An Independent Canada in a Shared North America

God, give us the grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. .Reinhold NiebuhrINTRODUCTIONREINHOLD NIEBUHR'S FAMOUS 1943 PRAYER is as useful a guide to public policy as it is to personal reformation. Applying the noted theologian's construct to the ever-present and ever-thorny issue of how to peacefully and usefully share the bounty of North America between the peaceable kingdom of and the mighty republic of the United States, Niebuhr's injunction impels us to determine carefully realities or interests on the ground, to assess the normative values or goals of the two societies, and to avoid the twin delusions of wishful thinking or deadening cynicism in reshaping the relationship to meet the needs of our citizens in the 21st century.The requirement to think through the basics of our relationship with the United States is perhaps the single largest challenge in the ambitious review of international policy launched by the Martin government. In announcing the new review, the prime minister said he wanted to recapture Canada's sense of international purpose. The last review of defence policy was in 1994, the last foreign policy white paper, Canada in the world, was completed in 1995.Since 1995, there have been many changes but three are uppermost in assessing a new relationship with the United States. The first, of course, is 11 September 2001 : targets in the continental United States were attacked by al Qaeda terrorists and at a stroke the benign world of the 1995 white paper-with the end of the Cold War there was no perceived direct security threat to North America-was irreversibly transformed. As expressed by Chris Patten, the European Union's commissioner for external relations, September 11th showed that the United States, whilst invincible is not invulnerable.In 1995, too, the NAFTA agreement had only been signed a year earlier and Mexico was still not on the priority agenda. We in must now decide whether we want a bilateral relationship with the United States or a trilateral relationship with both our North American partners. My focus is the United States, but should not forget that while we agonized over whether to join the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mexico was going through the same process-but with the pressure intensified a hundredfold because Mexico was on the United Nation's security Council. Mexico, like Canada, declined to join the US coalition. In North America, Mexico is an ally, not a rival, and should be treated as such. Lastly, in 1995, was in the midst of a. severe budgetary crisis; to discuss increased investment in international policy in 1995 was whistling in the wind. Today the federal government has a large surplus. The case for more international capacity, which is a key argument of this paper, is still difficult when competing with other priorities like health, but it is possible. Today, unlike 1995, we have a real choice if we want to do more in foreign policy.COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCECanadians have had experience in dealing with Americans for over 400 years. For a time-between 1763 and 1776-we were even loosely united with our American cousins in an early British empire experiment of sovereignty-association. (For proponents of sovereignty-association in general, or union with the United States in particular, this initial integration of North America may not be the happiest of precedents!)But from the first moments of Canadian history, as the Huron nation worried about the Iroquois moving north, or Champlain heard about Plymouth Rock, or a young John Macdonald joined the militia to repel agitators intoxicated with the American invention of mass democracy, to the present day issues of the border, trade, migration, and security, the United States has been a daily presence in the lives of Canadians. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.