A community of fate? Nonpolarity and North American security interdependence

Abstract

This article examines the recent evolution of the idea of a North American security perimeter, and its implications for Canadian foreign economic policy in an era characterized by a shifting global distribution of power. The current global order is characterized by a rapidly shifting distribution of power away from the United States and toward not only other states (the BRICs) but also other actors - including networks, multinational corporations, and NGOs. Drawing upon the “new regionalisms” school, we argue that Canada's instinctive approach to the “North American game” - emphasizing the historic Canada-US special bilateral relationship is an insufficient and excessively narrow approach for adapting to the global and regional challenges provoked by the rapid onset of nonpolarity.

Keywords:

• unipolarity
• nonpolarity
• multipolarity
• North America
• regionalism
• BRIC
• BRICSAM
• North American Integration

Notes

The social networking site Badoo.com did just reaffirm in poll results canvassing 30,000 people across 15 countries that the United States was still considered the “coolest” nationality despite “their global superpower status decline in the face of challenges from other emerging players on the world stage”. See “World still thinks Americans are the ‘coolest’: Poll”, Vancouver Sun, 6 September 2011.

In fact, recent efforts by a number of well-known Canadian policy analysts and academics to grapple with the contours of a post-American world appeared in Clark and Hoque (2011).

Drezner was focusing primarily on the United States but we see his observations of global transformation as widely generalizable to other states and their foreign policies.

See the entire document at: http://www.dhs.gov/files/publications/beyond-the-border-action-plan.shtm.

Costs of War project, “Estimated Cost of Post-9/11 Wars: 225,000 Lives, Up to $4 Trillion”, news release, June 29, 2011, http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2011/06/warcosts.

See http://www.international.gc.ca/anti-terrorism/actionplan-en.asp.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jeffrey Ayres

Jeffrey Ayres is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Michael's College.

Laura Macdonald

Laura Macdonald is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Carleton University. Email: [email protected]