North America beyond NAFTA? Sovereignty, identity, and security in Canada-U.S. Relations.

• Author: Golob, Stephanie R.
• Position: 1

1. INTRODUCTION*

   In basic geometry, we learn that the perimeter is the sum of the length of the sides enclosing a geometric space. It is about as linear a concept as one could imagine, a mere matter of locating a space, measuring the length of the straight lines that define its outline, and adding it all up. In the natural world things get a bit more complex, with land masses segmented and defined by rivers and mountain ranges that do not lend themselves to the linear calculus of geometry. Still more complex, of course, are political boundaries, which are the legally and militarily enforced lines in the sand that set off a centrally-governed, territorially-contiguous political community (what we political scientists call a 'state') from its neighbors.

   Once we recognize the invented nature of these political boundaries, even in those states which claim transcendent historical attachment between people and territory, we see that the perimeters, or the borders, of the state are designed not only to keep external enemies out, but to define who and what is worth defending within those barriers, and why that particular state has the legitimate right to do so. Rather than adding up the length of the sides of a geometric space to determine its value, the border-as-perimeter of a state is measured in less concrete terms that add up to state legitimation, such as sovereignty (autonomy from outside meddlers), security (from invasion) and identity (within the community and in contrast with outsiders). To paraphrase R.B.J. Walker's seminal work in this area, the state justifies its primary role in the international system and its monopoly over the use of force at home by mediating between the 'inside' and the 'outside' (2), and that mediation occurs -- literally and s ymbolically -- at the border.

   This view of the international system of states as one of fortified units geared both internationally and domestically for continuous defense -- individually and in strategic alliances -- has been challenged in the immediate post-Cold War years by those proclaiming the rise of a community of 'liberal democratic states' that were no longer arming against one another, but rather opening their borders for economic (and, in the case of Europe, political) integration, often in regionally-defined spaces. In the vernacular of the constructivist literature with International Relations, which advocates for such a 'constructed' view of politics based upon the social transformation of identities, this is an expansion of the 'we,' a redefinition of the 'ingroup' to, if not fully include, then to no longer absolutely exclude those who are beyond a nation's strict political perimeter. (3)

   There are three main hypotheses advanced to explain this cooperative turn in international relations, two of which stress the consolidation of a shared sense of identity across national boundaries. The neoliberal-institutionalist model posits that intensifying economic interdependence provides an incentive structure that makes cooperation a positive-sum outcome for competitive states; in other words, the classical liberal idea of 'peace through trade' is consistent with, and is advanced by, the rational calculations of power-maximizing units. (4) The second hypothesis is equally inspired by classical liberalism and by Immanuel Kant, but instead advances what has been called the 'democratic peace thesis.' (5) This is the notion that states with liberal democratic regimes are less likely to go to war against one another because their institutions are transparent (and thus avoid problems of mutual misperception), their armies are drawn from and funded by the population (the latter through taxes with the purse-s trings controlled by elected representatives in the legislature), and their leaders need popular support when they face re-election. Though not explicitly constructivist, the democratic peace thesis rests firmly on the assumption that democracies identify internationally with one another in a way that makes mutual interpretation of their foreign policy actions more likely to be sympathetic. They are like "us" and would not act this way without a good reason.

   Finally, recent scholarship along constructivist lines has developed Karl Deutsch's postwar concept of the 'security community' to understand how and why states identify across boundaries in a way that perception of threat and ideas about what constitutes security are shared and yet not aimed against one another. Within 'pluralistic' security communities, write Adler and Barnett, there are "dependable expectations of peaceful change," and "peace is tied to the existence of a transnational community" based upon "shared identities, values and meanings, many-sided and direct relations, and some degree of reciprocity." (6)

   The lessons of these three hypotheses -- open borders and freeflowing commerce advance economic security, democracies make better neighbors, and shared threats can lead to shared identities -- are surely not lost, nor are they readily accepted, by students of the world's longest undefended land border between Canada and the United States. Indeed, we might describe that border as U.S. Undersecretary of State George Ball did cynically in the 1960s, as a symbolic manifestation of Canada's ongoing "rearguard action against the inevitable," meaning its absorption into the U.S. economic sphere and, by extension, its cultural and political domain. True, the extreme delineation between 'us' and 'them' symbolized by a "border as national perimeter" clashes with the reality of a "border as semi-permeable membrane" that we know allows (and encourages) bidirectional flows of goods, services, people, technology, and ideas on a scale perhaps unmatched except by its mirror image along the U.S.'s southern border. However, w e may ask, what is more real than a symbol with the force of meaning attached, particularly when it changes the behavior of actors in line with those beliefs, as opposed to concrete realities that contradict them? While seers of globalization, and opponents of the 1988 Free Trade Agreement (recall the famous campaign ad), viewed the 'borderless world' as the future on the continent of North America, it is the border that has not only increased in significance, but also has retained its symbolic resonance within a region that refuses to be truly regionalized. And while we may more readily account for the persistence of the border-as-barrier image in relations between the United States and Mexico, given the vast differences in level of development, the history of U.S. interventionism, and the cyclical resurgence of anti-immigrant sentiments in the U.S., it is my contention here that the symbolic barriers that persist in U.S. and Canadian thinking form an even more striking and formidable obstacle to deeper regi onal integration than usually considered. (7) For even as industries, trade unions, NGOs and individual citizens have increasingly transcended the border in the past near-decade, 'North America' has just barely emerged in the U.S. and Canada as a publicly-debated idea beyond the narrow confines of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or beyond the traditional venue of Canada-U.S. bilateral relations. (8) What stands between, literally and symbolically, is the border, and even as it becomes more trafficked, more sensitive for mutual security, and more jointly administered in line with self-interested forces of interdependence and the exigencies spurred by the September 11th attacks, it remains for the two national governments -- in identity terms expressed in foreign policy -- what divides 'us' and 'them' more than what joins together a 'North American' 'we.' Ironically but fittingly, in the age of globalization, and in the same borderless world that spawned Al Qaeda, states continue to look to bord er-defending and border-defining foreign policy as the symbolic means of forging national unity and, by extension, replenishing state legitimation.

   From this perspective I will analyze the identity-based borders that have been fortified and sanctified by Canada and the U.S. in their relations with one another, because I believe they explain a resistance on the part of government and foreign policy officials to 'construct' a 'North American' identity, even in the context of the golden opportunity offered by the post-September 11th moment. The paper begins with a brief constructivist analysis of the symbolic and interpretive link between sovereignty, security, and identity in the construction of the Canadian and U.S. national interests, as each state employed foreign policy to forge distinct domestic and, by extension, international identities for their respective and highly diverse national communities on the North American continent. The analysis reveals extreme ambivalence on the part of the U.S. as well as Canada regarding mutual identification in foreign policy and bilateral cooperation. This ambivalence is founded on a history of sensitivities over sovereignty on both sides -- in part manufactured for domestic consumption -- that have persisted despite (or, some would argue, because of) the formalization of economic integration. Instead of a smooth narrative of ever-deepening mutual regional identification driven either by shared geography, shared material self-interest or shared democratic or Western values, the story of 'North America' is punctuated by the intrusion of ideological and identity-inscribed borders erected by the two national governments and defended via foreign policy rhetoric, ostensibly to protect 'the nation' from the neighbor's designs on its sovereignty, security, and identity.

   The remainder of the article takes this historical and constructivist analytical framework and applies it to the official re-inscription of borders with identity content as seen in post-September 11th security cooperation between the U.S. and Canada. With the...