (Ed). Language and
Politics. New York University Press.
6. There is a plethora of studies analyzing Canadian public opinion in rela-
tion to the Afghanistan War. For a sample, see Boucher, J.C. (2009).
Selling Afghanistan: A Discourse Analysis of Canada’s Military Inter-
vention (2001–2008). International Journal 64(3), 717–733; Nossal,
K.R. (2010). Rethinking the Security Imaginary: Canadian Security
and the Case of Afghanistan. In Charbonneau, B. & Cox, W. (Eds).
Locating Global Order: American Power and Canadian Security After
9/11. University of British Columbia Press.
7. Neumann, I.B. (2002). Returning Practice to the Linguistic Turn:
The Case of Diplomacy. Millennium: Journal of International Studies
31(3), 631; Swidler, A. (2000). What Anchors Cultural Practices. In K.
 1 INTRODUCTION 29

Knorr Cetina et al. (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory.

Routledge, 94.
8. Shotter, J. (1993). Cultural Politics of Everyday Life: Social Construc-
tivism, Rhetoric and Knowing of the Third Kind. Open University
Press; Jackson, P.T. (2006). Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruc-
tion and the Invention of the West. University of Michigan Press; Pouliot,
V. (2010). The Materials of Practice: Nuclear Warheads, Rhetorical
Commonplaces and Committee Meetings in Russia-Atlantic Relations.
Cooperation and Conflict 45(3), 294–311.
9. Shotter, J. (1993), 3–4.
10. The “War on Terror” (WOT) and “Global War on Terror” (GWOT)
remain phrases fraught with controversies, inconsistencies, mischaracter-
izations and spurious assumptions. While a key feature of the George
W. Bush-era parlance in discussing the scope of America’s perceived
threats and responses, the phrases were phased out of official communica-
tions during the Obama presidency. “Overseas Contingency Operations”
(OCO) quickly replaced “GWOT.” See Wilson, S. & Kamen, A. (Mar
25, 2009). The Washington Post, A.4.
11. While the Canadian government did not formally participate in the inva-
sion of Iraq, it did dispatch Canadian troops to the theatre of operations
in Iraq, which can be seen as far more of a contribution than those
offered by many official members of the “coalition of the willing.” See
Vucetic, S. (2006). Why Did Canada Sit Out Of The Iraq War? One
Constructivist Analysis. Canadian Foreign Policy 13(1), 133.
12. See ‘American Review of Canadian Studies’ special issue on Canada’s
Commitment to Afghanistan (2010) 40(2).
13. Bush, G.W. (2002, January 29). State of the Union Address.
14. Harper, S. (2006, March 13). Address by the Prime Minister to the
Canadian Armed Forces in Afghanistan. Office of the Prime Minister.
15. Trudeau, J. (2022, May 8). Justin Trudeau and Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Joint Press Conference, Kyiv.
16. Smith, P. (2005). Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, The Gulf War,
and Suez. The University of Chicago Press.
17. Ontological security-based approaches in IR have made, perhaps, the
most headway on this front. See Kinnvall, C. & Mitzen, J. (2017).
An Introduction to the Special Issue: Ontological Securities in World
Politics. Cooperation and Conflict 52(1); Steele, B.J. (2008). Ontolog-
ical Security in International Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State.
Routledge. For an insightful accounting of narrative and foreign policy
change, see Subotic, J. (2016). Narrative, Ontological Security, and
Foreign Policy Change. Foreign Policy Analysis 12.
18. Bertucci, M.E., Hayes, J., & James, P. (Eds). (2018). Constructivism
Reconsidered: Past, Present, and Future. University of Michigan Press.
30 T. R. MCDONALD

19. Searle, J.R. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. Free Press.
20. Onuf, N. (2018). Preface: The Dinosaur Speaks! In Bertucci et al. (Eds),
11.
21. Wendt, A. (1992). Anarchy Is What Staes Make of It: The Social
Construction of Power Politics. International Organizations 46(2), 398.
22. Wendt, A. (1992).
23. Wendt, A. (1995). Constructing International Politics. International
Security 20(1), 73.
24. For example, see Adler, E. (2013). Constructivism in International Rela-
tions: Sources, Contributions, and Debates. In Carlsnaes, W., Risse,
T., & Simmons, B.A. (Eds). Handbook of International relations (2nd
ed). SAGE; Barder, A. & Levine, D. (2012). “The World Is Too Much
for Us”: Reification and the Depoliticising of Via Media Construc-
tivist IR. Millennium 40(3); Berenskoetter, F. (2010). Identity in
International Relations. In The International Studies Encyclopedia. Wiley-
Blackwell; Bertucci et al. (2018); Checkel, J. (2004). Social Construc-
tivisms in Global and European Politics. Review of International Studies
30(2); Jepperson, R.L., Wendt, A., & Katzenstein, P.J. (1996). Norms,
Identity, and Culture in National Security. In Katzenstein, P. (Ed).
The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Poli-
tics. Columbia University Press; Vucetic, S. (2017). Identity and Foreign
Policy. In James, P. (Ed). Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics.
25. Vuectic, S. (2017), 2; Hansen, L. (2006), 19.
26. I speak of “constructivisms” so as to acknowledge the diversity among
constructivist approaches in IR. See Sjoberg, L. & Barkin, S.J. (2018).
If It Is Everything, It Is Nothing: An Argument for Specificity in
Constructivisms. In Bertucci et al. (2018).
27. Wendt, A. (1999). Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge
University Press.
28. Vucetic, S. (2017), 5; original in Abdelal, R., Herrera, Y.M., Johnston,
A.I., & McDermott, R. (2009). Measuring Identity: A Guide for Social
Scientists. Cambridge University Press.
29. Hansen, L. (2006), 19.
30. Smith, S. (2000). ‘Wendt’s World’. Review of International Studies 26,
151.
