Rebordering of North America: Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Context, The

Latin American Politics and Society, Summer 2004 by Olney, Patricia

The next chapter, by Hristoulas, a Canadian-educated professor at the Institute Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico, describes one of the main ironies about current Mexican and Canadian foreign policies. Mexico, with a longstanding nationalist foreign policy that eschewed cooperation with the United States, now enthusiastically endorses initiatives for trilateral cooperation in the region. Meanwhile, Canada, a longtime champion of multilateralism, is suddenly reluctant to support any measures that involve trilateral cooperation among the NAFTA partners. Hristoulas contends that the apparent contradiction comes from the importance of the migration issue in Mexico, on the one hand, and Canada's skepticism about Mexico's ability to be an effective partner in regional security relationships, on the other. Mexican president Vicente Fox expects to see workers' permits facilitated in exchange for border security cooperation, while Canadian leaders are concerned about levels of corruption and crime in Mexico, leading them to prefer bilateral security measures. Hristoulas believes that some kind of regional arrangement is inevitable and that Canada will have to come to terms with it.

Serrano, a professor at El Colegio de Mexico, and Clarkson, from the University of Toronto, disagree over whether there is necessarily a movement toward greater multilateral cooperation in the region. Serrano looks historically at what she perceives to be the current failure of U.S.-Mexican relations and notes that cooperation has been most effective when it was low-profile. Clarkson comes to the same conclusion about U.S.-Canadian relations for similar reasons. Low-profile cooperation works best because it allows the government to play to a nationalist domestic audience without appearing to sacrifice the country's sovereignty. The Clarkson and Serrano selections provide evidence for the realist assumption that multilateralism breaks down if the most powerful actor's interests diverge from those of the other partners. Both authors make it clear that Mexico and Canada must follow the U.S. lead in North American policymaking and that their role is limited to managing this reality in a way that best protects their interests. Both authors also predict a hardening of U.S. border policies, bilateral rather than multilateral initiatives, and a slowdown in regional integration efforts.

Pauly, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, further highlights the reality of U.S. dominance in the trilateral relationship by noting that in the post-9/11 world, the pragmatists in Canadian politics have the upper hand over the nationalists. Canadian elites are cooperating fully with the United States despite the perceived impact of this cooperation on Canadian sovereignty. Pauly agrees with Clarkson and Serrano that the most likely future scenario is bilateral cooperation between the United States and its two partners, as opposed to regional arrangements.

Meanwhile, Hufbauer, from Georgetown University, and VegaCanovas, from El Colegio de Mexico, are more optimistic in their chapter about the prospects and potential depth of regional integration. They propose the gradual development of a "common frontier" that would amount to the "Europeanization" of North American relations. Maintaining open borders would depend on Canada's and Mexico's willingness to work toward regional security cooperation under U.S. leadership, something complicated by President George W. Bush's "preemptive strike doctrine," which is not popular with these neighbors. In addition, Mexico and Canada would have to push for creative measures that would make regional integration attractive to the United States.