Inter-National Imag(ining): Canada's Military in Afghanistan

Abstract

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.