This dissertation examines narratives given by elite foreign policy voices during the Canadian Forces’ involvement in the 2001–2014 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission(s) in Afghanistan.
Part I introduces the topic and outlines the theoretical and methodological ap- proaches used. Part II explores three dominant narratives presented by foreign policy elites: (a) Canada was in Afghanistan to support our NATO allies and to avoid dam- aging our international reputation; (b) Canada was in Afghanistan to fight terrorism and promote security abroad to reduce the domestic threat of terrorism to Canada’s borders; and (c) Canada was in Afghanistan to assist with humanitarian projects to help Afghans. I explore these narratives in light of a long-standing identity myth about Canada’s role in international politics: Canada-as-Peacekeeper. I examine attempts by foreign policy elites to use the mission in Afghanistan to re-militarize Canadian foreign policy and shed the peacekeeper myth.
Part III demonstrates that official war discourses are a result of political negotiations and hegemonic power. Using the Support the Troops campaign, I demonstrate that critics of policy in Afghanistan were silenced using pro-military rhetoric. I argue that the control of foreign policy narratives and the de-politicization of the military as political agents have many problematic effects, most notably that military violence is often cast as an appropriate solution for global political problems. I argue that preoccupation with Canada’s place in the world (i.e. Canada’s international identity) in foreign policy scholarship has under-theorized how narratives about Canadian foreign policy distort and omit particular perspectives. Official discourse on Afghanistan was highly euphemized and politically strategic. The mythologized belief that Canada is a middle-power “helpful-fixer” obscures the actual violence that occurs within military interventions and omits the burden of trauma experienced by soldiers and foreign bodies. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/19710 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Wegner, Nicole |
| Contributors | Beier, J. Marshall, Political Science - International Relations |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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