31. Arfi, B. (2010). Fantasy in the Discourse of ‘Social Theory of Interna-
tional Politics’. Cooperation and Conflict 45(4); Doty, R. (2000). Desire
All the Way Down. Review of International Studies 26.
32. Wendt, A. (1999), 77; Smith, S. (2000), 154.
33. Solomon, T. (2015). The Politics of Subjectivity in American Foreign
Policy Discourses. University of Michigan Press, 12; original in Adler,
 1 INTRODUCTION 31

E. (1997). Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Poli-

tics. European Journal of International Relations 3(3). For a critical
examination on this “middle ground” see Onuf, N. (2018), 13.
34. Vucetic, S. (2017), 11; original in Adler, E. (2013), 116–117.
35. Hansen, L. (2006), 19.
36. Doty, R.L. (1996). Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in
North–South Relations. University of Minnesota Press, 6.
37. Doty, R.L. (2000), 138.
38. Laclau, E. & Mouffe, C. (2001). Hegemony and Socialist Strategy:
Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Verso, 108.
39. Hansen, L. (2006).
40. Campbell, D. (1992), 4.
41. Ibid., 11.
42. Ibid., 11.
43. Solomon (2015), 12.
44. Doty, R.L. (1993). Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-
Positivist Analysis of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines.
International Studies Quarterly 37(3), 302 (emphasis in original).
45. Epstein, C. (2010) Who Speaks? Discourse, the Subject and the Study
of Identity in International Politics. European Journal of International
Relations 17(2), 342.
46. Benabdallah, L. (2020). Shaping the Future of Power: Knowledge Produc-
tion and Network-Building in China-Africa Relations. University of
Michigan Press, 56.
47. Ibid., 48; original in Persaud, R. (2002). Situating Race in International
Relations: The Dialectics of Civilizational Security in American Immigra-
tion. In Chowdhry, G. & Nair, S. (Eds). Power, Post-Colonialism and
International Relations: Reading Race, Gender and Class. Routledge,
54–65.
48. Doty, R.L. (1996).
49. Ibid., 13.
50. Campbell, D. (1992), 9 (emphasis in original).
51 Ibid., 165 (emphasis added).
52. Ibid., 72 (emphasis added).
53. Along similar lines, Jutta Weldes suggests: “with their successful repeated
articulation, these linguistic elements come to seem as though they
are inherently or necessarily connected and the meaning they produce
come to seem natural, to be an accurate description of reality.” See
Weldes, J. (1996) Constructing National Interests. European Journal of
International Relations 2(3), 285.
54. McCourt, D. (2016). Practice Theory and Relationalism as the New
Constructivism. International Studies Quarterly 60(3), 478.
32 T. R. MCDONALD

55. Hayes, J. (2015). Nuclear Disarmament and Stability in the Logic of

Habit. The Nonproliferation Review 22(3–4); Howard, L.M. (2015). US
Foreign Policy Habits in Ethnic Conflict. International Studies Quarterly
59(4).
56. Charrett, C. (2019). Ritualised Securitisation: The European Union’s
Failed Response to Hamas’s Success. European Journal of International
Relations 25(1). Oren, I. & Solomon, T. (2015). WMD, WMD, WMD:
Securitisation Through Ritualized Incantation of Ambiguous Phrases.
Review of International Studies 41(2).
57. Mitzen, J. (2006). Ontological Security in World Politics: State Identity
and the Security Dilemma. European Journal of International Rela-
tions 12(3); Steele, B.J. (2008). Ontological Security in International
Relations: Self-Identity and the IR State. Routledge.
58. Solomon, T. (2019). Rhythm and Mobilization in International Rela-
tions. International Studies Quarterly 63.
59. Solomon (2015).
60. Holland, J. (2013). Selling the War on Terror: Foreign Policy Discourses
after 9/11. Routledge; Vucetic, S. (2021). Greatness and Decline:
National Identity and British Foreign Policy. McGill-Queen’s University
Press.
61. Holland, J. (2013).
62. Hansen, L. (2006).
63. Benabdallah, L. (2020).
64. Hart, M. (2008) From Pride to Influence: Towards a New Canadian
Foreign Policy. University of British Columbia Press, 203.
65. Klassen, J. & Albo, G. (2013). Empire’s Ally: Canada and the War
in Afghanistan. University of Toronto Press; Massie, J. (2019). Why
Canada Goes to War: Explaining Combat Participation in US-led
Coalitions. Canadian Journal of Political Science 52.
66. Barry, D. (2005). Chretien, Bush, and the War in Iraq. The American
Review of Canadian Studies. 35(2); Gross Stein, J. & Lang, E. (2007).
The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar. Penguin.
67. Boucher, J.C. & Nossal, K.R. (2017). The Politics of War: Canada’s
Afghanistan Mission, 2001–14. University of British Columbia Press
(ebook); Juneau, T. & Momani, B. (2022). Middle Power in the Middle
East: Canada’s Foreign and Defence Policies in a Changing Region.
University of Toronto Press.
68. Hart, M. (2008), 19.
69. Bloomfield, A. (2012). Time to Move On: Reconceptualizing the
Strategic Culture Debate. Contemporary Security Policy 33(3); Gray, C.S.
(1999) Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory
Strikes Back. Review of International Studies 25(1); Haglund, D. (2004).
What Good Is Strategic Culture: A Modest Defence of an Immodest
 1 INTRODUCTION 33

Concept. International Journal 59(3); Haglund, D. (2009). And the

Beat Goes On: “Identity” and Canadian Foreign Policy. In Bothwell,
R. & Daudelin, J. (Eds). Canada Among Nations 2008: 100 Years of
Canadian Foreign Policy. McGill-Queen;s University Press, 345–347;
Johnston, A.I. (1995). Thinking about Strategic Culture. International
Security 19(4); Poore, S. (2003). What Is the Context? A Reply to
the Gray-Johnston Debate on Strategic Culture. Review of International
Studies 29(2).
70. Bloomfield, A. & Nossal, K.R. (2007). Towards an Explicative Under-
standing of Strategic Culture: The Cases of Australia and Canada.
