Stephen Clarkson

Smart Borders and the Rise of Bilateralism: The Constrained Hegemonification of North America after September 11

INTRODUCTIONThe consolidation of multistate regions is one of the most interesting features of globalizations recent past. The European Union may be by far the most advanced example of this phenomenon, but North America, including as it does the global hegemon, is surely no less important.Linguistic markersThis special issue takes as its premise the notion that North America comprises not just the United States and Canada, as it used to, but also Mexico. This is not obvious because, at first glance, the word hardly seems to describe a political entity. Historically, norte americano in Mexico designated the other, foreign, threatening but also alluring space to the north from which Mexico was excluded, and to which Mexican obreres were attracted. This phrases usage in Mexican discourse began to become self-referential after the signature of the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, which bound together the United States of Mexico, the United States of America, and Canada in an accord aimed at formalizing and deepening the already considerable economic integration that had occurred between the global hegemon and its two neighbours.1Notwithstanding this linguistic difficulty, North America does designate much more than a triad of contiguous countries to the north of Guatemala. Geographically and ecologically, it has long existed as a continental entity. More recently, increasing economic, demographic, and cultural flows have caused some perhaps overenthusiastic scholars to talk about the emergence of a North American community.Accepting this premise of a regional reality, we must take care not to project onto it the notions that have emerged from the past 50 years of integration on the eastern shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike the much more deeply institutionalized European Union with its Schengen-mandated disappearing frontiers, North Americas borders remain largely intact and, since the tragedy at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, have been raised considerably higher. Furthermore, we must keep in mind two of the continents continuing realities:Asymmetry identifies the enormous difference in capacity between the USA and its two neighbours. For example, while dealing with Uncle Sam has to be the overwhelming concern of Canadas and Mexicos foreign services, the opposite is not true. Dealing with Canada and Mexico only involves Washingtons peripheral vision as it pursues its interests abroad.Skewedness describes the colossal cultural and historical differences between Mexicos relationships with the United States on the one hand and Canadas relations with the USA on the other. This makes it somewhat risky to lump Canada together with Mexico in a common category as the United States periphery since differences often vastly outweigh the similarities between these two countries both in their domestic realities and in the way that they connect with their American neighbour.Conceptual modelFor analytical purposes, this article will posit a simplified dynamic model, presenting the complex processes of North American integration and disintegration as the product of four often conflicting forces operating within the continent:US expansionism, which is driven by competitive industries within the American market and is managed by the US state, and which pushes its neighbours to lower their border barriers.US protectionism, which is activated by uncompetitive industries and is also managed by the US state, and tends to strengthen US border barriers against foreign competition.Integrative efforts by the two peripheral governments to enhance their relationship with Uncle Sam and increase their access to his market, which, when successful, reduce US border barriers.Defensive efforts by the two peripheral governments to guard their autonomy from Uncle Sam and to deal with their own internal struggles, which, when successful, raise the peripheries border barriers. …

Manicheism Corrupted: The Soviet View of Aid to India

Much scholarly attention is devoted to the practice of Soviet aid to the Third World; very little academic energy has been spent on the Soviet theory of aid for under-development. Yet the Soviet view of the whole problem of aid for the developing countries is important not just because the size of the Soviet aid programme and the popularity of Marxism-Leninism have a direct impact on economic development in the Third World; it is also an index of Soviet relations with particular developing countries and even their policy towards their rivals in this field, the imperialist West. It is often argued that the unrelieved propaganda content of Marxist-Leninist ideology negates any interest this doctrine might have for the unconverted. Closer study shows that there are important nuances that can be discerned in the Soviet writings on developing countries and that these different trends reflect fundamental political conflicts determining Soviet policy in this area. It is generally accepted that, in the de-Stalinization of Soviet policy towards the ex-colonial areas, Soviet Marxism-Leninism finally accepted propositions that had been denied since Zhdanov launched the Cominform in 1947 with his apocalyptic vision of a world split into two irreconcilable camps. In the post-Stalinist view of India, for example, Nehru was no longer a lackey of British imperialism maintaining India under colonial tutelage; he was now considered to be the progressive national bourgeois leader of a politically independent Republic whose non-aligned foreign policy made her a member of the peace-loving club of nations and whose state capitalist economic system was building the basis for independent economic development. While this transformation of the Soviet interpretation of the political, economic and international situation of the emerging

