During the nine years that the Conservatives under Brian Mulroney held power in Ottawa, Canadian foreign policy underwent a series of important departures from established policy. Some of these changes mirrored the major transformations in global politics that occurred during this period as the Berlin Wall was breached, the Cold War came to an end, and a globalized economy emerged. But some of the changes were the results of initiatives taken by the Conservative government.

The first major scholarly examination of the foreign policy of this period, this collection explores and analyzes the many departures from traditional Canadian statecraft that took place during the Mulroney Conservative era: free trade with the U.S., a continentalized energy policy, initiatives over the environment and the Arctic, the withdrawal of Canadian forces from Europe, and the transformation of peacekeeping into peacemaking.