Why Canada Goes to War: Explaining Combat Participation in US-led Coalitions

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (3) ◽  
pp. 575-594 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Massie
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Comparative Analyses ◽  
Government Ideology ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

AbstractCanada has taken part in six wars since 1945, all of which have been conducted under US leadership. Despite such military interventionism, there have been no systematic comparative analyses of Canada's decisions to take part in US-led wars. The objective of this article is to develop and test a theoretical framework about why Canada goes to war. More specifically, it seeks to account for variations in Canada's provision of combat forces to multinational interventions led by the United States. It assesses leading theoretical explanations by examining five post–Cold War cases: the wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Libya; the war against ISIS; and the refusal to take part in the invasion of Iraq. The article concludes that Canada's willingness to go to war is shaped primarily by a desire to maintain transatlantic alliance unity and enhance Canada's alliance credibility. Threats to national security, the legitimacy of the intervention, government ideology and public opinion are not found to consistently or meaningfully shape Canadian decisions to take part in US-led wars.

Concluding Comments: Collective Identities in a Complex World

Africa ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
pp. 456-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald L. Donham
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Complex World ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Global Television ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Invasion Of Iraq

As I write, the United States and the United Kingdom have begun their invasion of Iraq. Thus, the most developed forms of violence are being brought into relationship with some of the world's most complexly layered local identitites—all on global television. The unpredictability of this situation points, I believe, to one of the more profound aspects of the post-Cold War order.

The Refugee Challenge in Post-Cold War America

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Cristina Garcia
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asylum Policy ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Cold War Era ◽  
The Cold War

This book examines refugee and asylum policy in the United States since the end of the Cold War. For over forty years, from the end of World War II to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War had provided the ideological lens through which the United States had defined who a refugee was. Cold War concerns about national security and the political, economic, and military threat of communism had shaped the contours of refugee and asylum policy. In the post-Cold War era, the war on terrorism has become the new ideological lens through which the US government interprets who is worthy of admission as a refugee but the emphasis on national security is not the sole determinant of policy. A wide range of geopolitical and domestic interests, and an equally wide range of actors, influence how the United States responds to humanitarian crises abroad, and who the nation prioritizes for admission as refugees and asylees. This book examines these actors and interests, and the challenges of reconciling international humanitarian obligations with domestic concerns for national security. The case studies in each chapter examine the challenges of the post-Cold War era, and the actions taken by governmental and non-governmental actors in response to these challenges.

scholarly journals Is It Time for the Beaver to Hop off the Eagle? A Case for Canada to Reconsider Its Geopolitical Alignment with the United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Zhou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
International System ◽  
Economic Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
International Diplomacy

Canada is known for its close relations with the United States in the domains of economic affairs, defence and international diplomacy. This arrangement, however, was a product of the great changes brought about by the Second World War. The combination of British decline, Ottawa’s desire to achieve full independence from London, and the looming Soviet threat during the Cold War created a political environment in which Canada had to become closely integrated with the United States both militarily and economically. Canada did so to ensure its survival in the international system. With the exception of a few controversial issues like US involvement in Vietnam (1955) and Iraq (2003) as well as Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD), Ottawa has been Washington’s closest ally since 1945. On numerous occasions like the Korean War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as recently as the War in Afghanistan and the War Against IS (Islamic State), Canada had provided staunch military and diplomatic support to Washington in its engagements around the globe. In an era of relative peace, stability, and certainty, particularly during the Post-Cold War period and the height of American power from 1991 to 2008, this geopolitical arrangement of continental integration had greatly benefited Canada. This era of benefits, however, is arguably drawing to a close. The Great Recession of 2007-09, the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the insistence on pursuing a foreign policy of global primacy despite its significant economic cost, are sending the US down an uncertain path. Due to its close relations and geographical proximity with the US, Canada now faces a hostile international environment that is filled with uncertainty as a result of superpower decline, great power rivalries, environmental degradation, and failed US interventions.

The Fall and Revival of Coercive Diplomacy: Security Partnerships and Sino-American Security Relations, 1972–2009

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Christensen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Security Treaty ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Security Relations ◽  
The Taiwan Strait ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines how, in the post-Cold War era, the United States' alignment with Taiwan and alliance with Japan again have figured prominently among issues affecting U.S.-China security relations. While they are far from being allies, the United States and the People's Republic of China (PRC) are not enemies either, but rather major economic partners who have also cooperated to some degree in addressing an increasing range of international problems. But there are still security tensions between the two sides over issues such as relations across the Taiwan Strait, and both nations practice coercive diplomacy toward the other, sometimes tacitly, sometimes less so. The chapter considers how the legacies of these Cold War alliances—particularly the U.S.–Taiwan relationship and the U.S.–Japan security treaty—have affected U.S.–China relations since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

1. Theories of US foreign policy

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Offensive Realism ◽  
Defensive Realism ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter examines some of the competing theories that have been advanced to explain U.S. foreign policy. In trying to explain the foreign policy of the United States, a number of competing theories have been developed by International Relations scholars. Some theories focus on the role of the international system in shaping American foreign policy while others argue that various domestic factors are the driving force. The chapter first considers some of the obstacles to constructing a theory of foreign policy before discussing some of the competing theories of American foreign policy, including defensive realism, offensive realism, liberalism, Marxism, neoclassical realism, and constructivism. The chapter proceeds by reviewing the theoretical debate over the origins of the Cold War and the debate over the most appropriate grand strategy that the United States should follow in the post-Cold War era.

The United States and the Soviet Union

2020 ◽  
pp. 138-152
Author(s):  
Matthew Kroenig
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
Otto Von Bismarck ◽  
The Cold War

Otto von Bismarck famously said that “God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.” Divine providence may not have hurt, but it was America’s domestic political institutions that transformed a smattering of British colonies in North America into, first, an independent nation and, then, a global superpower with a network of allies and partners spanning six continents. The United States faced off against the Soviet Union for a half century during the Cold War. But Washington possessed the better institutions, and the stress of the competition caused Moscow’s political system to collapse altogether. In the post–Cold War period that followed, Washington deepened and expanded the Pax Americana, and spread unprecedented levels of global peace, prosperity, and freedom. For the first time since Ancient Rome, a single superpower so overawed any potential competitors that great power rivalry itself came to a temporary halt.

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