Contemporary Security Policy 28(2), 288; Haglund, D. (2009), 345–347.
71. Massie, J. (2009). Making Sense of Canada’s “Irrational” International
Security Policy: A Tale of Three Strategic Cultures. International journal
64(3).
72. Bloomfield, A. & Nossal, K.R. (2007).
73. McKay, J.R. (2018). Why Canada Is Best Explained as a ‘Reliable Ally’
in 2017. Journal of Transatlantic Studies 16(2).
74. O’Connor, B. & Vucetic, S. (2010). Another Mars-Venus divide? Why
Australia Said ‘Yes’ and Canada Said ‘Non’ to Involvement in the 2003
Iraq War. Australian Journal of International Affairs 64(5).
75. Massie, J. (2009), 644.
76. O’Connor, B. & Vucetic, S. (2010). For a rebuttal, see Sampford, C.
(2015). Cheerleaders of Folly: Australia’s Misguided Attempt to Be a
Good Ally. In Thakur, R. & Cunningham, J. Australia, Canada and
Iraq: Perspective on an Invasion. Dundurn Press (ebook).
77. Massie, J. (2008). Regional Strategic Subcultures: Canadians and the Use
of Force in Afghanistan. Canadian Foreign Policy 14(2).
78. O’Connor, B. & Vucetic, S. (2010), 539 (emphasis added).
79. Weldes, J. (1999). Constructing National Interests: The United States and
the Cuban Missile Crisis. University of Minnesota Press, 10.
80. Nossal, K.R. (2010), 107–108.
81. Boucher, J. & Nossal, K.R. (2017) (ebook).
82. Ibid., 77.
83. Bhabha, H.K. (2004). The Location of Culture. Routledge, xxii.
84. Francis, D. (1997). National Dreams, Myth, Memory, and Canadian
History. Arsenal Pulp Press, 10–11. Francis hypothesizes that this is
because Canada has such a diverse and sparsely located population
throughout the expansive Canadian territory that, relative to other coun-
tries, there is greater need to develop narratives about what binds these
disparate individuals as a collective.
85. Kymlicka, W. (2003). Being Canadian. Government and Opposition
38(3), 358. Though neither focuses extensively on Canadian foreign
policy, Canadian philosophers Kymlicka, along with Charles Taylor,
Another random document with
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zeal of the true Indian-born domestic, who hails a change, a
“tamasha,” anything in the shape of a “feast,” with a joy and energy
totally unknown to the retainers of the folk in these colder latitudes.
Hospitable Mrs. Brande was to have a house and a house-party.
“P.” was absent on official business; but, under any circumstances,
he would not have been a likely recruit for what he called a “new
outbreak of jungle fever.” The Dashwoods, the Booles, the
Daubenys, the Clovers, were to have a married people’s mess.
There were also one or two chummeries, which made people look at
one another and smile! The bachelors, of course, had their own
mess; moreover, there were tents.
Mrs. Langrishe joined neither mess nor chummery, this clever
woman was merely coming as the Clovers’ guest for two days, and
Lalla was Mrs. Dashwood’s sole charge. Mrs. Sladen, of course,
stayed with Mrs. Brande, who had been relegated to the old
commandant’s house, an important-looking roomy bungalow,
standing in a great wilderness of a garden and peach orchard. Once
or twice during the last twenty years it, and one or two other
bungalows, had been let (to the Persian’s great annoyance) for a few
months in the season to needy families from the plains, who only
wanted air, good hill air, and could afford but little else!
Mrs. Brande and her party arrived a whole day before the general
public, travelling comfortably by easy stages through great forests of
pine, oak, or rhododendron, along the face of bold, bare cliffs, across
shallow river-beds, and through more than one exquisite park-like
glade, dotted with trees and cattle—naturally, Mrs. Brande kept a
suspicious eye on these latter. When the travellers reached their
destination, they found that roads had been repaired, lamp-posts
and oil lamps erected, the old band-stand was renovated—servants
were hurrying to and fro, carrying furniture, shaking carpets, airing
bedding and picketing ponies. There were coolies, syces, soldiers,
and active sahibs galloping about giving directions. In fact, Hawal
Bagh had put back the clock of time, and to a cursory eye was once
more the bustling, populous cantonment of forty years ago!
 And how did the scanty society who dwelt in those parts relish the
resurrection of Hawal Bagh? To the neighbouring poor hill villagers
this event was truly a god-send; they reaped a splendid and totally
unexpected harvest, and were delighted to welcome the invaders,
who purchased their fowl, eggs, grain, milk, and honey.
Mark Jervis beheld the transformation with mingled feelings. He
had broken with his old life; most people, if they thought of him at all,
believed him to be in England—two months is a long time to live in
the memory of a hill station. Honor—she would be at Hawal Bagh—
she had not forgotten him yet. He would hang about the hills, that he
might catch a distant glimpse of her, or even of her dress. Surely he
might afford himself that small consolation.
As for the Persian, she surveyed the troops of gay strangers from
her aerie with a mixture of transports and anguish.
It was a fine moonlight night early in September, the hills loomed
dark, and cast deep shadows into the bright white valley. The air was
languorously soft, the milky way shone conspicuous, and fully
justified its Eastern name, “The Gate of Heaven.”
There was to be a ball in the old mess-house, and Mark took his
stand on the hill and watched the big cooking fires, the lit-up
bungalows, the hurrying figures; listened to the hum of voices, the
neighing of ponies, the tuning of musical instruments. Could this be
really the condemned, deserted cantonment of Hawal Bagh, that
many a night he had seen wrapped in deathlike silence? The dance
commenced briskly, open doorways showed gay decorations, the
band played a lively set of lancers, and a hundred merry figures
seemed to flit round and pass and repass; whilst the jackals and
hyenas, who had been wont to hold their assemblies in the same
quarter, slunk away up the hills in horrified disgust. Presently people
came out into the bright moonlight, and began to stroll up and down.
