Teaching Canada–US relations: Three great debates

Debate #1: Context and compatibility

The first substantive work on Canadian–American relations was published in 1879. In The United States and the Dominion of Canada: Their Future, a Scottish-born Canadian, Alexander Monro, concluded that geography and history had made citizens of both countries more North American than they were Canadian or American. “Nowhere on the face of the globe,” he wrote, was “there to be found a more unnatural boundary line” than the one between them. Moreover, there was no denying the increasing economic integration taking place on the continent. ⁵

Monro’s book seems to have influenced, if not inspired, the first two of our three debates. The former developed primarily at the hands of the British-born scholar and commentator Goldwin Smith. Not unlike Monro, Smith had grown disillusioned with the British imperial system and saw no future for Canada within it. In 1891’s Canada and the Canadian Question, he promoted a morally superior North American civilization supported by closer economic integration. ⁶ When the American journalist Samuel Moffett made a similar argument in 1907 in his The Americanization of Canada, it became clear that such thinking was not exclusive to subjects of the British Empire. ⁷

Most Canadian writers remained generally uncomfortable with this continentalist view. In 1890, one of Canada’s best-known constitutional experts, John George Bourinot, published a series of studies on Canada and the United States. Unlike Monro and Smith, Bourinot admired British parliamentary traditions. He used the vast differences between the two countries’ political systems to demonstrate that, thanks to its still-close ties to Great Britain, Canada was developing its own unique identity, independent of its neighbour to the south. ⁸

For over 40 years, Bourinot’s work struggled to withstand the wave of continentalism that overtook Canada in the early twentieth century. In 1937, however, another constitutional expert, Henry Angus, responded to suggestions that Canadians and Americans were becoming increasingly similar by using survey data to compare their impressions of one another. ⁹ Like Bourinot, Angus paid less attention to the continental economic relationship, suggesting implicitly that factors other than cultural influences and protective tariffs could provide accurate comparisons between the two countries. ¹⁰ There was, for example, a defensive assertiveness in Canada that was significantly different from the less restrained confidence projected by most Americans.

Shortly after, historian Edgar McInnis published a comprehensive history of the relationship. As a soldier in the First World War, McInnis had fought for Canada alongside, but not together with, the American military. His book, which soon became widely used on Canadian university campuses, espoused sentiments that seemed to reflect that experience. McInnis maintained that Canada and the United States had consistently sought to share their continent, once again implying that the countries worked together but remained separate units. Like Bourinot, he foresaw Canada developing into its own international person, a partner of the United States with distinct national interests. ¹¹

Unlike their foreign-born counterparts, analysts like Bourinot, Angus, and McInnis studied perceptions and value systems. While the geographical proximity between Canada and the United States was certainly noted, the countries’ shared British heritage and attitudes toward the Empire were equally, if not more, important. Moreover, to these writers, the differences between the two states defined the relationship. The continentalists celebrated Canadian–American similarities; the nationalists attributed what they called the “remarkable” relationship to the countries’ complementarity.

Neither interpretation satisfied the University of California professor Herbert Bolton. His History of the Americas: A Syllabus with Maps extended his mentor Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis—the argument that American development could best be understood by studying the socio-cultural impact of the extension of the Western frontier—to include much of the western hemisphere. To Bolton, then, Canadian and American history could be explained neither individually nor together. Both states were part of a broader regional past, defined by the social, political, economic, and military histories of North, Central, and South America. ¹²

To some from Canada and the United States, Bolton had got it right. At a conference held in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, historian George Williams Brown concluded that the Americas indeed did have a common history, one that had created common interests with much of the North Atlantic community, and with Great Britain in particular. ¹³ His comments complemented the work of John Bartlett Brebner, another Canadian who, like Brown, had spent many of his adult years abroad. Brebner's final volume of the Carnegie Series on the Relations between Canada and the United States was entitled North Atlantic Triangle: The Interplay of Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Drawing from Bolton’s contention that history had to be understood in a broad context, he maintained that the United States and Canada could never fully separate themselves from the history, culture, and institutional influence of the United Kingdom. ¹⁴ If not a history of the Americas, Brebner seemed to suggest, there might at least be a history of the North Atlantic.

