Foreign Affairs

John Ralston Saul
Culture and Foreign Policy
Republished with permission

a) Role of Culture

Foreign Affairs has been re-examining the role of culture in its departmental mandate with the help of The Honourable Serge Joyal. The underlying assumption in this re-examination seems to have been that culture is currently treated as a marginal sideline of foreign policy when it ought to be recognized as having a central role in its own right.

Mr. Joyal's preliminary comments indicate he will be recommending that culture be identified as one of the three fundamental missions of Canadian foreign policy. He also seems to be moving towards models such as the British Council and to the grouping of Canadian cultural services in a handful of concentrated centres spread strategically around the world.

These three ideas - the fundamental mission, the beefed-up and reorganized Arts Promotion Branch and the concentrated cultural centres could well be positive steps in the right direction.

At the same time, their success would depend on a number of factors:

With a cultural affairs budget sinking down towards $4 million, there simply aren't the sums necessary to carry out a fundamental mission. It is therefore essential not to enter into a process in which a recognition of importance is rendered illusionary by fiscal structures. Culture is a fundamental of foreign policy. Budgets must therefore be altered to recognize that reality.
The senior position in such a directorate would have to be at the ADM level.
The British Council or Goethe Institute or the directorate model would help to focus attention inside and outside the department on the role of culture. However the small quantity of centres and of cultural attache posts means that it could sink into the status of an isolated ghetto. Arts promotion is not now a mainstream career option in the department. A change of this sort should be intended to make it mainstream. To carry out a cultural foreign policy the involvement of the rest of the department is essential. I will deal with this in the section on Foreign Service Officers (see 6b).
The idea of gathering services might prove to be a way of combining forces. But it could also sink into Imle more than a way of bureaucratically justifying the cost of cultural centres while deflecting the centres from an aggressive role.

I make this last point because we mustn't forget the contradiction between the diplomatic approach and that of culture. Culture depends on creativity and salesmanship. Bureaucratic hierarchies play no useful role.

Foreign Affairs, quite naturally, values discretion, often secrecy. It is justifiably hierarchical, but over the last few decades has become, not so justifiably, increasingly hierarchical and administrative. It's justifiable nervousness about diplomatic error can make it unjustifiably favourable to what might be called "representational, culture; an approach which doesn't work. It is interested in reporting lines These are irrelevant and damaging to cultural affairs. Culture is not about administrative control. That isn't what makes culture saleable or popular or art.

I mention these elements not as a criticism but in order to be realistic about the attitudinal changes necessary if culture is to be treated as a fundamental mission.

A few small examples of situations which need to be dealt with are:

Cultural attache travel-entertainment budgets are so low that they can't possibly carry out their missions of selling culture by getting out of their offices to develop long-term relationships with festivals, theatre companies, museums, etc.
Cultural officers need to be in constant direct contact with the cultural community in Canada in order to know who is who, how it works, what is happening.

This means the expense of regular communications, but also of travelling to Canada regularly.

One departmental change I will deal with in the next two sections is that careers be restructured so that cultural officers divide their time between foreign posts, Ottawa and being placed in the cultural community in Canada.

Cultural officers do not meet on a regional basis. In Europe this makes no sense. All cultural officers in Europe should gather at least twice a year in one of their embassies to discuss programs, policy, and to develop regional strategies.

Ottawa is not necessarily the right place to originate strategies.

Cultural officers do not meet on any regular basis in Ottawa with each other or with the cultural community.

Cultural policies are particularly complex. They cannot work without a high intensity of group effort.

Finally the current system revolves around the classic Foreign Affair's posting system. Almost every departure and arrival turns into a fresh start. This simply does not reflect the local long-term building of relationships which is especially particular to the cultural world. Memory and continuity are key.

b) Foreign Service Officers Characteristics

Over the last two decades many foreign service officers at all levels have made extraordinary and often successful efforts to advance the cause of Canadian culture abroad. In doing so they have strengthened Canada's image and had a qualitative and commercial impact on culture. It cannot be said, however, that this has been part of an organized departmental or governmental strategy. It has been more personal initiative than anything else, without the expectation that they would be thanked by the structure or that their careers would be advanced.