Mark recognized many well-known figures. There was Honor, in
white, walking with a little man who was conversing and gesticulating
with considerable vivacity. She seemed preoccupied, and held her
head high—gazing straight before her. Lookers on see most of the
game. The man must be a dense idiot not to notice that she was not
listening to one word he said.
There was Miss Paske, escorted by a ponderous companion with
a rolling gait—Sir Gloster, of course—and Miss Lalla was
undoubtedly entertaining him. It almost seemed as if he could hear
his emphatic “excellent” where he stood. Mrs. Merryfeather and
Captain Dorrington, Captain Merryfeather and Miss Fleet, and so on
—and so on—as pair after pair came forth.
Suddenly he became aware of the fact that he was not the only
spectator. Just below him stood a figure, so motionless, that he had
taken it for part of a tree. The figure moved, and he saw the Persian
lady standing gazing with fixed ravenous eyes on the scene below
them. He made a slight movement, and she turned hastily and came
up towards him. They were acquaintances of some standing now,
and met once or twice a week either among the lepers or about the
cantonment. Mark had never ventured to call at the mysterious little
bungalow, but he sent her offerings of flowers, fruit, and hill
partridges, and she in return admitted him to her friendship—to an
entirely unprecedented extent. Whether this was due to the young
man’s handsome face, and chivalrous respect for her privacy and
her sex, or whether it was accorded for the sake of another, who
shall say?
“You are looking on, like myself,” he remarked, as she accosted
him. “Are you interested?”
“Nay, ‘the world is drowned to him who is drowned,’ says the
proverb. I came to Hawal Bagh to retire from the crowd, and lo! a
crowd is at my gates!”
“This, surely, must be quite a novel sight to you?”
She gazed at him questioningly, and made no answer.
“Of course you have never seen this sort of thing before, English
people in evening dress, dancing to a band?”
“I have known phantoms—yea, I have seen such as these,”
pointing, “in a—dream—thousands of years ago.”
 Her companion made no reply, the Persian often uttered dark
sayings that were totally beyond his comprehension. Possibly she
believed in the transmigration of souls, and was alluding to a former
existence.
“Mine are but spirits, whereas to you these people are real flesh
and blood,” she resumed. “You were one of them but three months
ago. Think well ere you break with your past, and kill and bury youth.
Lo, you grow old already! Let me plead for youth, and love. Heaven
has opened to me to-day. She,” lowering her voice to a whisper, “is
among those—I have seen her—she is there below.”
“I know,” he answered, also in a low voice.
“Then why do you not seek her—so young, so fair, so good? Oh!
have you forgotten her sweet smile, her charming eyes? Love, real
love, comes but once! Go now and find her.”
Mark shook his head with emphatic negation.
“What heart of stone!” she cried passionately. “Truly I will go
myself and fetch her here. I——But no—I dare not,” and she covered
her face with her hands.
“Do not add your voice to my own mad inclinations. It is all over
between us. To meet her and to part again would give her needless
pain.”
“Ah! again the music,” murmured the Persian, as the band
suddenly struck up a weird haunting waltz, which her companion well
remembered—they had played it at the bachelors’ ball. “Music,” she
continued, clenching her two hands, “of any kind has a sore effect on
me. It tears my heart from my very body, and yet I love it, yea,
though it transport me to——” She paused, unable to finish the
sentence. Her lips trembled, her great dark eyes dilated, and she
suddenly burst into a storm of tears. The sound of her wild, loud,
despairing sobs, actually floated down and penetrated to the ears of
a merry couple who were strolling at large, and now stood
immediately below, little guessing that another pair on the hillside
were sadly contemplating a scene of once familiar but now lost
delights, like two poor wandering spirits.
 “Surely,” said Mrs. Merryfeather, “I heard a human voice, right up
there above us. It sounded just like a woman weeping—crying as if
her heart was broken.”
“Oh, impossible!” scoffed the man. “Hearts in these days are
warranted unbreakable, like toughened glass.”
“Listen! There it is again!” interrupted the lady excitedly.
“Not a bit of it, my dear Mrs. Merry; and your sex would not feel
flattered if they heard that you had mistaken the cry of a wild beast,
for a woman’s voice! I assure you, on my word of honour, that it is
nothing but a hyena.”
 CHAPTER XLII.
BY THE OLD RIFLE-RANGE.

A powerful and determined temptation, that was deaf to reason or

argument, struggled hourly to drag Mark Jervis to Hawal Bagh. It
changed its fierce wrestlings, and passionate and even frantic
pleadings to soft alluring whispers. It whispered that life was but an
hour in the æons of time—a drop in the ocean of eternity. Why not
taste the drop—enjoy the hour? Snatch the sunshine and live one’s
little day, ere passing for ever into eternal darkness and oblivion! It
even quoted the Scriptures, and vehemently urged him to take no
thought for the morrow—that sufficient unto the day was the evil
thereof. It seized the brush from the hand of memory, and painted
Honor Gordon as an angel. It babbled of a visit to Mrs. Brande—she
had always been his friend. Surely there was no harm in going to
see her! But the young man sternly silenced alike whisperings or
pleadings. He beat the mad tempter to its knees, choked it, and, as
he believed, put it to death. Why undergo the anguish of parting
twice—why walk across red-hot plough-shares a second time?
For four whole days he held aloof, and never visited the
cantonment—save in his thoughts and dreams. On the fifth he
conscientiously set forth in the opposite direction, and after a long
and aimless ride was astonished to find himself—no, not exactly on
the enchanted ground, but close to the old rifle-range, which lay at
the back of its encompassing hills. To the left dipped a long valley, on
the right of the path towered a forest of rhododendrons and ever-
green oaks, carpeted with ferns, and a blaze of delicate autumn
flowers; here and there the Virginia creeper flared, and here and
there a pale passion-flower had flung abroad its eager tendrils and
attached two noble trees. All at once, a fat white puppy came
bustling through the undergrowth; he was chasing a family of
respectable elderly monkeys, with the audacity common to his age
and race. Truly the pup is the father of the dog; and Jervis, who was
walking slowly with his pony following him, recognized this particular
pup at once as an old friend. He had bought him and presented him
to Mrs. Brande, when her grief was as yet too fresh—and this same
rollicking, well-to-do animal had once been indignantly spurned! To
whom did he now belong? Who was his master or his mistress?
