Hampson: Is Conservative foreign policy different from Liberal foreign policy?”

By:
Fen Osler Hampson
/
5 September, 2011
By: Fen Osler Hampson
Director of the Global Security program and Distinguished Fellow at CIGI and Chancellor's Professor at Carleton University

The short answer is that the Liberals under Chretien-Axworthy promoted the Soft Power foreign policy brand with their human security agenda. Under Harper, the Conservatives have been champions of Hard Power with our mission in Afghanistan and our more recent role in Libya. It is time now to have a Smart Power foreign policy, which makes good use of both Hard and Soft Power and which recognizes they are but two sides of the same coin.

Before you click away, we’d like to ask you for a favour … 

Journalism in Canada has suffered a devastating decline over the last two decades. Dozens of newspapers and outlets have shuttered. Remaining newsrooms are smaller. Nowhere is this erosion more acute than in the coverage of foreign policy and international news. It’s expensive, and Canadians, oceans away from most international upheavals, pay the outside world comparatively little attention.

At Open Canada, we believe this must change. If anything, the pandemic has taught us we can’t afford to ignore the changing world. What’s more, we believe, most Canadians don’t want to. Many of us, after all, come from somewhere else and have connections that reach around the world.

Our mission is to build a conversation that involves everyone — not just politicians, academics and policy makers. We need your help to do so. Your support helps us find stories and pay writers to tell them. It helps us grow that conversation. It helps us encourage more Canadians to play an active role in shaping our country’s place in the world.

Become a Supporter