International affairs writer Andrew Cohen believes Canada’s presence on the world stage has dwindled dramatically since the decade or so following the Second World War. According to what he refers to as “the three principal measures,” we are no longer “as strong a soldier, as generous a donor, and as effective a diplomat,” making us “diminished as a people.” Our former Prime Minister, Nobel Peace Prize- winner Lester Pearson, whom Cohen credits for our glory years, would see Canada today as “slackening, faltering, and lacking in good will.”

Cohen begins each chapter in While Canada Slept with a review of Canadian achievements in the not-so-distant past before laying out our current woeful situation. With armed forces among the weakest in the industrialized world, foreign aid at its lowest level in 37 years, and a marginalized foreign service, we lag behind other likeminded nations, and worse, we have become a freeloader at the global table.

Our once-strong commitment to the Third World has been weakened, our foreign service is in tatters, and our peacekeeping activities have almost ceased (Canada has turned down nine peacekeeping missions in the last decade). “Our sense of our own influence as a middle power is more imaginary than real,” Cohen writes, claiming that we are suffering the effects of a “simple loss of will.”

“We are not mediocre at home. So why be mediocre abroad?” Cohen’s response to his own question – “the world would be poorer without us” – is not much of an answer. There is little evidence, that the kind of strong foreign presence Cohen advocates is actually of much importance to Canadians.

The book never gets past a feeling of nostalgic longing for the Canada of the 1950s. Those arenas where Canada excels are still, as Cohen states, “parts of the picture.” It is just that they are now smaller parts.