Earlier this year, the term “Harper Doctrine” emerged in discussions of Canadian foreign policy, coined in a National Post article by Eugene Lang. Given the turmoil that has erupted over the effective killing of the F-35 fighter procurement, and the non-quite-Solomonic (columnist Andrew Coyne quipped that “everyone gets half a baby”) decision on the CNOOC-Nexen acquisition, it’s worth a look at what kind of doctrine could cause that kind of chaos. The answer seems to be: one that actually tries to project a Procrustean world view and make foreign policy fit into it, but at the same time appears to take every decision in isolation.
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