There has been a gradual evolution over the last two decades in what External Affairs looks for in its officers. The old humanist-generalist profile was abandoned in favour of a theoretically modern technocratic-manager profile. The dispassionate systems man was to accomplish foreign policy miracles through structural expertise.

Curiously enough this approach missed the key point: modern communications make systems expertise and information-gathering rather secondary in foreign policy. What was needed were men who could develop long-term relationships around the world and act as effective salesmen. In both cases what was needed was extensive and sophisticated levels of political, social and cultural understanding and very concrete skills in, to put it bluntly, selling. The technocrat, caught up in the hierarchical, abstract power struggles of complex administrative structure rarely possesses any of these skills. They are a model dangerously out-of-date.

What makes a diplomat successful today is a practical sense of Canada's culture, society and business combined with the ability to penetrate the society (not the bureaucracy) of the country in which he/she is stationed.

Those who succeed know the local culture, go to the theatre, read the new books. In most European' cultures in particular, the elites who matter tend to read a lot of fiction and to participate in their culture.

Most of our diplomats would operate in this way, but again their own structures don't reward or encourage such an approach. What's more, the system has rewarded many who literally disparage culture as an irrelevant irritant which costs money and at best offers an entertainment possibility.

If we are to refocus our foreign policy on three fundamental missions, it must be realized that these are not three water-tight compartments. And culture penetrates all three. It is a value in itself. It is the image of a country. It is also a valuable trade good.

We must carefully rethink the values of the department so that they reflect the more cultured, practical needs of modern diplomacy and we must reward those qualities. This begins at the level of entry.

We must also think about simplifying the way in which the department functions, making it less hierarchical, less systems-oriented and more open to the society it represents abroad. As the writer Anthony Storr puts it: "Behavioural rigidity is the enemy of survival."

Given what international diplomacy now needs, the structure of FSO careers should probably be changed so that at least a quarter of every career is spent in Canada, outside of Ottawa, on loan or exchange to NGOs, provincial governments, boards of trade, corporations, etc., perhaps for periods of one to two years. Quite simply, I can think of no better way to equip them with a working, practical, evolving understanding of what their country is. But at the same time they could teach these Canadian organizations how better to succeed abroad.

In particular they should serve in the Northern half of Canada so that our foreign policy begins naturally to assume the profile of a Northern country.

c) Cultural Officers

It is difficult, almost impossible for an officer specializing in culture to do his or her job if they simply move back and forth between Ottawa and foreign postings. I would suggest that a third of their career be spent in the cultural community in Canada.

This could involve periods of 6 months or one or two years, in publishing companies, theatre companies, cultural organizations, etc. They could take part in the organization of festivals, work in provincial departments, export-oriented agencies and corporations, cultural NGOs.

This would work to the benefit of Foreign Affairs and the cultural sector.

Given that we have senior cultural officers in a limited number of countries it is important not to isolate them from the rest of the department. Many young officers will have to deal with culture in smaller posts.

Culture is among the most complex of sectors. It is based on high levels of cultural sophistication and long-term relationships combined with rapid turns of fashion. It therefore makes no sense at all to follow the classic posting patterns in which an officer may be sent to a senior position in a country the language of which he/she doesn't speak. And the culture of which he/she doesn't particularly know.

In these cases, at least the first two years will be wasted, while the language is learnt and the officer runs to catch up and tries to make contacts with people who don't have time to slow down for outsiders who can't keep up.

Cultural attaches should never be sent to a country if they have not already been posted there in a more junior position. They should never be posted unless they are linguistically and culturally fluent before going.

