In search of a Canadian Middle East policy: A look at past approaches

Introduction

Anyone who has briefly studied Canadian foreign policy has likely noticed the national preoccupation with Pearsonianism. When the Liberals came to power in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared to the world that “Canada is back.” ¹ To hopeful observers, this was not merely one last swipe at his predecessor, Stephen Harper, but a promise to return to an era in which Pearsonian values prevailed. ² Trudeau specifically expressed a desire to change Canada's approach towards the Middle East. While in opposition, he demanded an inquiry into the complicity of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) in the torture of Afghan detainees and committed to restoring diplomatic relations with Iran and ending the combat mission in Iraq in favor of peacekeeping. Once in power, his choice for foreign ministers was Stéphane Dion, a veteran Liberal whose appointment seemed to confirm an impending new approach. ³ Yet, Trudeau has not dramatically changed Canada's approach to the region. Rather than end the combat role in Iraq, the Liberals extended the CAF mission. ⁴ Under pressure from the US to take on more responsibility for defense, the government also committed to a 73 percent increase in defense expenditure as peacekeeping fell to an all-time low. ⁵ Meanwhile, Canada became the second largest exporter of military weapons to the Middle East. ⁶ A controversial arms deal with Saudi Arabia signed by the Conservatives went forward, despite Trudeau signaling his intention to re-evaluate following the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. ⁷ Those who had hoped for a Pearsonian revival have been disappointed.

The disappointment is rooted in the perception that Harper's departure from a supposed Pearson doctrine, one in which Canada was a peacemaker, multilateralist, and honest broker, has been somehow detrimental. ⁸ Jeremy Wildeman writes: “By the 2010s, it was apparent that the Harper Conservative government was striving to undo Canada's Pearsonian tradition.” ⁹ It seems counterintuitive, then, that though Pearson's foreign policies are upheld as the gold standard, Harper's policies are the ones described as “realist.” ¹⁰ After all, a realist foreign policy supposes that government pursues and protects the national interest when it deals with other states. Curiously, Harper never claimed to be led by realpolitik. He took pride in being led by his “moral” compass.

The contrast between the two former Prime Ministers continues to shape public debate about Canada's foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, where both left deep marks. One contends that Canada should act as an honest broker and peace monger in the spirit of Lester B. Pearson; whereas the other holds that high-minded principles—not popularity or moral relativism—should guide dealings in the region. ¹¹ The disagreement appears to be over values and norms, not interests.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it examines the foreign policies of two former Prime Ministers who embody the debate: Pearson and Harper. ¹² Second, it challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding their policies. It demonstrates that it was Pearson who was the realist—not Harper, who was more idealist than realpolitik. ¹³ The paper does this by examining the formative event that gave birth to the notion of a Pearsonian foreign policy, the 1956 Suez Crisis. It establishes that Pearson was not motivated by a desire to play peacemaker but impelled by a hard-nosed interest to maintain the Western alliance upon which Canada's security depended. It then examines the design of Harper's engagement in the Middle East, demonstrating that his foreign policies were primarily informed by domestic considerations than security ones.

Pearson's Middle East

By the 1950s, the Middle East had become strategically valuable both in the defense of the West, as a gateway to Asia and the Mediterranean, and in the defense of oil interests throughout the region. ¹⁴ It was an area where Canada's allies—Britain, France, and the US—all had substantial but sometimes competing interests. Canada had none, nor an interest in developing a regional policy, even as public interest grew with the creation of Israel. ¹⁵ The Suez Crisis thrust Canada into the Middle East.

