Veronica Kitchen

Argument and Identity Change in the Atlantic Security Community

The Atlantic community shares more than just dependable expectations of peaceful change. Its members also share a reflexive political community they sense is worth preserving and a view that their security is intertwined. Existing accounts of the Atlantic security community have identified the importance of renewed emphasis on common values as a factor in preserving and expanding the security community after the Cold War. But, debates at the end of the Cold War also turned on the question of what the allies would do together and what responsibilities they had to each other and to other states. This article outlines a discursive framework and a set of rhetorical strategies used by members of the Atlantic community that explain how they worked to maintain and change their community during debates about their mandate for cooperation. This framework is then applied to the Atlantic communitys debates over common action during the Yugoslav wars.

NATO's out-of-area norm from Suez to Afghanistan

The parameters of NATO’s out-of-area missions are defined not just by the treaty norms encoded in Articles 4 and 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, but also by a social norm entrenched during the Suez crisis. The evolution of the social norm defining the responsibilities allies have to each other in NATO missions, together with changing definitions of security and mutual defence, have led to a situation where the distinction between Article 4 (concerning consultation on global security issues) and Article 5 (concerning mutual defence) is non-existent. This change can help explain the current inter-allied dispute over burden-sharing in NATO’s ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

The Globalization of NATO : Intervention, Security and Identity

Introduction 1. Identity, Security, and Political Talk 2. The Suez Crisis: Establishing the Out-of-Area Norm 3. The Cold War Community and the Vietnam War 4. Changing Notions of Security and the Intervention in Bosnia 5. September 11th and the Dispute over Iraq 6. The Post-9/11 Alliance and Changing Notions of Mutual Defence in Afghanistan Conclusion: A New Strategic Concept and New Norms?

Paradiplomatic policing and relocating Canadian foreign policy

Even though they claim to recognize that the boundaries between domestic and international security have eroded, scholars of Canadian paradiplomacy have tended to ignore the security-oriented paradiplomatic activities undertaken by sub-national actors in Canada. However, policing paradiplomacy is, in our view, a perfect case for understanding how paradiplomacy in security can change the relationship between the state and its citizens. Through an examination of the paradiplomatic activities of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Sûreté du Québec, and the Vancouver Police, we show how the role of the informal, the danger of mission creep, and the shaping of foreign policy from the margins work to shift how we think about where foreign policy happens.

Canada (En)Counters Terrorism: U.S.-Canada Relations and Counter-terrorism Policy

This paper examines the role of identity in shaping counter-terrorism policy in Canada. We show that identity functions in three ways: constitutively by defining the range of choices a state is likely to consider; strategically by being a resource to buttress arguments based in economic or sovereignty interests; and heuristically by using identity as a marker for risk. This three-faceted explanation helps explain why, despite close economic, social, and political links between Canada and the United States which might lead us to expect Canada to follow American counter-terrorism policy, Canadian counter-terrorism policy often diverges from the American lead.

Veterans and military masculinity in popular romance fiction

ABSTRACT Although popular culture has become an important area of study in international relations, few scholars so far have turned their attention to popular romance fiction, despite its popularity among readers. Through an analysis of contemporary category romances featuring military heroes, and combining the scholarship on popular romance fiction with that of security studies, I open a new area of study for scholars of security. I argue that the structure of the romance genre – which requires the hero and heroine to fall and love and be happy at the end of the novel – reinforces particular kinds of politics. First, the focus on intimate relationships closes off broader critiques of global politics. Second, the focus on the home front reinforces the idea that there is no possible distinction between a peaceful home front to be protected and an international space of war. Third, heroes dealing with grief, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other problems of a return to civilian life after deployment are portrayed as turning chaos into quest, again through a courtship narrative. Because of the familiar settings and stories that ‘feel true’, popular romance fiction is a site for the reproduction of specific kinds of military masculinity and military families. While these fictional accounts can have the beneficial effect of providing more nuanced portrayals of possible intimate lives of soldiers, they also close off critiques of politics and help to order a resilient, war-ready society and reinforce these images among readers who may not otherwise seek out non-fictional stories about the military.

Partners across the Atlantic? Canada, Germany, and the EU

As the transatlantic relationship moves further away from the Cold War context that defined it for many years, it also becomes, by definition, less of an exclusive relationship. The common interests of Canada, Germany, and the other transatlantic partners are shared by other states around the world. The values and common identity that were always said to define the Atlantic community have become at once more exclusive (the European Union) and less exclusive (the community of democratic states) but also, absent the ideological conflict of the Cold War, perhaps less relevant. What, therefore, might the future of the transatlantic relationship look like? Grand projects like the new transatlantic marketplace still exist, but as StormyAnnika Mildner points out, interests diverge as much as they overlap, and European Union cooperation with Canada is often an afterthought to its relationship with the United States. Existing regional institutions, and most notably the European Union, complicate matters as well. As the EU develops into a global actor, it acts as an extra party to every relationship, a player whose vision is potentially different than that of any single member state. With an eye to its potential to colour policy, Stefan Ganzle and Steffi Retzlaff examine the way the European Union is portrayed in the Canadian media.