Given how long it takes to establish viable relationships, cultural postings should be for not less than 5 years.
Cultural officers must gather in regular regional meetings to develop strategy. Culture is specific and concrete, not administrative. Strategy needs to come from concrete experience. These co-operative meetings would also make the rotation ot officers less of a jarring experience for Canada's contacts in each country.
Canada has been very well served by many of its cultural attaches. However it must be remembered (on the assumption that this policy review is moving towards a greater emphasis on culture) that this is not a meditative or discreet area. It is among the most aggressive sectors in society.

Those who make their lives in it - the creators, producers and distributors - live lives of high risk and competition - far tougher than in most straight business sectors. It is an extremely concrete business. Cultural attaches need to be a combination of agents and producers it they are to succeed. They need to be entrepreneurial, not because all culture can or will be profitable, but because beyond the act of creation all jobs in culture are entrepreneurial. If you neither create, produce, nor sell, you are a dead-weight.

d) Cultural Centres

The difficulty in making cultural centres work has always been the same. Governments, politicians, civil servants and departments of foreign affairs quite naturally have a view of proper action abroad which is careful, muted, respectful, diplomatic in effect. There is a tendency to prefer prestige and dignity. But culture works best when it is noisy, unleashed, unexpected, often shocking or outrageous. There is little place in it for dignity or care. It is the opposite of diplomatic.

For cultural centres to succeed they must be filled with people; people who come because they hear and talk about what happens there. There must be an open, free and easy atmosphere. More than welcoming, there must be a sense in the city where they are that these centres are exploding in one way or another.

The very existence in London and Paris of a security net at the door creates an atmosphere of
exclusivity and prestige, both of which are death to culture.

The two specific free-standing cultural centres in London and Paris, and the other facilities in embassies such as Washington, must be thought of in the context of the real culture in the cities where they sit. What makes a Parisian go to a cultural event? What ever it is, we must present our culture in such a way that we meet those criteria or there is no point in having a cultural centre.

A few generic suggestions:

The two cultural centres in particular should probably have some sort of board or advisory committee. This should include leading local cultural figures interested in Canada, leading Canadian cultural figures who live in that city, a few Canadian cultural figures who have made breakthroughs in that country, and who could be brought over once a year, and a few local businessmen who are interested in Canada and culture. The current obsession with profitability might reduce this idea to a mere board ot business sponsors. This would be a mistake. Culture is only secondarily a business. What makes it culture is creativity, not finance. The latter are dependent on the former.
The cultural centres should concentrate on group events. It is rarely a good idea to organize solitary readings or even exhibitions. Events are far more likely to work if they tie in well-known local creative figures. Debates of two, three, four, around themes. Group shows comparing Canadian and local artists. (::cooperate efforts with local galleries.

These events must not be determined by an irregular schedule generated from Ottawa. Regularity is a great drawing-card in the cultural world. And each city has its own rhythm.

Above all it is important to become known for specific events; not necessarily straightforward self-interested events. Annual public conferences on themes which go beyond Canada. At one time the Cultural Centre in Paris was involved in an annual international poetry and translation gathering which caught people's attention and focused attention on one of our strengths.

Being part of a thematic festival or event taking part across a city is a good way of reaching out. Above all, cultural centres must not be prestigious fortresses. They must be an integral part of the cultural life of the city and thus draw Canadian culture into the larger civilization.

Paintings must be for sale when they are shown (see 10c).

Specifically on London and Paris:

LONDON
It was a terrible mistake in the first place to move the High Commission from Canada House, Trafalgar Square to Grosvenor Square. Canada House is a landmark building at one of the best central visible addresses in London. It is identified with Canada. It is close to government offices, is in the centre of the cultural district and is on the way to the City.

Grosvenor Square is an anonymous building on a square entirely identified with the United States. In London, Grosvenor Square is the United States - the controversial Eagle on top of their distinctive building, the statues in the square, the place of anti-American demonstrations. By moving to Grosvenor Square, Canada lost its image, its presence. It is also an ax-centric address.