Book Review: Western Europe: The European RightThe European Right. A Historical Profile. Editors RoggerHans and WeberEugen. 1965. (BerkeleyUniversity of California Press. vi, 589pp.

that better than any college professor. Statecraft is often a very dirty business; to suppose anything else is to suppose nonsense. What Soustelle does not admit is the real issue: that there was no happy outcome possible in Algeria. He implies that his course of pacification would have succeeded honourably, that Algeria would have remained happily and fraternally French for all time; that world communism would thereby have suffered a severe blowthat Nasser would have been set back and that Israel would have been correspondingly strengthened; that democracy in France would consequently have flourished, and so forth and so on. It is all wildly improbable and quite unreal. One does not have to worship the myth of decolonization to say this. Obviously some of the new African and Asian rulers are uncivilized thugs; this is no reason to celebrate the Portugese mission in Angola. Of course, though we dont say it in polite company the spectacle of these often venal, opportunist statesmen, living on Western aid, spouting the Rights of Man in the halls of the United Nations, is a farcical and desolating experience. How it will end, one does not know. But Soustelle and his bitter-end friends had no solution for nativist stirrings and the breakup of the age of imperialism save recourse to repression. Whatever his crimes, errors and failings, de Gaulle acted to end a struggle which threatened to tear France apart and was inflicting mass suffering in North Africa. As one of his ministers, Soustelle did not then speak out against torture, suffering, injustice inflicted by the French authorities; indeed, quite the reverse. Thus his protests now strike a curious note. His sensitivity to injustice and intolerance is strangely selective and periodic. As much so as that of the left-wing intellectuals he so much condemns. They had their idol of the native giant striving with bare hands (and pure heart) to free himself from the bloody repression which was the death struggle of the old colonialism; Soustelle has his of the betrayed and knightly Army and the civilizing colon wrestling with barbarism. So in the end we grow weary of his cause, as we wearied of theirs. The world is more complicated than they acknowledge, more complicated, more baffling and more tragic. A brilliant man converted to the French minoritys position in Algeria, Soustelle probably sought to use de Gaulle in May 1958. He did not succeed. His hands are no cleaner than those of the men he attacks. So while he often lands on target (when he does not spoil his effect by fantastic charges) his is only one of a number of telling criticisms of the regime, and his presentation of himself a failure.

9.50)

Jacques Henry Preston, Richard A., (ed.), The Influence of the United States on Canadian Development : Eleven Case Studies, Duke University Commonwealth-Studies Center, Duke University Press, Durham, N.C., 1972, 269 p.. Études internationales 53 (1974): 567–568. DOI : 10.7202/700471ar Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit dauteur. Lutilisation des services dÉrudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique dutilisation que vous pouvez consulter en ligne. [https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politiquedutilisation/]

The Influence of the United States on Canadian Development: Eleven Case Studies

One of the riddles that future historians of Canadas absorption into the American system will have to answer is why there was so little consciousness in Canada during the 195os and i 96os of the accelerating takeover of the country. Even if our chroniclers in the twentyfirst century are writing in the context of an independent Canada, those working on the mid-twentieth century will still have to solve the puzzle of why Canadians had so little awareness of the economic, political, and cultural impact on their society of the growing American presence in their midst. There will be no satisfactory explanation that does not include the failure of the Canadian university community to recognize the implications of its own colonization and to respond academically to the countrys major long-term threat. The lack of social science courses on Canadas American relationship provides a most striking example of this academic neglect, a condition which can best be explained as a vicious circle of four self-maintaining causes. In the first instance, it is not possible to give courses on the impact of the United States on Canada if there is no serious literature on the problem. At least in the accepted sense of teachingimparting a given body of knowledge to students there is not much to teach if very little scholarly writing in any of the social sciences bears directly on the American relationship. Secondly, one cannot expect to find a substantial body of literature if there are no academic tools suitable for producing the necessary research. A quick review of the conceptual orientations and

Lament for a Non-Subject: Reflections on Teaching Canadian-American Relations

the height of the NATO rearmament programme, not even a footnote hinted disagreement with what Acheson had done to his concept. Rees remains -a reliable, if orthodox, anti-communist cold warrior. Where he is occasionally misleading, it is through rigorous compression rather than clear error. Reess work is written with greater literary flair than Hugh Seton-Watsons Neither War nor Peace. It is also more recent. Which is not to say that it supersedes.