On 26 July 1956, in a stunning move, Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Anglo–French-owned Suez Canal Company. The British and the French were outraged at what they regarded as the final straw in a long series of Egyptian provocations, and though the two European powers usually diverged on how to handle problems in the Middle East, in this case they both supported decisive force. ¹⁶ Britain was in a steep period of decline after the Second World War and the loss of India. Its holdings in the Middle East, particularly the Suez Canal, represented the last vestiges of its power. It had also been just a little over a month since Britain had completely withdrawn from the Canal Zone, where it previously had a garrison of some eighty thousand. ¹⁷ British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, who had been responsible for the withdrawal in the hopes of mollifying Nasser, had egg on his face. ¹⁸ Eden wanted him “destroyed.” ¹⁹ Nasser's pan-Arabism had also created problems for the French, who mistakenly viewed Nasser as the principal orchestrator of the Algerian rebellion. Comparing Nasser to Hitler, the French Prime Minister urged a concerted military response. ²⁰ Eden, who remembered appeasement, needed no urging. ²¹

Eden turned to Canada and the US for support to “bring Nasser to his senses.” ²² The US, occupied by Cold War concerns over how the Soviets might respond to instability in the Middle East, particularly in the event that the British resorted to antiquated colonial tactics, counselled restraint. President Dwight Eisenhower's main priority was maintaining the blockade against Soviet expansionism. Though Nasser had already delivered two blows to containment, first when he concluded an arms deal with the Eastern Bloc and later when he recognized communist China, the Americans wanted to ensure that Egypt would have a bridge back to the West. ²³ It was crucial, they explained, to avoid “the appearance of attempting to dominate the councils of the free world.” ²⁴ Like the US, Canada understood that the implications of the wave of nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiment flooding the developing world. The crisis had seriously divided the Commonwealth: Australia and New Zealand supported Britain while all the Asian members—India, Ceylon, and Pakistan—sided with Egypt. Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was anxious to remain out of the conflict. Though he appreciated the Canal's significance to his allies, nationalization had not directly affected Canada. ²⁵ So long as the change in ownership did not interfere with operations, the view was that Nasser, who had offered full compensation to the British and French, was well within his legal rights. ²⁶ The British were not interested in hearing a legal lesson, not least from their former colony. ²⁷

Frustrated at the lack of support, the British hatched a secret military plan with the French and Israelis to overthrow Nasser. With the Americans distracted by the Soviet suppression of a rebellion in Hungary, the three set their plan in motion. ²⁸ On 29 October 1956, Israeli forces invaded Egypt and advanced within ten miles of the Canal, providing Britain and France the pretext to reoccupy the Canal. Within two days, the British and the French sent in troops to “protect” the Canal. Pearson was not taken by surprise. British foreign secretary Selwyn Lloyd had intimated a pre-emptive Israeli attack, telling Pearson that: “They’d probably win…Nasser would go, and most of our troubles would be solved for us.” ²⁹ Pearson conceded it was “ingenious” but warned of blowback. ³⁰

As St. Laurent watched the British and the French attempt to appropriate Egyptian territory, he received a belated telegram from London in which Eden presumed that Canada would fall in line behind the “necessary” intervention. St. Laurent was no Anglophile, and he resented that British stubbornness undermined Canada's national security interests. ³¹ With Pearson's help, he composed a blistering reply, noting Britain's obligations to the United Nations (UN), the “serious division” in the Commonwealth, and concerns about the “deplorable” break in the Anglo-American relationship so fundamental to the alliance. ³² Respect for international law and the UN were pillars of Canadian foreign policy, as outlined by St. Laurent in the 1947 Gray Lecture, and British actions also compromised these. ³³ Meanwhile, Eisenhower blasted Britain and France with the same force as he had the Soviet invasion of Hungary earlier that week. To distance the US from European colonialism, the Americans quickly drafted a motion in which they condemned Britain and France for the UN General Assembly, where the two European powers could not hide behind their vetoes. Canada was in a difficult position between its allies.

Pearson was immediately dispatched to New York with a free hand to do whatever he could to salvage the British position, heal the fracture in the alliance, and restore the faith of the Afro-Asian world. Abstaining on the first UN resolution, Pearson scrambled to find a compromise acceptable to the US, Britain, and France. He eventually came to consider whether a UN force separating the Egyptians and Israelis might spare the British and French further humiliation. ³⁴ Canadian readers may be surprised to learn that the idea for a UN police force was not Pearson's alone. In fact, the proposal for what became the UN Emergency Force (UNEF) was drafted by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., the US ambassador to the UN. In his memoirs, Cabot Lodge explains that he thought to hand it to Brazil's João Carlos Muniz when he, “by the merest chance bumped into Pearson.” ³⁵ (Optics prevented the US from presenting the proposal.) Though the proposal ultimately required US pressure on the British pound to succeed, it was Pearson, who had the skill, connections, and confidence of the majority of UN member, to see that it pass. ³⁶ UNEF-1 was formed, and the myth of a Canadian vocation was born.