There was a sound of light young footsteps, a crashing of small
twigs, a glimpse of a white dress, and an anxious girlish voice
calling, “Tommy, Tommy, Tommy!”
In another second Honor Gordon ran down into the path, about
thirty yards ahead of Tommy’s donor. She was almost breathless,
her hat was in her hand—possibly it had been snatched off by an
inquisitive branch as she struggled after the runaway. The soft little
locks on her forehead were ruffled, and she had an unusually brilliant
colour.
As Mark’s starving eyes devoured her face he thought he had
never seen her look so lovely. He summoned up all his self-
command—there must be no going back to “old days,” no moaning
over “what might have been.” No; he was the stronger, and must set
a stern example.
For quite twenty seconds there was a dead silence, a silence only
broken by the trickling of a snow-born mountain stream, passing
lingeringly through the ferns and orchids—who seemed to stoop and
bend over—listening intently to its timid silvery song.
“How changed he was!” thought Honor, with a queer tight feeling in
her throat, “only three short months, and the bright look of buoyant
youth had faded from his face.”
“Ah!” she exclaimed, with a supreme effort. “I had a presentiment
that I should see you soon—I dreamt it!”
“Dreams sometimes go by contraries,” he answered, with a rather
fixed smile.
“And how clever of Tommy to find you! The dear dog remembered
you.”
 “Well, up to the present he has not shown any symptoms of
recognizing me; on the contrary, he has cut me dead. He is in hot
pursuit of some venerable lumgoors. How long is it since he has
seen me?” asked Mark.
“The day of the bachelors’ ball. I recollect you gave him a
méringue, and very nearly killed him! It was on the eighth of June.
This is the tenth of September; just three months and two days.”
“So it is,” he acquiesced, with forced nonchalance.
“Do you live near here?” she continued.
“About four miles, by a goat path across that hill.”
“Pray are you aware that we are picnicing below, with half
Shirani?”
“Yes, I know; but not another starvation picnic I hope?”
“And yet,” ignoring his ill-timed jest, “you have never come to see
us, and we leave to-morrow!”
He looked down to avoid her questioning eyes, and made no
answer, beyond a faint, half-strangled sigh.
“At least we are still friends,” she urged, swallowing something in
her throat.
“Yes—always; but I thought I had better remain away. The Shirani
folk would take me for a ghost, and I might upset their nerves. What
is the latest station news?”
“Our latest news is, that Mrs. Sladen is to go home at Christmas.
Miss Clover is engaged to Captain Burne, and Miss Paske to Sir
Gloster Sandilands,” she answered stiffly.
“Poor Toby! I suppose my former acquaintances believe me to be
in England—if they ever think of me at all?”
She hesitated, twisted her ring round and round, and then said—
“Your friends,” with emphasis, “know that you are out in this
country, looking after your father. How is he?”
 “Wonderfully better, thank you.”
“And you—you have been ill?” she remarked rather tremulously.
“No, indeed; I never was better in my life. Of course you saw
Waring before he went down?”
“No,” with undeniable embarrassment. “In fact, he copied your
example, and dispensed with all farewells. He—he—left rather
suddenly,” and she coloured.
“Why do you hesitate?” looking at her keenly. “What did he do? He
has been doing something, I can see.”
“It was rather what he did not do,” with a constrained laugh. “Of
course it is no business of mine. He did not pay any of his bills. I am
not sure whether I ought to tell you.”
“And I am quite sure you ought,” he answered with decision.
“But he left such quantities of debts behind him, and no—address
——”
“Debts?” he repeated incredulously.
“Yes, he paid for nothing. Club accounts, card accounts, mess
bills, servants’ wages—not even his bearer’s bill for thread and
buttons and blacking. People,” with a nervous little laugh, “seem to
think that was the greatest enormity of all!”
“No!” cried Mark, his pale face turning to a vivid red, “I will tell you
of a greater. I knew he had spent and muddled away most of our
joint-funds, and the day I was last in Shirani I collected the bills and
gave him all the money I had in the world—a cheque for five hundred
pounds—to settle our affairs. He swore, on his honour, he would pay
them at once and send me the receipts. Now, of course, every one in
Shirani believes me to be as great a swindler and thief as he is! They
must naturally suppose that I—I—bolted from my creditors! I,” with
increasing warmth, “now understand why you stammered and
hesitated when I asked if I was not forgotten. Forgotten! I shall live in
people’s memories for years—on the principle that ‘the evil which
men do lives after them.’”
 “I am sorry I told you——” she began eagerly.
“And I have chiefly myself to blame. I was an idiot to trust Waring. I
had had one lesson; but—I was half mad with my own troubles, and
determined to tear myself away from Shirani at once. I felt that if I
stayed on I might yield to temptation—good resolutions and fresh
impressions might fade—and I might never return here——”
The pup, flouted and evaded by the scornful lumgoors, and
exhausted by his tremendous efforts, now squatted on the path,
apparently listening open-mouthed to every word.
The grey pony had also drawn near, and occasionally rubbed his
handsome head against his master’s shoulder, as much as to say
—“Enough of such fooling; let us move on!”
“This is horrible!” continued Mark. “I hate to owe a penny, and I
have no means of paying our joint-debts, for Waring has wolfed the
cheque.”
“And your uncle?”
“He has never written once. From his point of view I have treated
him atrociously, and I am awfully sorry he should think so, for I am
very fond of him. Of course he has done with me.” And, with a grim
smile, “I am now in sober truth—a real poor relation. I am a pretty
sort of fellow,” he went on, “I have talked of nothing but myself—and
money—money—money, for the last five minutes. Tell me of
yourself. Are you having a good time?”
