Both of these books are concerned with defining Canada’s “national interests.” Granatstein’s Whose War Is It? holds that the country’s interests lie firmly with the U.S., while McQuaig, in Holding the Bully’s Coat, argues that Canadians would be better served if many of our foreign policy ties with the U.S. were loosened considerably or altogether severed. None of this is surprising, considering the authors’ respective reputations. And neither book offers a particularly fresh take on topics that are already discussed constantly on the opinion pages of the country’s newspapers.

McQuaig adheres faithfully to Canadian leftist orthodoxy in Holding the Bully’s Coat. Long stretches of the book pay homage to Lester Pearson, Canada’s peacekeeping role, and Lloyd Axworthy and his work on anti-landmine agreements in the 1990s. She also writes at length about Canada’s current mission in Afghanistan, which she says is a part of America’s war and marks a fundamental shift in the role of Canada’s armed forces. While these points are hard to argue with, even staunch leftists may find fault with her willingness to take the Taliban’s pre-invasion calls for negotiation at face value, especially when she neglects to mention the well-documented depravity of that regime.

She is on much firmer footing, however, when she criticizes the Bush administration’s officially sanctioned campaign of torture, illegal detentions, and extraordinary rendition, but she leaves herself open to charges of overstatement when she writes that, in the U.S., torture “is no longer a universally condemned activity like slavery, child rape, cannibalism, bestiality, incest.”

At the opposite end of the political spectrum sits J.L. Granatstein, whose deep-seated hawkishness is evident even in Whose War Is It?’s table of contents, with chapter titles like “The Harmful Idealization of Peacekeeping” and “Getting On with Washington and the Pentagon.” With the notable exception of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservative government, Granatstein sees staunch anti-Americanism everywhere in Canada, from hockey rinks to the House of Commons. He is, of course, not entirely mistaken on this point, but Granatstein’s blind devotion to American foreign policy is unpalatable to many, if not most, Canadians.

For instance, he admits that he supported Canada joining the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq back in 2003. Granatstein is wise enough now to acknowledge that the invasion has gone horribly wrong, but he still won’t give any credit to then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien for avoiding, however haphazardly, that potential disaster.

The weakest part of Granatstein’s book, however, is the writing. He opens the book with a chapter depicting a possible near future where Canada, due to decreased military spending, has been left vulnerable to both natural disasters and terrorist attacks. He concludes the book with another speculative chapter, one showing the positive outcome following the implementation of his ideas. These chapters read like a bad thriller and are a weak substitute for strong evidence. There is some unintentional humour when Granatstein, in the course of explaining the need to oust Saddam Hussein, writes: “As I sometimes tell my granddaughter, the fact that there is no monster under her bed is no guarantee that there aren’t monsters out there.” Hush little baby, don’t say a word….

Read one after the other, these two books leave one clamouring for a less binary approach to Canada’s role in the world, one in which not being with the U.S. for every one of their ill-advised and occasionally illegal actions doesn’t mean we always have to be against them.