Canada House continues as a cultural centre, but is about to be closed. There are some 65 years left to run in its lease. It needs renovation.

The most sensible way to deal with London would be to negotiate an elevation of Canada House (which should be possible) and move the High Commission back in. Frankly, we can't get out of Grosvenor Square a minute too soon. If some minor services don't fit into Canada House, they can go to a cheaper address. Intelligently negotiated this should not be an expensive operation.

The cultural centre and tourism could operate on the first two floors, with no security, using the north entrance. This was once a back door. It now faces the main door of the new wing of the National Gallery. The back door is now a prime address for a cultural centre. Again, it ought to be possible to negotiate the small improvements which would make this a larger more welcoming entrance.

If we are going to have cultural activities in London, to abandon a building and an address which most people would kill for would be, to put it mildly, incomprehensible.

PARIS
The Paris Cultural Centre has always been in the wrong place. It is at a prestigious Ministerial sort of address, with no foot traffic and no relevant culture nearby. A few years ago it was almost moved to the centre of Paris and of the cultural district; a very sensible plan. This was inexplicably killed.

In spite of the difficult property market in Paris it ought still to be possible to design an exchange for a better cultural address.

If it is not moved, then remarkable efforts will have to be made to draw people to it. Certainly the building has good space, but it is hard to convince the public to come into that district specifically for one exhibit or event.

On the other hand, because we have good space and because Canadians' both Francophone and Anglophone, have won French publics and because in Paris partnerships are often welcome, there is a great deal which can be done. All the same, the building is in the wrong place and it is an unnecessary effort to have to bring people out of their way.

e) Press Officers

The job of a press officer in an embassy is to ensure that Canada is 1 ) correctly represented in the local media; 2) sufficiently represented.

This job has very little to do with the diplomatic approach or method. It resembles, if anything, that of the press attache of a publisher or a film producer. Their job is to sell the image of Canada and this requires energy, sometimes aggressivity and non-conformist behaviour.

Many diplomats do this well. But the system does not encourage them. For example, I have often heard press officers say that they have missed some reference to Canada because the embassy does not subscribe to that newspaper or magazine.

This suggests that embassies do not subscribe to clipping agencies, probably in a gesture of false economy.

It also suggests that the officer has a formalized relationship to information. If embassies are too strapped to have wider-spread subscriptions (another false economy), then the press officer ought to spend an hour every day simply going through newspaper/magazine stands trying to find out what is being said and, often more to the point-, what isn't being said and should be.

In fact, press officers should be in their offices as little as possible. They ought to be out seeing the press, talking to them, explaining, cajoling, encouraging.

Let me take a very specific example of where action is needed. Newspapers, magazines, television and radio are devoted to comparative graphs. These examine everything from temperatures in different cities to daily currency conversion rates. They are constantly comparing public debt levels, education levels, industrial production, divorce, infant mortality, sexual activity and so on. The tendency in the United States is to include themselves, a few Europeans and the Japanese. The Europeans do the same.

This is not a conspiracy. Nor is it the result of Canada not being important enough to be included. In almost all of these charts, less important countries (by population, economic activity, etc.) are included. In general, we are the only member of the Group of 7 to be left out. We are left out because there is an unclear perception of why we should be included. The United States occupies the position as the North American example. in international eyes, NAFTA is the United States. (Indeed, the United States acts internationally as if that were the case.) And we are not members of the more collegial EEC.

The European, now one of the most influential international weekly newspapers, is a prime and regular devotee of this approach. A single example: in the issue of 5-11 August/94, a public debt table including 17 countries did not include Canada. Surely, with the size of our debt, we have earned a place. The question is - did a Canadian press officer get on the phone to complain or encourage?