The intervening years

Canada remained a distant observer of the Middle East even after the Suez Crisis. Trade, which accounted for merely 0.007 percent of Canada's overall exports in 1955, barely grew. Canada had participated in the partition of Mandatory Palestine and the formation of the state of Israel in 1947, however. Assembly talks over the future of Palestine were marred by discordance. The Americans and the Soviets agreed to a tripartite scheme; the British hoped only to absolve themselves of Palestine; and the Arabs refused to accept everything. Pearson, who had been chairman of the Assembly's Political Committee at the UN on the deliberations, had one takeaway: do not take sides. ⁴² This wisdom underpinned Canada's Middle East policy from 1947 onwards and was later reinforced in the 1980 Stanfield Report. ⁴³

From 1950 to 1969, Canada was the third largest donor to the UN Refugee and Works Agency (UNRWA) supporting Palestinian refugees who had been expelled and accepted them at a time when policies favored white European immigration. ⁴⁴ Even so, it avoided entanglements in the problems of a region, where it had few direct interests. This meant that it sometimes supported positions that satisfied no one. Indeed in 1965, Israel's Ambassador to Canada, Gershon Avner, bemoaned this “egregious impartiality.” ⁴⁵ By the 1990s, Canada became actively involved in the Israel-Palestinian conflict in support of a two-state solution and to support displaced Palestinians through refugee programs. It prided itself on its balanced approach, particularly as it allowed the Palestinian Liberation Organization to open a mission in Ottawa. ⁴⁶ Political issues were dealt with gingerly, however, so as not to interfere with trade, which from the 1970s on had grown. ⁴⁷

Observers and political commentators tend to idealize Canada's involvement in the Suez, and while it is true that some decision-makers accepted the role that this implied, Canada's policy choices in the region more or less reflected its alliance with the US. Sometimes, the two converged. It was the United States that asked Canada to chair the Refugee Working Group (RWG) in support of the Middle East Peace Process (MEPP) negotiations—a position that dovetailed with Canada's image as an honest broker, but ultimately Canada supported the American approach to the MEPP. ⁴⁸ Canada participated in peacekeeping enterprises in the Middle East, such as UNEF-II in Egypt, UN Disengagement Observer Force in Syria, and UN Interim Force in Lebanon, while also deploying the CAF to support the US in the 1990–1991 Gulf War, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 Iraq War, and the 2011 NATO-led mission in Libya. ⁴⁹ Perhaps, then, it is unsurprising that despite attempts to be seen as neutral, it never quite succeeded. Arab countries, starting with Nasser, viewed Canada askance. ⁵⁰ This perception led him to demand that the CAF withdraw from Egypt in 1967. ⁵¹ It was a blow to Canada's self-proclaimed impartiality. ⁵² A few years later, in 1973, the Saudis engineered an Arab oil embargo through the consortium Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries on Western countries that they regarded as pro-Israel. Canada paid a price. The oil embargo, which was responsible for a sharp economic downturn in industrialized countries, hurt eastern Canada. ⁵³ As such, the approach to the Middle East was characterized by caution. This changed under Harper.

