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
private sectors who want access to rigorous, timely, informed and inde-
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
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