Foreword

It is a pleasure to introduce this collection of essays on the foreign policy of the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney, for it is time that we examined the historical record in a dispassionate and scholarly way.I say this not merely out of partisan pride, although I am very proud of our many accomplishments, from human rights in South Africa, to taking Canada's seat at the Organization of American States for the first time, to free trade, to calling early for action in the Balkans, to the Haiti intervention.Rather, I welcome an assessment of the Conservative record because it demonstrates that the roots of much of Canada's contemporary foreign policy can be found in the changes that came about during the Tory period -particularly in the last few years of Prime Minister Mulroney's leadership, when the world was undergoing such profound changes, and new ground had to be broken with almost every decision.To paraphrase the Chinese proverb, as a government we lived in interesting times.Indeed, they were often tumultuous times.When we started in 1984, the world had not much changed over the preceding thirty years: it was frozen in a Cold War, divided between a democratic West, an undemocratic East, and a mostly undemocratic South.Security concerns were those that had existed since the late 1940s: the possibility of nuclear war over Europe, the Middle East, and Korea.In economic affairs the mindset was also traditionally nationalist and defensive, and, in some countries, overtly protectionist.The information revolution and the globalization of commerce were still on the horizon.Social or non-traditional issues like the environment and the role of women were only beginning to find their way onto the international agenda.In short, it was a world that William Lyon Mackenzie King, or even Sir Robert Borden, would have recognized.But change came rapidly.Mikhail Gorbachev launched perestroika and glasnost and set in train events that he could not have anticipated.In 1989 Berliners from East and West scrambled to meet atop a wall that for nearly thirty years had kept people apart.The Cold War ice broke up and

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