“A good time!” she echoed, with a flash of her dark grey eyes.
“I beg your pardon, Honor,” he said, humbly. “But it has been one
of my few consolations when I roam about these hills, to think that
you were happier than I am.”
“And had forgotten you?” she added expressively.
“And,” with a slight tremor in his voice—“had forgotten me.”
“Never!” she returned, with passionate energy.
“Yes—you will, in time; perhaps not for two or three years—for you
are not like other girls. I am your first lover—nothing can deprive me
of that memory.”
“No, nothing,” she admitted, almost in a whisper.
“But, you know, they say a woman generally marries her second
love,” with a laborious effort to speak steadily.
“How calmly you can discuss my lovers, and my future!” cried
Honor, indignantly. “Oh, how hard you have become—how cold—
how cruel!”
“Cruel—if I am cruel—only to be kind,” he replied steadily. “For,
years to come, you will thank me—and think——”
“I think,” she interrupted, with a pitiful little gesture, “that when we
meet so—seldom—scarcely ever—that you might be——” here her
voice totally failed her.
She had grown much paler, and her breath came quickly, as she
tried to keep down a sob.
Mark resisted a wild impulse to take her in his arms—and
stooping, picked up the pup instead.
“Your uncle got my letter?” he asked, in a cool formal tone.
“Yes, and was dreadfully concerned; but he said you were a man
of honour, and your views and his were identical—but—I don’t agree
with them.”
“You don’t agree with them! What do you mean?”
“He told auntie, of course—and of course I insisted on her telling
me. After all, it was my affair. I know the obstacle—I am ready to be
your wife, just the same. As for poverty——”
“Poverty,” he interrupted quickly, “is not the question! I have a little
money of my own, and I could put my shoulder to the wheel and
work for you, Honor. It is not that—it is that my future is
overshadowed, my reason stalked, by an hereditary and implacable
enemy. I have no right to drag another into the pit—and, please God,
I never will! When I lived a smooth luxurious sort of life, in those days
that seem years ago, I thirsted for some difficult task, something to
do that would single me out and set me apart from other men. My
task has been allotted to me; it is not what I desired——”
“No!” interposed Honor, whose heart was fighting against her fate
with a frenzy of despair. “Your task is to renounce everything—the
world, and friends, and wealth, and me—and to bury yourself in
these remote hills, with a crazy old gentleman who cannot realize the
sacrifice. Don’t!” with an impatient gesture of her hand, “I know that I
am speaking as if I were mad, and in my old foolish way. I know in
my heart that you are doing what is right—that you could not do
otherwise, and I—I am proud of you.”
Then, as she looked into his haggard, altered face and miserable
eyes, and caught a glimpse of the real Mark beneath his armour of
stoicism—“But, oh, it is hard—it is hard——” she added, as she
covered her face with her hands and wept.
“Honor! for God’s sake don’t—don’t—I implore you! I cannot bear
this. I would go through all I have struggled with over again to save
you one tear. Circumstances—destiny—or whatever they call it—is
too strong for us. You must not let me spoil your life. You know I shall
love you—you only as long as I draw breath.”
“I know that!” raising her wet eyes to his. “And you dare to talk to
me of a good time, of marrying my second love! Oh, Mark, Mark!
how could you?”
“I was a brute to say it. I thought it would make it easier for you—
when——” and his voice broke—“sometimes—when—you think of
me——”
“Which will be every day—and often. And now I must be going. I
was already late enough when Tommy ran away. I was afraid of his
meeting poor Ben’s fate. Will you come with me as far as the brow of
the hill, where our paths part?”
“Yes—part for ever!” he added to himself.
As they turned, she asked him many questions concerning his life,
his associates, and his occupations. He on his side made the best of
everything, painting the Yellow Bungalow, the gardens, the planters
and missionaries with gorgeous colours.
 “And are there no white women near you?” she inquired. “Have
you never met one lady to speak to since you left Shirani?”
“Yes, I have one acquaintance, and one who is a friend of yours.
She is a Persian, I believe. Your little cornelian ring has been a
strong link between us. She is a most mysterious person. No one
can tell who she is, or where she came from. All we know is, that she
spends her present time in doing good, nursing the sick and dying.
She told me that you knew the history of her life—you alone——”
“It is true,” bending her head as she spoke, and fixing her eyes on
the ground.
“She shrinks from all observation, but she does not hide from me
—for your sake; we talk about you constantly, I may say always.”
“Then give her a message from me, please. Tell her that I often
think of her, and ask her if I may write to her, or if she will write to
me?”
“You forget that she is a Persian. How can she possibly write to
you?”
Honor coloured painfully, and twisted her ring round and round
before she spoke, and then she said—
“Please give her the message all the same. I—I—can manage to
get her letter read. I will understand it.”
They were now at the point where their roads diverged—his went
along the hill, hers led down into the valley. She stopped for a
moment, and caressed the grey pony’s sleek hard neck; then she
turned and gave the pony’s master both her hands. They gazed at
one another, with sad white faces, reading their life’s tragedy in each
other’s eyes. Then she suddenly tore her fingers from his clasp, and
ran down the hill with Tommy in pursuit. Jervis stood where she had
left him, until the very last echo of her footsteps had died away.
“And that is a sound I shall never hear again,” he groaned aloud,
and flinging himself down on the root of a tree, he covered his face
with his hands. How long he remained in this attitude the grey pony
alone knew! By-and-by he became tired of waiting—for he was either
too well fed or too sympathetic to graze—he came and rubbed his
soft black muzzle against the man’s short brown locks (his cap lay
on the ground). It was his poor little attempt at consolation, and
effectually roused his owner, though it did not comfort him, for what
could a dumb animal know of the great distresses of the human
heart?

