Andrew cohen - while canada slept
1103 mots
5 pages
Andrew Cohen – While Canada slept: How we lost our place in the worldAndrew Cohen is journalist and professor. He worked for the Financial Post and for the Globe and Mail. He is now teaching journalism and international affairs at Carleton University. In his 2002 book While Canada slept: How we lost our place in the world, he describes the decline of Canada in the world and its challenges for the future. He thinks today’s Canadian international Policy is to be reviewed. Its budget shall be raised and the policies adjusted in order to affirm Canada’s traditional values and voice on the international scale.
In his book, Andrew Cohen refers to a “Golden Age for Canada’ Policy” (5). The Golden Age refers to the decades of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Yet the decline began approximately in the 1960’s with Howard Green, the head of minister of External affairs saying that “the time had come “to drop the idea that Canada’s role in world affairs was to be an honest broker”” (132). Andrew Cohen focuses on the diplomacy practised during the Golden Age that “brought Canada influence and stature” (9). He is nostalgic of the generation of the “Renaissance Men” – Hume Wrong, Norman Robertson and Lester Pearson – who represented the face of Canada’s international policy during the Golden Age Era. That Age was also characterised by a powerful army: in 1945, Canada had the fourth largest army in the world with 1.1 million soldiers. In 1951, Canada invested 6.6 per cent of its GNP in his international policy whereas today it spends only 1.1 (44).
Andrew Cohen says: “The problem begins with money and manpower” (47). We will focus our analysis, first, on the “manpower” Andrew Cohen points at; then, we will concentrate on the “money” concern. The analysis aims at answering the question: Was the “Golden Age” for Canada’s International Policy that Andrew Cohen refers to so golden and shall Canada really regret that “Golden Age”?
In his book, Andrew Cohen focuses on the type of men