Abstract
Jia Panpan [Canadian Hope] and Jia Yueyue [Canadian Joy], the twin cubs of Da Mao and his mate Er Shun, the two giant pandas that China loaned to Canada in 2013, turned one year old on 13 October 2016 while Justin Trudeau prepared to celebrate the anniversary of his first year in office. The prime minister had been present at the newborns’ naming ceremony, which doubled as a photo op for his project to rebrand the country and inject new life into its global engagement efforts. The image, which gave his media profile an additional boost, appeared to substantiate the Liberals’ promise of a renewed, compassionate foreign policy. For this reason, it is an apt choice for the cover of Nicholas J. Cull and Michael K. Hawes’s Canada’s Public Diplomacy, a collection of essays that interrogate claims that Canada is “back” (14) and effectively expanding its soft power influence on the world stage.
This book springs from a symposium, titled Rebooting Canadian Public Diplomacy, held in 2016 at the University of Southern California (USC) to mark both the seventieth anniversary of the Fulbright Program and the tenth anniversary of the USC Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Public Diplomacy. If the Foundation for Educational Exchange between Canada and the United States of America (i.e., Fulbright Canada) does not feature more prominently in this new addition to the Palgrave Macmillan series in Global Public Diplomacy, it is because the book itself is a testament to the constructive relationships that exchange diplomacy makes possible; eight of the eleven contributors are alumni of the program.
Public diplomacy, Hawes explains, is “the conduct of international relations by governments through public communications media and through dealings with a wide range of non-governmental entities … to influence the politics and actions of other governments” (15). It is a “portmanteau phrase” (2) for a panoply of advocacy, profile-raising, and relationship-building strategies—from educational exchange programs to government-funded exhibitions, interactive social media campaigns, and the art of gift-giving (or gift-loaning as in the case of China’s panda diplomacy)—for which payoffs are not always readily apparent.
Although Canadians’ experience with the practice dates to the 1940s and beyond—its wider acceptance coinciding with the ascendancy of liberal internationalism—the book’s ten chapters focus, for the most part, on the last twenty years, assessing the Trudeau Liberals’ key achievements and priorities against the Conservative government of Stephen Harper’s disengagement from public diplomacy. The result is a somewhat unfavourable, albeit preliminary, evaluation of recent trends combined with optimism for prospects, as evidenced by the prescriptive solutions offered by some of the contributors, such as Daryl Copeland’s seven-point plan to “relearn how to use [soft power] muscles that have been atrophying for years” (38) and Evan H. Potter’s inventory of lessons learned in Web 2.0 diplomacy.
On the one hand, Canada’s Public Diplomacy is intended as an introduction for non-Canadianists wanting to learn about the country’s soft power capabilities and those with “an existing interest in Canadian foreign policy who seek to understand its public dimensions” (2). Its selected bibliography, which was compiled with these two audiences in mind, provides a welcome overview of recent scholarship despite some notable omissions—among others, Other Diplomacies, Other Ties: Cuba and Canada in the Shadow of the US (2018) and Undiplomatic History: The New Study of Canada and the World (2019).
On the other hand, the book is meant as a contribution to debates unfolding in the wake of a twenty-month-long study by the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade on the role of culture and the arts in furthering international relations. Cull, Copeland, and co-contributor Sarah E. K. Smith were among the expert witnesses who appeared before the committee in 2017–18. Cull and Smith are also, along with Potter, among the core team members of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative, a Queen’s University-based multidisciplinary think tank that launched, in September 2020, the first of three research summits in partnership with the USC Center on Public Diplomacy and Mexico City’s Universidad Iberoamericana.
Responding to these twin objectives, Canada’s Public Diplomacy foregrounds a state-centred, policy-oriented approach. Cull’s opening chapter introduces the theoretical precepts, typology, and terminology that underlie much of the book’s argumentation. Hawes, Copeland, Andrew F. Cooper, and Stéfanie von Hlatky each dissect aspects of Trudeau’s mixed record on the public diplomacy front. The other five chapters present case studies that illustrate the limits and possibilities of broadcast and network environments (Ira Wagman and Potter, respectively); argue for a greater commitment to generative partnerships with non-state actors, be they gallery directors, curators, or artists (Smith); revisit the role of gift exchange in opening up “spaces of equivalence in asymmetrical power relations” (225) to foster meaningful people-to-people and state-to-state dialogue (Mark Kristmanson); and underline the need to develop proficiency in the realms of intercultural relations and international law when partaking in the exhibition of disputed cultural artifacts (Bernard Duhaime and Camille Labadie).
The case studies featured may help map the scope of practices that fall under the public diplomacy umbrella, but they also serve to introduce the range of actors called upon to make and project Canada’s image abroad. On this topic, Copeland offers an important reminder when he writes that the “continuing evolution away from state-centricity,” which is a function of today’s dynamic world of networked non-state actors, “requires that diplomacy become more public, inclusive, and participatory” (37). Yet Canada’s Public Diplomacy offers few insights on how best to engage the individuals, groups, and organizations that make up domestic civil society. Listening to indigenous voices and incorporating the perspectives of diaspora communities, for instance, are key to holding Canada to account as it navigates an increasingly complex diplomatic landscape amid a climate crisis bound to negatively impact human rights and democratic governance. As Cull explains, the “most credible partners in global conversations are unlikely to be nation-states, and Ottawa would do well to look to empower” such non-state actors (10). This timely book is thus also an invitation to reflect on the urgent need to take concrete steps in that direction.