Harper's Middle East

Under the Harper government, the Middle East no longer existed along the periphery, but rather became a theatre for acting out a “principled” foreign policy that rejected the supposed moral ambiguity of previous governments. ⁵⁴ Harper overturned decades of Canadian neutrality on Israel and Palestine in favor of an unabashed pro-Israel posture. ⁵⁵ In addition to promoting pro-Israel positions, he signed major trade deals with select Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, and enthusiastically joined military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria. These positions had several goals. First, they differentiated Harper's Conservatives from the defunct Progressive Conservatives as well as from the Liberals, who prioritized multilateralism over values—or what the Conservatives derisively called “going along to get along.” ⁵⁶ This was related to a second objective—transforming the Conservatives into a governing party. To accomplish this, Harper realized that his evangelical base would not give him a majority mandate and that the party needed broad support. For that, he endeavored to attract traditionally Liberal voters in Canada's key urban centers where certain ethnic groups, including Chinese, Korean, Hindu, Jews, Persians, and Ukrainians, were overrepresented. ⁵⁷ That meant crafting and pursuing foreign policies for calculated votes.

Harper's 2003 article to the Wall Street Journal lambasting the then-Liberal government's unwillingness to support the US invasion of Iraq portended his approach to the Middle East. ⁵⁸ Harper clashed with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who did not support the Americans in widening the war on terror, particularly when the electorate (excepting Alberta) was overwhelmingly opposed. Chrétien was careful not to incur the wrath of his southern neighbor, however. He assured President George W. Bush that Canada stood with the US, but when it came to joining the coalition, Chrétien prevaricated. It was only when the UN did not endorse the invasion of Iraq that Chrétien announced Canada would sit it out. But this public announcement was accompanied by a private commitment to “be as helpful as possible in the military margins.” ⁵⁹ Canada's actual military contribution in support of the 2003 Iraq War exceeded that of those countries that joined the so-called “coalition of the willing.” The CAF provided extensive material and military support to the Iraq War effort, as Royal Canadian Navy warships in the Strait of Hormuz offered stealth support and the Royal Canadian Air Force conducted strategic airlifts for the Iraq War. Nonetheless, the decision not to join the coalition bruised the Canada-US relationship, since what the US really wanted was moral support. Harper, who had called Chrétien's decision “gutless and juvenile,” was determined to set things right. ⁶⁰

Harper reoriented Canadian foreign and defense policy around the US-led War on Terror. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration re-emphasized national security, prioritizing counterterrorism, democratization, and the Iranian nuclear program as the foremost objectives of US policy in the Middle East. Harper took note. Whereas previous governments, cognizant of anti-American undercurrents, avoided taking positions that too closely resembled those of the US, Harper had no compunction about doing so. ⁶¹ Once in office, he accepted terrorism as the West's new great struggle. He adopted Bush's extreme script, expressing skepticism about multilateralism, calling out dictatorships, and inflating the domestic threat of radical Islam. The fear mongering worked in Canada as well as it had in the US. By 2011, a majority of Canadians worried that Canada would be a target of “jihadists” and supported the government's anti-terrorism protection measures. ⁶²

Support for Israel and opposition to Iran became the twin features of Harper's Middle East policy. ⁶³ The former was not entirely new; Canada historically has been supportive of Israel and Harper dropped the pretence. ⁶⁴ However, unlike previous governments, Harper did not care about maintaining Canada's image as a fair and equitable honest broker. He overtly supported Israel, turning his back on what had outwardly been an even-handed approach to Israel and Palestine. ⁶⁵ Under Harper, Canada abstained from taking any position damaging to Israel, defended Israel's use of force against terrorism, and cut funding to the UNRWA, citing Palestinian aggression in the 2008–2009 Gaza War. ⁶⁶ By 2015, Canada was voting against almost all UN resolutions in support of the Palestinians. His evangelical conservative base loved it, but more importantly, so did a number of domestic and American Jewish advocacy groups, who delighted in his firm stance against Iran. ⁶⁷

