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Throughout the Second World War, a wide range of people, including political leaders and government officials, experts and armchair internationalists, civil society groups and private citizens talked about and formulated plans to ensure national security and to promote individual well-being in the postwar world. Rebuilding the Postwar Order explains how civil society and governments of the wartime allies conceived of peace and traces the international negotiations and conferences that later resulted in the United Nations system. It adopts a multilateral approach, connects wartime ideas to earlier peacemaking efforts, and reveals support for, as well as resistance and alternatives to, the emerging postwar order. In chapters on the United Nations, UNRRA, the IMF, World Bank and GATT, the FAO and WHO, UNESCO, and human rights, McKenzie explores the tensions between national sovereignty and international responsibility, national security and individual well-being, principles and compromises, morality and power, privilege and justice, all of which influenced the UN system

After the Second World War, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) promoted trade liberalization to help make the world prosperous and peaceful. Francine McKenzie uses case studies of the Cold War, the creation of the EEC and other regional trade agreements, development, and agriculture, to show that trade is a primary goal of foreign policy, a dominant (and divisive) aspect of international relations, and a vital component of global order. She unpacks the many ways in which trade was politicised, and the layers of meaning associated with trade; trade policies, as well as disputes about trade, communicated ideas, hopes and fears that were linked to larger questions of identity, sovereignty, and status. This study reveals how the economic and political dimensions of foreign policy and international engagement intersected, showing that trade was not only instrumentalised in the service of particular policies or relations but that it was also an essential aspect of international relations.

In October 2013, Canada and the EU announced the conclusion, in principle, of a comprehensive economic trade agreement (CETA). Canada's prime minister described the agreement as historic, "the biggest deal our country has ever made," and assured Canadians there would be major economic benefits. Not all Canadians share the prime minister's confidence. Concerns about job loss, affordable health care, farm production, and national sovereignty are central to criticism of the agreement. Why has this free trade agreement, and others before it, elicited a polarized reaction, with the champions and opponents of free trade squaring off against one another? Using the history of global trade and Canadian trade policy since 1945 as a guide, this essay examines the motivations, concerns, assumptions, and meanings that animate debates over free trade in Canada. Faith and fear are central to the way people understand and respond to free trade. This essay also explains how domestic and international factors and interests have shaped free trade since 1945, and how it blends economic, political, and geopolitical considerations.

Forty years ago, political scientist Denis Stairs published The Diplomacy of Constraint, an account of Canadian involvement in the Korean War. Stairs explored the attempts of Canadian politicians, diplomats, and bureaucrats to constrain US intervention in Korea and, more generally, to influence the conduct of its foreign policy in the pressurized context of the early Cold War. Since then, historians and political scientists have continued to publish accounts of Canadian involvement in the Korean War and books on Canada–US relations in general. Why, then, should someone read The Diplomacy of Constraint today when there are more recent analyses? This review essay attempts to explain the longevity and usefulness of Stairs' study. What have scholars learned from Stairs' interpretation and approach? Has he influenced subsequent academic analyses? Can his study be considered a model of interdisciplinary scholarship? Finally, is new scholarship intrinsically better than old?

Historical accounts of the Cold War usually relegate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to footnotes, if they acknowledge the GATT at all. This article examines the impact of the Cold War on the institutional development of GATT, showing how geopolitical considerations influenced decisions about whether to grant membership in GATT to Communist and non-aligned countries. The accession debates in GATT also reveal the multicentered dynamic of the Western alliance, exposing a variety of views about whether the Cold War was a battle to be waged or a condition of global international relations to be accepted. But if the GATT could not evade the Cold War, its secretariat also manipulated Cold War circumstances, beliefs, and priorities to strengthen the institution. The result of the GATT accession debates was to reposition the GATT as a forum and instrument of the Western alliance, rather than the universal organization it was supposed to be, and to impart new meaning to the process of liberalizing world trade.

Historical accounts of the Cold War usually relegate the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to footnotes, if they acknowledge the GATT at all. This article examines the impact of the Cold War on the institutional development of GATT, showing how geopolitical considerations influenced decisions about whether to grant membership in GATT to Communist and non-aligned countries. The accession debates in GATT also reveal the multicentered dynamic of the Western alliance, exposing a variety of views about whether the Cold War was a battle to be waged or a condition of global international relations to be accepted. But if the GATT could not evade the Cold War, its secretariat also manipulated Cold War circumstances, beliefs, and priorities to strengthen the institution. The result of the GATT accession debates was to reposition the GATT as a forum and instrument of the Western alliance, rather than the universal organization it was supposed to be, and to impart new meaning to the process of liberalizing world trade. Adapted from the source document.