Book excerpt: The last foreign policy review was conducted in 1995 and there has been no thoroughgoing, decisive, public reconsideration of the significance of the terrorist attacks against the United States, the violent response in U.S. policy and action, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, tests and failures of the United Nations Security Council, and the transformed quality of relations along the Canada-U.S. border. Still less has there been any open, extensive, government-led reassessment of the obligations of continental defence or the new and future accommodations required to realign Canada's relations with the United States and the rest of the world. Policy initiatives have instead looked temporizing and partial.