Book Cover

To succeed in the world, we need to know who we are and what we want; to understand the world and where it is going; to believe in ourselves and invest in our ideas; and, then, to seize the emerging day.

# Review

Heinbecker is a career diplomat, so I was interested to read what he has to say for Canadian foreign policy. Not surprisingly, he concludes that Canada is punching below its weight in the foreign policy arena and that Canada should look to the different golden ages of Canadian foreign policy for inspiration on how to behave.

Heinbecker first outlines the various Canadian foreign policy successes, such as Mulroney's central role in the creation of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and Martin's push for the G20. Heinbecker then outlines the two key lessons to be learned from history: improving Canada-US relations helps advance Canadian interests abroad in forums such as the UN and the G20 and exercising independence on foreign policy issues core to Canadian values, such as human rights and environmental concerns, is worth the price.

The writting is very colloquial and Heinbecker brings a great deal of expertise and insight from his experiences representing Canada abroad. It's a very informative read which proposes a very optimistic outlook on Canada's future in international relations (which , at the time of writting this review, has not yet been realized).

# Conclusion

This book is very informative and will appeal to disciples of Pearsonian liberal internationalism.

# Overall rating: 7.5

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