John Ralston Saul
Culture and Foreign Policy
Republished with permission

This paper does not propose an abstract grand strategy. Culture does not respond to abstract theory. It is a diverse area which responds to specific concrete actions. I have proposed a large number of possible concrete initiatives or changes.

• Culture is the image of Canada abroad. It is therefore central to foreign policy. Both political and trade initiatives are dependent on that image.
• International cultural policy is dependent on a healthy home market.
• Reform of culture's role in foreign policy only makes sense if it is accompanied by budgetary increases and changes in the career patterns, general profile and missions of diplomats.
• Culture is not an adjunct of other sectors. It is a value in itself and a valuable trade good.
• Culture is dependent on production and distribution. If these practical mechanisms are not addressed at home and abroad, the essential has been missed.
• The practical side of culture everywhere is dependent on long-term, relatively stable relationships - not on piecemeal cultural events. One of the greatest flaws in our foreign policy has been a rather piecemeal approach. Strategies must be stuck to and followed through and maintained.
• Culture is not to be shaped and controlled. It delivers the message of its people. The purpose of public policy is to ensure that delivery.
• The southern, urban impetus coming from Canada's elites misrepresents the nature of Canada. This not only encourages a false image abroad. It clouds the reality of who we are - a northern nation; the northern nation - and what we stand for.

Above all we must learn to present ourselves as the centre of a very different approach towards nationhood. This idea of centrality is not a matter of bluff. Our experience and our approach towards the problems of nationhood have been very different to that of our allies and competitors. In establishing our image in the world we must be clear and aggressive as we lay out that difference.

There is a standard late-Twentieth Century approach towards nationhood. It is centralized, monocultural and advances beneath the sails of triumphant mythology. This is the approach of most of our friends.

No doubt Canadians in general and those who represent them feel the burden of holding themselves emotionally apart in order to present a quite different vision of what a country can be. But there is nothing to be gained by dressing in other people's clothes.

We are likely to find much more support by insisting on the originality of both our experiment and our experience in this massive, co-operative, decentralized country with its strong aboriginal presence and bicultural population which has soaked up an astonishing variety of cultural influences and continues to do so. Our model resembles what may well be the nation of the next century. Rather than cede to the tired myths of 19th Century nationalism we must show ourselves for what we are. And our culture is the expression of that reality.

John Ralston Saul is an essayist and novelist. He is the author of many books, including The Doubter's Companion - A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense, Voltaire's Bastards: the Dictatorship of Reason in the West, and Paradise Eater, which won the Premio Letterario Internazionale in 1990. Mr. Saul has a Ph.D. from King's College, London.