Hostility towards Iran was, of course, in line with the self-described principled foreign policy. Relations between Canada and Iran had been poor since the 1979 revolution, deteriorating when Ottawa facilitated the escape of six US embassy staff held captive when fanatics took over the compound in Tehran. By the 1990s, the situation seemed to be turning around. Diplomacy resumed, and Iran became one of Canada's largest trading partners in the Middle East. ⁶⁸ But it crumbled again after the 2003 killing of Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi by Iranian officials. Ottawa became one of the most vocal critics of Iran's human rights abuses but stopped short of downgrading relations with Tehran—something that Harper, then Conservative leader, called spineless. When Harper formed government in 2006, he followed the Bush administration's course on isolating Iran. Few could fault him. After all, Iran was a repressive country with an odious president, waning human rights, and ambiguous nuclear ambitions. ⁶⁹ He condemned Iran's nuclear program, its support for Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations, and its opposition to the MEPP. This culminated in a surprising decision to end diplomatic relations with Iran in 2012. ⁷⁰ As Foreign Minister John Baird put it: Canada was too principled to maintain relations with a government that ranks “among the world's worst violators of human rights…[and] shelters and materially supports terrorist groups.” ⁷¹ Harper hoped that his hard-line approach to Iran might attract voters opposed to the Islamic Republic. Within the context of electoral politics, his policies paid off in key Jewish ridings (i.e., York Centre, Thornhill) and in Persian ones (i.e., Richmond Hill). ⁷²

Harper remained committed to a hard-line approach even as the new administration of US President Barack Obama sought rapprochement with Iran, beginning with multilateral negotiations on its nuclear activities. He opposed the negotiations, which resulted in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, or Iran deal) that was supported by the US and Canada's allies, Britain, France, and Germany. ⁷³ From an arms-control perspective, JCPOA was a robust agreement with verifications in place to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons; the International Atomic Energy Agency twice confirmed Iran's compliance before the Trump administration unilaterally nullified the agreement. Yet, the JCPOA had staunch detractors who did not want to see Iran rewarded with the removal of sanctions, including some Republicans and the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The disagreement between the US and Israel over the course of the nuclear negotiations tested Harper's loyalties. For all his talk of being a good ally to the US, Harper did not seem to mind crossing Obama.

Harper claimed to favor a value-based foreign policy. In practice, the application was rather uneven. Indeed, while the government vilified Iran as “evil” for the brutal suppression of its population, sponsorship of terrorism, and counterproductive regional policies, it embraced Saudi Arabia, a country with a similarly atrocious human rights record and links to the brand of terrorism that hastened the “War on Terror.” ⁷⁴ Harper turned Saudi Arabia into a major export market even as he set up a police hotline for the reporting of domestic incidences of the sort of “barbaric cultural practices” for which the Saudi kingdom was famous. ⁷⁵

Saudi Arabia's medieval political and social structure kept previous Canadian governments from deepening relations, in contrast to Canada's ally, the US. Saudi Arabia was integral to US alliance policy in the Middle East, becoming even more important after the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled the Shah of Iran. ⁷⁶ The loss of Iran was major not only for the US. It had deep regional reverberations. Israel lost its only friend in the region. Saudi Arabia went in a more conservative direction, reversing policies that had discomforted the ultra-conservatives in the country. For the Saudis, the Shah's fall was a cautionary tale. After all, a secular king had been brought down by an Islamist movement. The Saudi royal family thus concluded that if it wanted to hang on in a traditional Muslim society, it should be more—not less—conservative, particularly after the seizure of the Grand Mosque by Wahhabi extremists in Mecca. ⁷⁷ It also assessed that just as the US had abandoned the Shah, it would not stand by them in the event of a threat to their rule. ⁷⁸ To protect the throne, King Fahd assumed the title “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques” and deepened ties with the clerical establishment. ⁷⁹ As added insurance, Saudi Arabia increased defense spending from $13.4 billion USD in 1978 to $20.72 billion USD in 1980. ⁸⁰

The Canadian arms industry was tempted by the potential of Saudi Arabia's multi-billion dollar arms market and hoped that Riyadh's status as an American partner might help facilitate military exports. Harper had not designated Saudi Arabia and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council priority markets by accident. The industry has wanted to sell the Saudis armored vehicles and other weapons since Joe Clark held office. ⁸¹ While Canada has an established history of exporting weapons, including to regimes prone to violence or with human rights abuses, prior to this being added as an export prohibition, it generally has been publicity shy. ⁸² Harper was not. When the $15 billion weapons contract for light-armored vehicles to Saudi Arabia was announced, Harper defended the sale against concerns about Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses and propensity to use armored vehicles to disperse peaceful protests. Instead, Harper boasted about the boon to the Canadian economy. ⁸³

