After winning a majority, Harper reflected, “[S]ince coming to office … the thing that’s probably struck me the most in terms of my previous expectations … is not just how important foreign affairs / foreign relations is, but in fact that it’s become almost everything.”

In both actions and words, Harper has demonstrated a concerted interest in foreign policy. The Harper government acted quickly to support the United Nations military intervention in Libya, approving Canadian-led bombing raids and expelling Libyan diplomats. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s visit to China heralded a new era in Canada-China relations, suggesting a softening of what was, until last year, Canada’s firm position on Chinese human-rights abuses. A month later, Harper became the first Canadian prime minister to visit Brazil in seven years. Harper’s praise for a country with historically cool relations with Canada – “Friends, too much grass grows in the cracks on the road between our two great countries” – spoke to the robust attitude he now brings regarding Canada’s place in the world.

From Harper’s international actions, we can deduce what the current Conservative foreign policy looks like. But what are the principles guiding it?

In recent history, a wide range of conservative thinkers – Burke, Strauss, Kissinger, and Waltz, to name a few – have influenced markedly divergent western foreign-policy agendas – Nixon, Thatcher, Major, Mulroney, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Cameron, among others. Where does Harper’s foreign policy fit into this mix?

We ask three prominent Canadian small-c conservatives to enumerate the principles they think should define small-c conservative foreign policy, and to imagine how Canada should implement these principles over the next eight years.