Since the end of World War II Canadian governments have followed two central political agendas. While Canadians hoped that the United Nations would promote international co-operation and lead to a general state of international peace, this was not on the radar of our political leaders. South of the border, the Truman administration soon made it clear that the top political priority was the containment and overthrow of Soviet Communism and to combat Marxist ideology. Canada would become a formal ally of the USA, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand in the joint effort to maintain Anglo-American political and economic domination of the world.

Thus Canada’s leaders chose to subordinate foreign policy to the interests of the United States and the ideological war against political Communism. This included aggressive policies towards the Soviet Union and its political allies. The system of military alliances, starting with NATO and NORAD, became central to policy decisions.

This strategy was not limited to the military alliances. Canadian governments worked closely with the U.S. government and its western allies to try to construct a world economic system that was of benefit to those countries with a capitalist economy. This included US/NATO control of key international organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and then the World Trade Organization. They were also able to get the United Nations to accept as a primary goal the “free trade, free market” policy agenda .

Following the international economic crisis of the early 1980s, the governments of the advanced capitalist countries, following the agenda advanced by organizations representing big business and finance, moved to expand the policies of the free market and free trade. In Canada we know this as the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement and then the North American Free Trade Agreement. These organizations were important in the escalation of what became known as “neoliberalism.” The large corporations demanded an international economic and political system where they could produce goods and services anywhere in the world, sell these products anywhere, and repatriate their profits without government intervention.

The old order had to be removed. Based on the success of the recovery from the Great Depression, and pushed by the expansion of the popular democratic forces, governments around the world had adopted the key policy package advocated by John Maynard Keynes and accepted by liberal and social democratic governments. These inclujded state intervention in the economy and the implementation of broad social welfare policies.

The answer to the first Great Recession, with the excess capacity for industrial production and surplus capital would be to move strongly to the neoliberal model which  included the promotion of the free market, major cuts to social programs, privatization of state properties, deregulation of economies, implementing highly regressive taxation policies, and rolling back trade union rights through the liberalization of labour markets.

This would become known as The New World Order.