Former senior diplomat and Canadian Global Affairs Institute fellow Colin Robertson has been a Policy contributing writer for more than a decade. Always one of our most prolific book reviewers, in 2024, Colin began co-ordinating his Policy book reviews with author interviews for his CGAI podcast, Global Exchange. Here are Colin Robertson’s must-read Policy book reviews with embedded Global Exchange author interviews. With many thanks to Colin and all the authors who sat down with him.

Colin Robertson’s Policy Global Exchange Book Reviews

Maybe it’s a testament to Jean Chrétien’s quintessential Canadian-ness that he has not been thought of as a foreign policy prime minister, notwithstanding the wisdom of his refusal to endorse the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. A new anthology edited by the Bill Graham Centre’s Jack Cunningham and John Meehan sets the record straight. “Taken together, the essays demonstrate that Chretien and his government ‘pursued an often ambitious, activist policy to forward not only national interests but liberal ideals on the world stage’,” writes Colin. Here’s ‘Chrétien and the World’: Dispelling the Myth of Domestic Preoccupation, including Colin’s interview with John Meehan.

For Belfast-based lawyer and Policy Contributing Writer Ben Collins, the question of Irish unity is personal. Raised during The Troubles in a unionist household, Collins attended university in Dundee, where meeting fellow students from Ireland informed a shift in his views just as the Good Friday Agreement was being implemented. “I had high hopes that Northern Ireland could finally become an economic powerhouse,” he has written. That transformation has not happened, and Brexit hasn’t helped. Ben’s new book, The Irish Unity Dividend, makes the economic case for unity. As Colin writes of the book, “For Collins, hedging no longer suffices. The facts on the ground—economic, political, demographic—tilt in favour of unity.” Here’s ‘The Irish Unity Dividend’: The Pragmatic Case for a United Ireland, including Colin’s Global Exchange interview iwth Ben Collins.

Winner of the 2025 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, Canada’s Prime Ministers and the Shaping of a National Identity by Raymond Blake is another distinguished addition to the C.D. Howe Series in Canadian Political History. “When it comes to defining what it means to be Canadian, leaders matter and so do their words,” writes Colin in his Policy review. “The most successful Canadian prime ministers have been as much storytellers as statesmen, especially those who adapted to master the medium of their time.” Here’s Colin Robertson with How Canada’s Prime Ministers Shaped its Identity, complete with his Global Exchange interview with Raymond Blake.

As Canadians decry Donald Trump’s tariff war and its impact on their quality of life, the global effects of Trump’s economic radicalism are the subject of Financial Times columnist Philip Coggan’s The Economic Consequences of Mr. Trump: What the Trade War Means for the World. “For the democracies,” writes Colin in his review, “Trump’s tariff war signals the end of the American-designed and led rules-based order and a globalization based on a freer flow of goods, services and ideas.” Here’s Colin with Donald Trump, World-Order Wrecking Ball: ‘The Economic Consequences of Mr. Trump’,including his Global Exchange interview with Philip Coggan.

Over the past quarter-century, as China’s economy underwent a revolution that also vastly increased Beijing’s geopolitical power, the companies and countries that have contributed to that transformation have themselves been changed. Among them, as Patrick McGee writes in Apple in China, Apple may be the partner that has both gained and lost the most. “Apple in China,” writes Colin, “is a cautionary and still-unfinished tale of ambition, greed and naiveté as American capitalism cozied up to Chinese authoritarianism.” Here’s Colin Robertson with ‘Apple in China’: A Tech Behemoth’s Not-so-Grand Bargain, including his Global Exchange interview with Patrick McGee.

From his early childhood in Nazi Germany as the son of a Polish diplomat to the wartime safety of a posting to Montreal to his rise to the highest ranks of America’s foreign policy establishment, Zbigniew Brzezinksi’s life combined moral and intellectual rigour with the kismet of good fortune. In his review of the new biography Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Great Power Prophet by Financial Times US National editor Ed Luce, Colin writes that “Luce’s story of Brzezinski and his times is narrative history at its best.” Here’s Colin with Ed Luce’s ‘Zbig’: Brzezinski Finally Gets His Due, including Colin’s Global Exchange interview with Luce.

As America careens toward a post-democracy endgame rationalized by, among other developments, the trade-war stylings of Donald Trump, Robert Kaplan’s latest book, Waste Land (after the T.S. Eliot poem), provides helpful context for our current crisis. “Our politics — local, national, and international — has rarely before, says Kaplan, been played out on such an intense, globe-spanning and consequential level,” per Colin’s must-read review. Here’s Kaplan’s ‘Waste Land’: Between a Bang and a Whimper, including his Global Exchange interview with Robert Kaplan.

From Adam Chapnick and Asa Mckercher, Canada First, Not Canada Alone: A History of Canadian Foreign Policy, “is magisterial in scope, comprehensive in its research and meticulous in its references,” writes Colin. “Importantly, it is rigorous in its evaluation of events and personalities and the environment, domestic and foreign, in which decisions were made.” Here’s Colin Robertson with Canada First, Not Canada Alone: Canada’s Evolution in the World, including Colin’s Global Exchange interview with Adam Chapnick.

This seems the perfect moment to revisit Colin’s review of Donald Savoie’s 2024 primer for public service reform. “Savoie writes that the balance between operations and policy has been upended,” per Colin’s review. “He calls those who analyze and propose policy the ‘poets’ and says they have supplanted the ‘plumbers’ who actually deliver and administer government services.” Here’s An Indispensable First Step: Donald Savoie’s Roadmap for Public Service Reform, complete with Colin’s Global Exchange episode interview with the author.

What could be a more timely read than Colin Robertson’s review of Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World? “The autocracies share weapons, technologies and ‘best practices’ in surveillance, governance, propaganda, and narratives based on ‘Big Lies’,” writes Colin. “The common denominator for the growing ranks of kleptocratic rulers is not ideology but rather their personal enrichment through absolute power.” Here’s ‘Autocracy, Inc.’: Deconstructing the War on Democracy, including Colin’s Global Exchange interview with Anne Applebaum.

You can read all of Colin Robertson’s work for Policy, including his book reviews, at his author page.