Conclusion

With the exception of the Harper era, in which a calculated strategy with respect to the region was pursued, Canada seldom has aimed to advance any particular agenda in the Middle East. Rather, it has tended to take overt positions or actions in the Middle East only when circumstances forced it to do so (e.g., support of the Western alliance system). Though the Middle East region remains troubled by insecurity and multiple conflicts, Canada enjoys relative security, largely because of geography, but also because of decades of US security and strategic policy in the Middle East. To be sure, Canada continuously has helped to maintain US security architecture. During the Cold War, Canada supported the US's containment of the Soviets in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Pearson's intervention in the Suez Crisis illustrates Canada's interest in supporting the US side of the Cold War and preserving the Anglo-American relationship upon which the security alliance depended. Multilateralism mattered, too. In the context of the Cold War, Canada was sensitive to divisions that appeared within the UN and the Commonwealth, particularly among non-aligned states. While many have since interpreted Canada's regard for institutions during the Suez Crisis as evidence of a liberal idealist character, what worried Canada was not so much the dissolution of these organizations but what dissolution implied for the Western side of the Cold War. Indeed, Washington was deeply concerned—arguably more so than anyone in Ottawa—about how the colonialist bullying of European powers might harm the West and push developing nations towards Soviet communism. This explains why the US took such a hard line against the British, and why Canada, in turn, had little choice but break with its traditional ally by publicly siding with the US. Pearson understood what Eden did not; Britain was on the descent. Canada's national security interests would be served by its “special relationship” with the US.

Harper, too, understood the importance of a strong bilateral Canada-US relationship. He had campaigned on a promise to be a better friend to the US than his predecessor, and when elected, he brought Canada's defense and foreign policy in line with the US insofar as he deemed Islamist terror and revisionist authoritarian regimes as the biggest threats to international security and order. He embraced the “us-versus-them” binary of the Bush administration and translated it into support for democracies and opposition to select tyrannies, and showed hostility towards multilateralist organizations. These positions helped establish a clear neo-conservative brand for the Conservatives, but one that was decidedly more Republican than Democrat. ⁹³ Harper was principally affected by which party in the US was in office. He did not adapt to the U-turn in American policies brought on by the Obama administration. At a time when Washington was trying to bring Iran back into the international community, Harper curried favor with the Republican Congress that opposed rapprochement. Harper did not hide his disdain for Obama's policies in the Middle East, particularly the JPCOA. He also opposed Obama's effort to revive the peace process, siding with Netanyahu who denounced resuming negotiations from the 1967 borders as a starting point.

Harper's preference for a principled foreign policy meant that Canada ceased to be viewed as neutral. While some of his positions resonated with various domestic audiences, his approach to the Middle East rendered Canada irrelevant. His government's ideological aversion to diplomatic engagement with certain states, and the concomitant rejection of multilateralism diminished Canada's global influence—and its usefulness to its allies and partners. Recall why Pearson was selected to propose the ceasefire during the Suez Crisis and why the US wanted Canada to chair the RWG. Canada had been able to support the US precisely because it was perceived to be fair-minded. Indeed, his government had to withdraw Canada's campaign for a seat on UN Security Council when it was obvious that it would lose. Prior to this, Canada had only ever lost one bid.

Pearson was rather realist in his foreign policy. He also happened to support multilateral institutions that he realized were integral to the pursuit of a realist foreign policy. He understood that to get things accomplished, Canada would have to work with others. And he wielded “soft power” effectively. He was, however, not a Pearsonian. The memory of the Suez has shaped the discourse on Canadian policy, creating the notion of an activist foreign policy that is anti-militaristic, internationalist, and even idealist. ⁹⁴ Pearsonianism speaks to an idealistic or values-driven foreign policy. But it was Harper who pursued an ideological foreign policy. His commitment to a principled foreign policy guided by values eroded Canada's influence and power.