Those not present are absent from the imagination of the reader. Every time we are left off a currency convertibility chart it has an effect on people - from bankers to tourists - who are buying and selling currency. Every time we are left off a standard of living chart or an efficiency chart it is a small blow to our industrial role.

And when journalists come to write international analysis, much of it turns on what has already been summarized in hundreds of charts.

The job of the press officer is not to sigh or to wonder why. It is to get on the phone, have lunch, argue, complain, encourage. Their job is quite simply to make people take us into consideration by ensuring that our name and characteristics are present.

A corollary to all of this is that no press officer should be sent to a country unless they are completely fluent in the local language before arriving. Otherwise, they cannot do the job they are being paid to do - which is to read, listen and, above all, to talk.

f) Long-Term Local Relationships

The most effective arm of Canadian interests abroad is the foreign student educated here who has returned home, and the foreign personality who has visited Canada.

Traditional diplomatic activity turned on the need for intermediaries in the absence of rapid communications. With that need in the past the tendency has been to concentrate on the relationship between technocrats. These administrative relationships have some uses. But they don't cause culture to flower or to be sold. They don't produce much in the way of foreign markets. And they have limited political value.

The most important contacts and friends we have in most countries are those who came to Canada to be educated or were invited in various guises.

There are apparently some 90,000 foreign students in Canada in a year. And yet our embassies keep no track of these graduates. They even keep little track of those who are sent on official visits. One example: for a dozen years or so we brought some 6 enarques a year to Canada. When recently it was thought that it might be useful to see what had become of them (enarques after ail have careers and power) it was found that no list had been kept. Another example: there are 4,500 Canadianists in the Canadian studies programs. What actual use is made of them?

The fact is that young people who come to study in Canada already belong to a minority in their own country who have some combination of brains and money. They go home and become businessmen, artists, civil servants, politicians. Most of them like Canada. Having lived here, they have some understanding of it. Most of them would be delighted to see their relationship recognized and developed. They are natural partners in all sorts of ventures.

Equally, journalists, creative people, businessmen and civil servants who have made the effort to accept an invitation and to take the time out of their schedule to come to Canada are natural allies. The point is not that they come, go home, write an article and then are dropped. The point is that their visit should be the beginning of a long relationship. But that requires an ongoing effort on .the Canadian side. And it must be said that we rarely make that effort.

Long-term memory. Long-term relationships. Long-term co-operation. These concepts do not seem to be very important in Canadian foreign policy. And yet the effort required to create these things is what produces Canada's-real friends abroad. Foreigners who know Canada can do a great deal more for us than even the finest diplomat on a 3- or 4-year posting. The diplomat's job is therefore to make sure that these opportunities are taken advantage of.

One practical act would be to appoint a junior officer in each embassy (in the medium and large embassies it would be a full-time job) to concentrate on identifying who all these natural friends are. Computers make it easy to build and maintain detailed information and to keep it growing in spite of the diplomat's revolving career postings. It is relatively easy to follow their careers, to categorize them by profession, to ensure that they are contacted regularly, and invited periodically. When any section in the embassy is seeking a contact, this system would simplify the process; as it would for Canadians seeking contacts in their areas.

g) Touring - To Send Or To Bring

There is no absolute choice to be made between sending Canadian creative people abroad and bringing foreigners to Canada.

But what is clear is that we do not put nearly enough emphasis on bringing people here. Sending people abroad works very well in precise circumstances - festivals and long-term exchange programs, for example. Sending not well-known Canadians to do a tour of readings before small groups is a proposition of doubtful use to the author or the country.

h) Bringing

On the other hand, we can never bring enough people here - journalists, festival organizers, museum and gallery directors, publishers, agents of all sorts, music promoters, political groups, senior civil servants, and on and on.

The point is that a country speaks for itself. That Canada is a Northern country, with two official cultures and languages, an astonishing undeveloped north, a large indigenous population, an unprecedented mix of races and cultural origins, isn't really comprehensible to people who come from small, centralized, fully developed, mono cultural nations. They don't understand until they've seen it. Then, in general, they are very surprised.

