Welcome to the first issue of Policy magazine’s 10^th anniversary year. We chose diplomacy as the theme of our January/February 2023 issue in tribute to the decade’s worth of brilliant insight and analysis we’ve been privileged to publish from current and former diplomats. Also, at a time when challengers to democracy have consistently manifested contempt for diplomacy, we wanted to spotlight the art and public service of dialogue and negotiation as the civilized alternative to force and brutality for resolving conflict. Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bob Rae, graces our cover as the country’s permanent representative to the world’s flagship multilateral diplomacy body, and as a defender — in the face of unprecedented threats — of both the Canadian values of democracy, pluralism and human rights and the UN’s founding principles. Many thanks to all our contributors for their outstanding pieces, and for their service.

In This Issue

Retired UN ambassador Saul Rae with future UN ambassador Bob Rae, Portland, Ont., 1984.

We open the issue with a wonderful piece by United Nations Ambassador Bob Rae about his father’s path to, and life in, that same role half a century ago. “My father’s life was a strong combination of deep policy engagement and boundless mirth and humour,” writes Bob of his father, Saul Rae, in Memories of My Father: Sharing a Mission, 50 Years Apart. “Modern Canadian diplomacy has to speak with confidence, candour, humour, and honesty, and has to ensure that its acts and deeds match its words.”

Ambassador Larisa Galadza visiting children in a Kyiv bunker

As the war unleashed by Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion last February drags into a new year, Canada’s ambassador to Ukraine, Larisa Galadza, has filed a riveting piece for us from the besieged capital. “Living in Kyiv has meant experiencing many forces,” Galadza writes in Dispatch from a Wartime Ambassador, “the force of evil; the force of determination that is way beyond survival instinct; the force of an explosion, felt through the wall against my back and that I later learn has snuffed out beautiful life; and the force of nature — cold and darkness that is heavier and deeper because we are in a time of war.”

A game once popular with diplomats, writes Jeremy Kinsman

Senior Policy foreign affairs writer Jeremy Kinsman has served as ambassador to Russia, to the European Union and to Italy, and as high commissioner to the UK. “Justin Trudeau’s international image is an asset to Canadian diplomacy,” Jeremy writes in The Strengths and Weaknesses of Canada’s Diplomacy Game. “Foreign leaders welcome meeting their pleasant and reasonable colleague, who is, by instinct and interest, more substantive than Canadians know.”

Amb.  Nadia Theodore presenting her credentials to WTO DG Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala

The World Trade Organization is, after the United Nations, the multilateral posting most crucial to Canada’s interests. Nadia Theodore, who served as counsellor in Canada’s mission to the WTO headquarters in Geneva a decade ago, returned this year as ambassador. “The fact that disruptions to the ability of goods and services to flow across borders garner strong negative reaction is evidence of the fact that people understand global trade to be crucial,” the ambassador notes in our Policy Q&A, Trade Diplomacy in a Time of Flux, “whether to the success of their business, big or small, or to the prosperity of their economies and communities.”

Ambassador Kerry Buck, the first woman to represent Canada at NATO headquarters.

From 2015 to 2018, Kerry Buck served as Canada’s first woman ambassador to NATO. “As women, we need to take care not to downplay our own capabilities and to become more comfortable with power,” Buck writes in the invaluably honest Changing the Face of Security: Being a Woman Ambassador to NATO. “And we need to support each other.”

In the excellent Letter from Brussels: the Power of a United Response, Ailish Campbell, Canada’s first woman ambassador to the EU, outlines the myriad measures undertaken through a bilateral-multilateral European relationship that has, in this tumultuous year, doubled down on shared values.

Senator Peter Boehm, who served in multiple senior postings as well as Canadian Sherpa for seven G7s, is now chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade (AEFA) and overseeing the committee’s study on the state of the department of Global Affairs. Here’s our Policy Q&A with Senator Peter Boehm: ‘Is Canada’s Foreign Service Fit for Purpose’?

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on a video call with frontline mental health workers in Pakistan/UN photo-Eskinder Debebe

Of all the elements of liberal democracy that have been altered by the Fourth Industrial Revolution, diplomacy is among the most under-reported spheres of transformation. Michael Manulak of Carleton University and Duncan Snidal of Oxford University proved the perfect co-authors to fill that gap for Policy readers. Here’s How the Internet Has Changed Multilateral Diplomacy.

Diplomatic outcome: Adam Scotti’s instantly iconic shot of Michael Kovrig kissing the ground in Calgary

In September 2021, the long-anticipated release of Canadians Michael Spavor and Michel Kovrig from their retaliatory detention in China revealed the biggest Canadian diplomacy story of a young century. Mike Blanchfield and Fen Osler Hampson, who wrote the book The Two Michaels: Innocent Canadian Captives and High Stakes Espionage in the US-China Cyber War, kindly adapted and updated a chapter for our cover package. Here’s How the Free World Helped Free Two Canadians: Diplomacy and the Two Michaels.

Our regular Policy columnist and longtime CBC anchor Don Newman looks at the evolution of diplomacyfrom the shuttling of Henry Kissinger to today’s global troubleshooting — including in the case of the Two Michaels — in Diplomacy as Crisis Management.

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