Book Review: International Politics and Economics: Western Policy and the Third WorldWestern Policy and the Third World. By MeladyThomas Patrick. 1967. (New York: Hawthorn Books. Toronto: Prentice-Hall. 199pp.

how do states behave to one another? This is given as the basic shape of the framework and of the book. The distinction would seem to be between sources of foreign policy and forms of instruments of foreign policy. But in practice Iolsti does not use this classification. For instance, domestic beliefs and values are discussed in the first part of the book under the heading Formulation of Foreign Policy Objectives, and again in the second part as Internal Restraints on Action. The division seems to be between formulation and execution of policy, or is it between support and hindrances to the making and the carrying out of policy? The distinctions are not consistently maintained, and neither seems to correspond to the original differences between why and how. Holsti disclaims any intention to construct a theory of international politics, and his book is not quite pre-theory either. International Politics is basically an up-to-date version of the traditional study of the political relationships among modern Western nation states. Its framework has as little theoretical shape as the existing historical state systems that it discusses. Holsti presents some new and interesting data In his studies, but we are no nearer to the abstract structures that will help us classify the mass of real events of international politics. We are still in danger of drowning in data.

8.25)

propositions with which the book terminates, it sets up no coherent theory either in words, mathematical symbols, or diagrams. The author expresses preferences which are thoroughly liberal and frequently accord with those of this reviewerthe non-constructive role of the distribution of arms through the underdeveloped countries by the advanced countries, an increasing underground antagonism between the developed and the underdeveloped, the one-sidedness of western views of the underdeveloped world which partly flows from this latent antagomsm. An international class system looms dangerously close. Such a book makes one wonder about the market for intellectual produce, and its demand for thick volumes in social science. Would not Professor Horowitz, a scholar of talent and goodwill, have per formed a greater service by concentrating the effort that went into this book on a single matter of empirical investigation. He could have studied militarism, attitudes toward the United States and the Soviet Union and the political consequences of these, the struggle of 6lites, or any of the scores of topics here taken up in relation to the under developed world. With new data bearing on a new hypothesis, he could have given us a worthwhile journal article rather than an indifferent book.

Book Review: International Politics and Economics: The Politics of the Third WorldThe Politics of the Third World. By MillerJ. D. B.. 1966. (London: Toronto: Oxford University Press. 126pp.

In these days of communications overload, as journals proliferate like unrepentant hamsters and newspapers seem to fatten on our doorsteps, any new book that puts a claim on the reading publics time has a moral obligation to be good. When a book bills itself as a collection of provocative statements ... by some of the most stimulating people in the field of Canadian foreign policy, is attractively designed, and sponsored by the Canadian Institute of International Affairs to sell at

2.50)

2.00 for a paperback edition, it has an even greater duty to excel, for it will probably be read by thousands of that mythical general public that is the target of so many editors endeavours. Wide circulation of Canadas Role as a Middle Power1 will be a pity, for this compendium of twelve articles does not approach the standards of what should make up a well-edited collective effort on Canadian foreign policy. This is not a case of the reviewer expecting of a volume something its editor and publisher did not intend to provide. I would agree, first of all, with the dust jacket as to the desirability of provocative statements that analyse the assumptions on which our foreign policy is based and secondly with the editors expressed hope that these papers would lead to a critical examination of questions of foreign policy. Unfortunately these two aims of providing a basic critique of Canadian external relations and studies of particular policies are realized only very imperfectly. While one cannot expect a collection of short papers to have the thematic unity of a monograph, it is surely not unduly demanding to expect a C.I.I.A. publication on Canadas international role to deal incisively with at least the major assumptions underlying our foreign policy. The only postulate that is thoroughly attacked is the mythology of Canadian foreign policy. Blair Fraser neatly establishes that the myth of Canada the Mediator was a Churchillian sop for King the international busybody. Whether Canadas finest hour as linchpin was at Suez, as he claims, or in Korea, as Chester Ronning maintains, our doubtlessly effective mediation clearly depended on the coincidence of unusual circumstances: general U.N. agreement plus the concurrence of the great Powers. Donald Gordon shows that even Canadas role as the Peacekeeper appears to be more fiction than fact, since our independent peacekeeping is conditioned not just by the great powers approval but by their financial and material assistance as well. If these contributions are effective in debunking the conventional ideology of Canadian foreign policy, they are less successful in showing the reader what the realities of Canadas middle power role really are. What does middlepowermanship really involve? Despite the books