What's more, we have some 150 festivals in Canada. These are a focus for bringing in outsiders. The confusion which nevertheless reigns in national policy over the value of these festivals can be seen in the Harbour front festivals in Toronto. This is the most important showcase in English Canada, yet for the last decade governments have undermined it through an irresponsible approach towards funding. They have seemed indifferent to its survival, and at best would have been happy to see it broken up. One element - the Harbour front Authors Festival - is probably the most important literary festival in the world. In the international world of writing and publishing it is the event most likely to be mentioned by foreigners. it receives no funding from Foreign Affairs.

Specifically:

There is a need for the federal government to focus on these festivals; to support them in far more ways than money; to use them as focuses of Canadian culture.

There are, for example, other important literary gatherings - le rencontre québecoise internationale des ecrivains, the Vancouver Authors Festival. There is a festival in the Yukon. There are the Salons de Livres - Montreal, Quebec, Toronto (now third in importance), Saguenay, Ouatouais. There is the annual meeting of the Anglophone Booksellers Association, which must be transformed into a more public' popular event resembling the Salons de Livres.

What doesn't exist is sufficient co-ordination between these events. When we bring people we should be sending them to several events in different regions.

This is a general characteristic which should be applied as much as possible when we bring people to Canada. We must try to send them to at least two, if not three regions. Otherwise they get a very false idea of how complex Canada is.

This is particularly true of people from the three "colonial" powers. They often come with their own visions of a mono-cultural society and we must not play to that. The English should be sent to Lac St. Jean. The French to Alberta. The Americans to the North.

Nor must we fall into the trap of encouraging foreigners above all to go to our great urban centres. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver are exciting. But the world is full of exerting cities.

When the International PEN Congress was held in 1989 in Toronto and Montreal, a specific effort was made to take 16 of the leading foreign writers to Baffin Island. That is the image of Canada which remains with them because it is unique and because it is a true representation of what Canada is.

In general, when we bring people here, we should be putting less emphasis on the cities and on the south.

We must also try to be original - seek out the unexpected. For example, there is an annual Classic boat festival each year in Muskoka. These are the most beautiful pleasure boats in the world, all built in Canada early in this century. It is not an enormous festival, but it is a real expression of a Canadian phenomenon and of how a part of Canada spends its summers. Large parts of the foreign press would be enchanted (that is the appropriate word) by the event and they would discover a whole way of life about which they know nothing (the lakes and cottages).

These are small images of Canada, but they are real, unusual and attractive.

In our bringing of foreigners to festivals we should be putting our emphasis on what is new, experimental, original. I'm not suggesting that there is something wrong with more traditional approaches. It's just that we should not be obsessed by being the best at what is not proper to our experience. If we are, as so many people insist, a new vision of what a country can be, then we should be emphasizing what is new here.

None of this is of any use unless there is follow-up when visitors go home. Short-term and long-term follow-up. Repeat visits. A sense that we are building allies. This is in good part the responsibility of the local embassy (see 6f and it is rarely the case today.

i) Sending

We need to identify key festivals around the world in which we want a Canadian presence and then concentrate on developing relationships with them.

This is in good part the responsibility of the local Canadian cultural officers. They need to be aggressive and they need to be constantly at these festivals and in the offices of those who organize them.

Some cultural officers already understand this and take these actions on their own. But we need more aggressivity; more getting out onto the terrain of the local cultural producers.

In order to be able to educate and convince these festivals, the cultural officers need a wide and
constantly updated understanding of what is being created in Canada.

It must be said that the cultural budget as it currently stands scarcely allows them to leave their offices except on foot and certainly has no built-in method for educating and updating them.

Finally, it is important to repeat that most cultural events are based on long-term personal relationships. Cultural officers as currently conceived are usually therefore at a disadvantage.

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.