Honor was late for tiffin, in fact it was getting on for afternoon
teatime when she arrived. She discovered the bungalow in a state of
unusual commotion. There was visible excitement on the servants’
faces, an air of extra importance (were that possible) in the bearer’s
barefooted strut—he now appeared to walk almost entirely on his
heels.
Mrs. Brande was seated at a writing-table, beginning and tearing
up dozens of notes; her cap was askew, her fair hair was ruffled, and
her face deeply flushed. What could have happened?
“Oh, Honor, my child, I thought you were never coming back, I
have been longing for you,” rushing at her. “But how white you look,
dearie; you have walked too far. Are you ill?”
“No, no, auntie. What is it? There is something in the air. What has
happened?”
For sole answer, Mrs. Brande cast her unexpected weight upon
her niece’s frail shoulder, and burst into loud hysterical tears.
“Only think, dear girl!”—convulsive sobs—“a coolie has just come
—and brought a letter from P.—They have made him a K.C.B.”—
boisterous sobs—“and your poor old auntie—is—a lady at last!”
 CHAPTER XLIII.
“RAFFLE IT!”

“Major and Mrs. Granby Langrishe request the honour of Mr. and
Mrs. Blanks’s company at St. John’s church at two o’clock on the
afternoon of the 20th inst., to be present at the marriage of their
niece and Sir Gloster Sandilands.”
These invitation cards, richly embossed in silver, were to be seen
in almost every abode in Shirani. The wedding dress was on its way
from Madame Phelps, in Calcutta. The cake and champagne were
actually in the house. There were to be no bridesmaids, only two
little pages—“they were cheaper,” Mrs. Langrishe said to herself; “a
set of girls would be expecting jewellery and bouquets.” Happy Mrs.
Langrishe, who had been overwhelmed with letters and telegrams of
congratulations. She had indeed proved herself to be the clever
woman of the family. It was her triumph—more than Lalla’s—and she
was radiant with pride and satisfaction. Yea, her self-congratulations
were fervent. She was counting the days until her atrocious little
incubus went down the ghaut as Lady Sandilands. A little incubus,
securely fastened on another person’s shoulders—for life!
Lalla was entirely occupied with letters, trousseau, and
preparations. She was to have taken the principal part in a grand
burlesque, written specially for her, by Toby Joy. The burlesque had
been on hand for two months, and was to bring the Shirani season to
a fitting and appropriate close. The piece was called “Sinbad the
Sailor.” Lalla had been rehearsing her songs and dances most
industriously, until she had been called upon to play another part—
the part of Sir Gloster’s fiancée.
Sir Gloster did not care for burlesques; he had never seen Miss
Paske in her true element—never seen her dance. It was not
befitting her future position that she should appear on the boards.
No, no; he assured her that he was somewhat old-fashioned, his
mother would not like it. She must promise him to relinquish the idea,
and never to perform in public again. But Lalla was stubborn; she
would not yield altogether. Urged by Toby Joy, by the theatrical
troupe—who felt that they could not pull through without their own
bright particular star—she held out in a most unreasonable and
astonishing manner. At length she submitted so far as to declare that
“she would wear Turkish trousers, if he liked!” This she reluctantly
announced, as if making an enormous concession.
“He certainly did not wish her to wear Turkish trousers!” he
returned, greatly scandalized. “How could she make such a terrible
suggestion?” He was heavy and inert, but he could oppose a dead,
leaden weight of resistance to any scheme which he disliked. This
he called “manly determination;” but Lalla had another name for it
—“pig-headed obstinacy!” However, she coaxed, promised, flattered,
wept, and worked upon her infatuated lover so successfully, that he
reluctantly permitted her to take a very small part, so as not to have
her name removed from the bills; but this was to be positively “Her
last appearance,” and she might announce it on the placards, if she
so pleased. He himself was summoned to Allahabad on urgent
business—in fact, to arrange about settlements—and he would not
be present, he feared; but he would do his best to return by the end
of the week.
Miss Paske’s part, the dancing, singing peri, was given to a very
inferior performer—who was the stage manager’s despair, and a
most hopeless stick. Toby Joy, who was in woefully low spirits
respecting the certain failure of the burlesque, and—other matters—
came to Lalla on the night but one before the play.
“She has got influenza—so it’s all up,” making a feint of tearing his
hair, “and every place in the house sold for two nights, and—an
awful bill for dresses and properties. What is to become of me? Can’t
you take it? It was your own part—you do it splendidly—no
professional could beat you. Come, Lalla!”
“I promised I would not dance,” she answered with a solemn face.
 “Time enough to tie yourself up with promises after you are
married! Take your fling now—you have only ten days—you’ll never
dance again.”
“No, never,” she groaned.
“He is away, too,” urged this wicked youth; “he is not coming up till
Saturday; he won’t know, till all is over, and then he will be as proud
as a peacock. You have your dresses, you had everything ready until
he came and spoilt the whole ‘box of tricks.’” And Toby looked
unutterable things. “Did he say anything to your aunt?” he asked.
“No—not a word. You don’t suppose that I allow her to mix herself
up in my affairs? It was merely between him and me——”
“Well, you can easily smooth him down—and if you don’t take your
own original part, I must send round a peon this afternoon, to say
that the burlesque has been put off, owing to the illness of the prima-
donna—the ‘incapability’ is the proper word. But you are a brick, and
you won’t let it come to that; you will never leave us in a hole.”
A little dancing devil in each eye eagerly assured him that she
would not fail them! Yes, the combined entreaties of her own set—
their compliments and flattery—her own hungry craving for what
Toby called “one last fling,” carried the point. He would not be back
until Saturday. The piece was for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday,
and she could (as she believed) easily talk him over. Yes, she made
up her mind that she would play the peri; and she informed her aunt,
with her most off-hand air, “that she had been prevailed on to take
the principal part; that Miss Lane was ill (and any way would have
been a dead failure); that she could not be so shamefully selfish as
to disappoint every one; that the proceeds were for a charity (after
the bills were paid there would not be much margin)”, and Mrs.
