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Article Excerpt
How does Canada succeed in resisting American pressures in North America? This question has been asked repeatedly throughout Canadian history, with no end in sight for the interrogation, especially during times, such as the past couple of years, when thoughts (and fears) have strayed to the issue of American "neo-imperialism." (1) In the realm of security and defense, two contending schools of thought have emerged, at least among those who worry about inordinate pressure from the United States. (A third school can also be said to exist, represented by those analysts who argue that the interesting thing about U.S. "pressure" is how little of it actually exists in geopolitical terms.) For the purposes of this article, my focus will be upon those who do detect geopolitical pressure, and whose inquiries steer them toward the contemplation of effective remedial measures. (2) I am going to argue, somewhat counter-intuitively, that there is an implicit, yet seldom recognized, trade-off inherent in Canadian remedial diplomacy in bilateral relations, such that an (over)emphasis upon "sovereignty" actually diminishes, rather than enhances, Canada's independence. This trade-off is not necessarily a reaction to observable U.S. pressures (hence the existence of that third school of thought), yet it is central but implicit in the "remedialist" debate, which overlooks the critical role of what I call the "asymmetrical norm of common fate."
My objective in this article is, by highlighting this norm, to deconstruct the dominant interpretation of Canada's autonomy within North America on matters relating to security and defense in order to identify that interpretation's logic and implications. I will first examine the norm's structural and ideational foundations and then proceed to a historical assessment of its effects, which I take to be twofold. First, the norm of common fate preceded and contributed to the establishment of North America's "security community"; thus it partly explains how and why divergent threat perceptions did not result in Canada's political annexation to the United States. Second, the prevalence of this norm of common fate illustrates a fundamental characteristic of Canada's continental defense policy: the constant anxiety over its sovereignty, which paradoxically compromises its political independence.
The Remedialists and the Debate over "Choice"
One group of remedialists argue that Canada is quite successful in promoting its national interests vis-a-vis the United States. The reasons for Canada's success in that arena can and do vary, according to these analysts. Some lay the emphasis either on ad hoc rational calculations (3) or on clever "atlanticist" strategies articulated and promoted by Canadian policymakers. (4) Others put the stress on common norms, with liberal constructivists such as Stephane Roussel arguing that Canada and the United States have created a liberal-democratic security community, founded upon shared norms of mutual expectations and sovereignty, as well as upon values and political cultures. (5) Because of this ideational foundation, it is said, Canada may disagree with its neighbor without posing any threat to the fabric, or the future, of the security community.
Others see things radically differently. For them, the undeniable reality is that, in the bilateral relations between Canada and the United States, one country, Canada, is profoundly "dependent" upon the other, the United States. This perspective has been termed the "peripheral dependency" school, and its major contention centers upon the ironic observation that Canada managed to evolve from a colonial dependence on Britain to a satellite of America, (6) and as a result missed out on being an independent country. This lack of independence, adherents to this perspective claim, shows up across the spectrum of bilateral relations, but nowhere more than in the realm of defense and security. The inevitable imposition of American demands regarding continental security (7) and the allegation that the Canadian Armed Forces (CF) operate sometimes under U.S. command (8) are among the core theses of this school, which is convinced that Canada effectively lacks independence within North America. The remedy, for this group, is plain: "de-link" Canada as much as possible from the United States.
These two remedialist perspectives, which represent the polar positions of the debate, enable us to evaluate Canada's autonomy pertaining to continental defense, given that the two neatly summarize the theoretical status quo: complete dependence versus relatively unconstrained freedom of action. But before we get too far into the evaluation, it is essential to establish a distinction between two commonly interchanged notions: sovereignty and independence. The former refers to a state's effective political control over its territory (land, infrastructures, and people--including the military). The latter designates a state's capacity to exercise its political autonomy, relatively free from external constraints; in other words, its capacity to choose. (9) Some who make this distinction go on to contend that while Canada may in fact not be entirely "sovereign," it nevertheless remains independent, because it retains the capacity to participate--or not--in continental defense. (10) In other words, Canada has the latitude to choose whether to join the United States in its desire to protect itself through ensuring North America's continental security, or to refuse to do so by either undertaking such protection itself or letting Washington do it unilaterally.
