Fen Osler Hampson and David Welch were both doctoral students of Joseph S. Nye, Jr., at Harvard University and continued to work with him until his death on May 6. Prof. Hampson is a Chancellor’s Professor at Carleton University and president of the World Refugee and Migration Council. Prof. Welch is a University Research Chair and professor of political science at the University of Waterloo.
Canada held a special place in the work of the renowned American political scientist Joseph S. Nye, Jr., who died earlier this month.
Prof. Nye’s ideas about “complex interdependence” and “soft power” resonated deeply with Canadians and our foreign-policy establishment. They also had their genesis in his careful study of Canada-U.S. relations when he was a junior professor at Harvard University, where he explained how a small power such as Canada can wield influence and negotiate successfully against a much more powerful country such as the United States by mobilizing broader social, business and intergovernmental networks.
During the mid 1990s, when Canada, under Lloyd Axworthy as foreign minister, led international efforts to negotiate the Anti-Personnel Landmines Convention, establish the International Criminal Court, negotiate the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, and promote the Responsibility to Protect (or R2P) – the UN principle emphasizing that sovereign states have primary responsibility for protecting their people from mass atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and that the international community has a responsibility to step up if they do not – Prof. Nye lauded Canada at the time as a country that was “punching above its weight class” in strengthening the liberal international order.
Prof. Nye recognized that Canada’s influence in the world depended almost entirely on soft power, or the capacity to influence others through example, attraction, trustworthiness and persuasion. By these means, and through not only diplomacy but also transnational civil society and transgovernmental coalition building, Canada was able to play an outsized role in shaping global discourse and the norms and rules of the international system.
That recognition was also underscored by Prof. Nye’s own experience as a senior official in the U.S. government. For example, when later reflecting on his work on nuclear non-proliferation as a member of president Jimmy Carter’s administration, particularly in the negotiation of the London Suppliers Agreement – a multilateral regime developed by the key exporters of nuclear technology and related output – Prof. Nye praised the deep technical expertise and knowledge Canadian officials brought to those negotiations.
Prof. Nye also stressed that a country’s soft-power assets must be used regularly and maintained like a well-oiled machine. If they are neglected or abandoned, they risk being irretrievably lost.
Before he died, Prof. Nye railed against the wanton destruction of America’s soft power capabilities by Donald Trump and his phalanx of DOGE warriors. He deplored Mr. Trump’s dismantling of USAID, his cuts to other major government agencies such as the State Department, the CIA and the Voice of America, and his broad-scale assault against America’s leading institutions of research and higher learning.
The demise of Canada’s own soft-power capabilities at the hands of both Liberal and Conservative governments in this century has been slower and less sudden and dramatic, but no less impactful in terms of this country’s standing in the world.
Our development assistance budgets have not kept pace with the many challenges that lesser-developed countries now face as the four horsemen of the apocalypse descend on the world (climate change, disease, famine and drought). Our diplomatic service is increasingly strained in how it operates and responds to new challenges and crises.
While shovelling out millions of dollars to foreign – and in many cases, U.S.-based – NGOs and multilateral agencies, successive governments have failed to make corresponding investments in Canadian NGOs and think tanks, which should play a key role in projecting Canada’s values and influence abroad. Many are chronically underfunded or altogether starved of support. Some have been forced to close, such as the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, once the premier peacekeeping training organization in the world. Though we were once a key player in back-channel international security dialogues, particularly in Northeast and Southeast Asia, Canada came to be perceived as unreliable and only sporadically attentive.
Successive minority governments in this century have meant that politicians have focused on domestic priorities. Consequently, there has been little political investment, innovation, or imagination in how we conduct foreign policy because it is rarely a vote-getter. There is also now a real danger that our deteriorating relationship with the United States, because of Mr. Trump’s tariff assault, will be all consuming to both leaders and officials.
The Carney government’s commitment to undertake a foreign-policy review is promising, if long overdue. But it would do well to keep Prof. Nye’s insights about soft power front of mind. It will have to be especially attentive to buttressing Canada’s diplomatic corps while investing in the government’s key soft-power partners – Canadian non-governmental organizations and Canadian think tanks – which, in a world of complex interdependence, are critical to projecting and amplifying our national values and interests on the world stage, while preserving the institutions of the liberal international order that are under assault from all directions.
Soft power is not a luxury for a country such as Canada. Its revitalization is critical to our survival in a turbulent world.