Langrishe, in sublime ignorance of Lalla’s promise, acquiesced as
usual. She now subscribed to all her niece’s suggestions with
surprising amiability, assuring herself that the days of her
deliverance from “a girl in a thousand” were close at hand!
The burlesque of Sinbad was beautifully staged, capitally acted,
and a complete success. Miss Paske’s dancing and singing were
pronounced to be worthy of a London theatre—if not of a music-hall.
People discussed her wherever they met, and all the men hastened,
as it were in a body, to book places for the next performance.
The ladies were not altogether so enthusiastic; indeed, some of
them were heard to wonder how Sir Gloster would have liked it?
Sir Gloster, on the wings of love, was already half way through his
return journey. He had transacted his business with unexpected
promptitude, and was breakfasting at a certain dâk bungalow,
encompassed with many parcels and boxes. Here he was joined by
two subalterns, who were hurrying in the opposite direction—that is,
from Shirani to the plains. They were full of the last evening’s
entertainment, and could talk of nothing but the burlesque.
“It was quite A1,” they assured their fellow-traveller. “It could not
be beaten in London—no, not even at the Empire. Miss Paske was
simply ripping!”
“Yes,” returned Sir Gloster, complacently, “I believe there is a good
deal of nice feeling in her acting, but she had only a minor part.”
“Bless your simple, innocent heart!” exclaimed the other, “she was
the principal figure; she was the whole show; she filled the bill.”
“May I ask what you mean?” demanded the baronet, with solemn
white dignity.
“She was the peri—didn’t you know? She dances every bit as well
as Lottie Collins or Sylvia Grey, doesn’t she, Capel?” appealing
eagerly to his comrade.
“Yes; and I’d have gone to see her again to-night, only for this
beastly court-martial. I gave my ticket over to Manders, for he
couldn’t get a place. She draws like a chimney on fire; there is no
squeezing in at the door—even window-sills were at a premium. You
ought to go on, Sir Gloster; of course you will get a seat,” with a
significant laugh. “This is the last performance, and, upon my word,
you should not miss it.”
Sir Gloster remained mute. Was it possible that his little Lalla, who
wrote him such sweet, endearing notes, had deliberately broken her
word, and defied him?
At the very thought of such a crime his white flabby face grew
rigid. Seeing was believing. He would take this crack-brained young
man’s advice, and hurry on. He might manage to be in Shirani by
eight o’clock that evening—just in time to dress and get to the play.
His wrath was hot within him—and the anger of a quiet and
lethargic person, when once roused, is a very deadly thing. His
sturdy hill ponies bore the first brunt of his indignation; and Sir
Gloster, who was naturally a timid horseman, for once threw fear to
the winds, and galloped as recklessly as Toby Joy himself. He
arrived at the club just in time to swallow a few mouthfuls, change
his clothes, and set off to the theatre. He could not get a seat, but
“he might, if he liked, stand near the door, with his back to the wall,”
and for this handsome privilege he paid four rupees—the best-laid-
out money he ever invested, as he subsequently declared. The
curtain had already risen; the scene looked marvellously like
fairyland. Toby Joy had just concluded a capital topical song, when a
large egg was carefully rolled upon the stage. The egg-shell opened
without the application of a spoon, and hatched out a most exquisite
creature, the peri, whose appearance was the signal for a thunder of
hand-clapping. The peri—yes—was Lalla, in very short, fleecy
petticoats, with a twinkling star in her hair—his own present, as Sir
Gloster noted with an additional spasm of indignation.
Presently she began to dance.
Now, be it known, that her performance was perfectly decorous
and delightfully graceful. Lalla’s glancing feet scarcely touched the
ground, and she danced as if from pure happiness and lightness of
heart. (Toby Joy danced as if he had le diable au corps.) After
entrancing the spectators for ten thrilling minutes with several
entirely fresh variations, Lalla finished up with the tee-to-tum spin,
which is to the dancer what the high note, at the end of a song, is to
the singer!
The result of this effort was a hurricane of frantic applause, in
which Sir Gloster took no part; he was not a theatre-goer—he was
provincial. His mother and his surroundings were strictly evangelical;
and whilst his fiancée enchanted the whole station, he stood against
the wall glowering and pale. The only character present to his mind
was the daughter of Herodias! Frankly speaking, the performance
had filled him with horror. That the future Lady Sandilands should
offer herself thus to public contemplation; that any one who chose to
pay four rupees might see this indecorous exhibition—including
soldiers in uniform, at the low price of four annas!
He was actually beside himself with fury, and forced his way out,
with his head down, like a charging animal. Few noticed him or his
hasty exit; every one had eyes for Lalla, and Lalla only. She received
an ovation and a shower of bouquets as she was conducted before
the curtain by Toby Joy, modestly curtseying and kissing her hand.
Miss Paske subsequently remained to enjoy a merry and recherché
supper, chaperoned by the invaluable Mrs. Dashwood; and Mrs.
Langrishe, as was not an unusual occurrence, went home alone.
To that lady’s great amazement, she discovered Sir Gloster
awaiting her in the drawing-room, and she gathered from his strange
and agitated appearance that something terrible had occurred.
“I was thinking of writing to you, Mrs. Langrishe,” he began in a
curiously formal voice, “but I changed my mind, and came to see you
instead. All is over between your niece and myself.”
Mrs. Langrishe turned perfectly livid, and dropped into the nearest
chair.
“Pray, explain!” she faltered at last.
“Miss Paske will doubtless explain to you why she gave me a
solemn promise to renounce dancing on a public stage. I reluctantly
allowed her to appear for the last time in a very small part—that of
an old nurse. I return unexpectedly, and discover her in the character
of a ballet-girl, exhibiting herself—well, I must say it—half naked to
the whole of Shirani. Such a person is not fit to be my wife. She has
broken her word. She has a depraved taste; she has no modesty.”
That Ida Langrishe should live to hear such epithets applied to her
own flesh and blood!