But is this a genuine "choice"? Given the history of bilateral relations, one can be permitted a certain degree of skepticism. More often it seems that Canadian policymakers, who consider Canada's national security to be inextricably and inevitably (and thus permanently) tied to America's, and who regularly interpret North America's structural imbalance of power in a certain fashion, regard national sovereignty to be threatened by America, with the result being necessarily detrimental to Canada's independence. Canada's margin of autonomy, in this respect, is conditioned by a norm of common fate, which in turn defines the limits of possible choices in matters of continental defense.
Security Communities and the Norm of Common Fate
Although Barry Buzan, Ole Waever, and Jaap de Wilde prefer the notion of "regional security complex" to that of "security community," they contribute to the literature on the latter by incorporating into their analysis the elements of threat perception and management. (11) According to them, "securitization" and "desecuritization" processes play a significant role in binding or, as the case may be, distancing states to or from each other. By "securitization" they refer to the "intersubjective establishment of an existential threat with a saliency sufficient to have substantial political effects." (12) Among these effects are shared definitions of threats, coordinated policies to counter them, and, potentially, political union.
Indeed, designating an external object as a common threat, as well as responding jointly to it, contributes to states' rapprochement, while differential threat perceptions (DTP)--strong divergences in threat assessments, possibly leading to enmity--operate inversely. (13) The ultimate consequence of the process of securitization--and of the policy coordination and potential political union that typically ensues--is the formation of a collective identity among member-states of what has become known as a security community. (14) States' social identities--i.e., their self-attributed sets of meanings resulting from the consideration of other states' perspectives--involve some form of identification, "a continuum from negative to positive--from conceiving the other as anathema to the self to conceiving it as an extension of the self." (15)
While "pluralistic" security communities (16) do not imply absolute, positive identification, they do entail some degree of self-identification in military and security affairs--in other words, the existence of a norm of common fate. (17) The "common fate" portion of that concept refers to the idea that a state's "individual survival, fitness, or welfare depends on what happens to the group as a whole," (18) while "norms" are commonly defined as "shared expectations about appropriate behavior held by a community of actors." (19) When such a norm of common fate exists among states, it becomes logically impossible--indeed, self-defeating--to consider one member's security apart from that of the whole group (i.e., that of the security community). On the other hand, significant DTP may considerably diminish a security community's robustness--notably, by driving apart quondam allies or by preventing states from becoming allies in the first place. In such instances, the desecuritization processes that follow can undo political unions and/or coordinated policies that were oriented to counter prior common threats. DTP can, therefore, destroy security communities. It can also reinforce such communities, however, should it contribute to the felt need to establish new threats or re-establish old ones.
Aside from the necessary sovereignty of its member states, the primary condition for the emergence of a "pluralistic" security community is the absence of conflict--indeed, the absence of even the idea of conflict--between the members of the community; in other words, the use of force must be unthinkable between member states. (20) Additionally, the normative structure on which security communities are founded is characterized by a particular interpretation of power relationships between their members. As contentious as this notion may be, let us accept Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall's definition of power: the "production, in and through social relations, of effects on actors that shape their capacity to control their fate." (21) In that sense, the "structural imbalance of power," to use the terminology of William T. R. Fox in respect of the unique relationship between Canada and the U.S. on the North American continent, (22) must encompass much more than mere material disparities (i.e., military, technological, and economic inequities); ideational components (i.e., perceptions, roles, and self-images) also constitute significant elements of this imbalanced structure.
These ideational elements incline one toward skepticism regarding the "benevolent empire" advanced inter alias by political commentator Robert Kagan--a thesis accounting for the rise of America's hegemony on the North American continent. (23) In a similar vein, Barry Buzan and Ole Waever claim that Canada participates in the centralized and "imperial" (i.e., American) decision-making process in regard to defense and security issues, to a point where the United States recognizes Canada's independence in continental affairs. (24) To be sure,...
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