This debate seems to have receded from view immediately after the Second World War, perhaps because the division of the world into two hostile camps created a spontaneous (if largely unexamined) consensus about the two states’ political and geographic position at the core of a Western or transatlantic community. If Canada’s place in the Cold War was obvious and uncontroversial, then the crucial questions would be how closely allied and integrated Ottawa would be to Washington—as alliance leader and economic linchpin—and how to understand the new power dynamics within this much closer bilateral relationship. When the debate resumed again in earnest 20 years later, what had previously been thought of as a cutting-edge approach to understanding the Canadian–American relationship was rejected as antiquated by political scientists from both countries. John Holmes—a former Canadian diplomat and now university professor—argued that Canada and the United States needed to be understood more broadly as “a major power and a middle power in world affairs, acting both as partners and as independent entities in international politics, deeply involved in the security and stability of the world at large.” ¹⁵ An American professor of government, David Baldwin, made a similar argument in 1968 and, in 1984, Charles Doran of Johns Hopkins University made the same case in theoretical terms. ¹⁶

Ironically, while some scholars were extending the geographical context, others were returning to continentalism. Thanks in part to the deterioration of the Canadian–American relationship in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, a number of American writers who, like their continentalist predecessors, felt sympathy for the Canadian predicament in North America, revisited some of the older arguments. This time, however, their conclusions were more tempered; few went so far as to support, or even predict, complete integration. ¹⁷

In 1964, American sociologist Everett C. Hughes revisited the idea of a North American economy, based on an integrated industrial system. ¹⁸ In the 1970s, John Redekop introduced the notion of continental subsystems. Too many of the macro-level theories of the bilateral relationship, he claimed, underestimated the distinct, sector-level interactions that dictated, if not determined, the nature and scope of Canadian–American relations. ¹⁹ In the 1980s, a working group from the Atlantic Council of the United States made a similar, albeit less theoretical, argument. ²⁰ And by the end of the decade, the originators of the Canadian–American Borderlands Project had also concluded that there was an arbitrariness to the geographical divide between Canada and the United States that contradicted the more natural north–south trajectory of the North American continent as a whole. ²¹ To some, then, Canada and America had evolved to become increasingly distinct from the old European world and were destined to cooperate and collaborate on the international stage.

There was, nevertheless, a renewed emphasis during this period on differences between the two countries. In the free trade debates of the mid-1980s, Canadian opponents of free trade argued that their values and priorities differed fundamentally from those of their American neighbours, and that further economic integration would inevitably push Canada down a slippery slope to cultural and (de facto) political absorption by the United States. ²² The country had “never been so threatened,” ²³ argued the leader of the opposition, John Turner. A few years after the ratification of the free trade agreement, the Canadian nationalist argument about value differences was powerfully affirmed by a landmark study by an American sociologist, Seymour Martin Lipset. Continental Divide: The Values and Interests of the United States and Canada reflected its author’s long-standing interest in how national values affected behaviour and institutions. Having recognized the obvious similarities between the two countries, Lipset argued that they nonetheless differed consistently in their basic organizing principles. Canada, he suggested, was “a more class-aware, elitist, law-abiding, statist, collectively-oriented, and particularistic (group-oriented) society than the United States.” In fact, he added, Canadians had become “the world’s oldest and most continuing un-Americans.” ²⁴ They were cautious economically while Americans took risks. Canadian society was a cultural mosaic; America was a melting pot. And Canadians were more elitist than their individualistic and egalitarian neighbours.

Half a century later, it was clear to many that the nationalists’ dire warnings about the economic and cultural implications of free trade had been overblown. Indeed, historian J.L. Granatstein went so far as to argue that the free trade debates had been the “last gasp” for anti-Americanism in Canada, and predicted that both elite and public thinking about the management of the bilateral relationship would be more level-headed and pragmatic in the new century. ²⁵ The 1990s’ blend of easy harmony and creeping indifference seemed to confirm this view. In the aftermath of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), political scientists Ronald Inglehart, Neil Nevitte, and Miguel Basanez used opinion research to demonstrate a convergence of basic political worldviews within North America. ²⁶ It followed that a post-NAFTA push for further bilateral or trilateral integration would not trigger the same kind of intense opposition.

Close cooperation in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks fostered a sense of community and common purpose, but the controversy over the George W. Bush administration’s push to war in Iraq provoked strong negative reactions in Canada. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was thus encouraged to suggest not only that the two countries had markedly different value systems but also to imply that Canada might have more in common with its European partners than with the United States. In this highly charged moment, many were receptive to the arguments of Canadian pollster Michael Adams, whose 2004 book, Fire and Ice, rejected the convergence thesis. Recalling Lipset’s work, Adams argued that the two societies had markedly different values and priorities and might actually be growing further apart. ²⁷ With Bush’s departure in 2008, however, both the post-Iraq outburst of anti-Americanism in Canada and the popularity of Adams’ divergence thesis receded. ²⁸

Reflecting on this stream of scholarship as a whole, the dominant theme over the last 20 years has been widespread acceptance of the two countries’ common destiny as North American partners, held together not only by extensive economic exchange but also by shared values and challenges. The original approach to understanding Canadian–American relations, which focused on the two countries either as individual state actors or as co-inhabitants of North America, seems to have been quietly rediscovered and renewed. After a brief hiatus in the mid-twentieth century, during which academic observers grappled with complex theoretical and analytical frameworks that focused on the two countries’ respective power and position within the international system, the field has apparently come back to the “continentalist” frame that characterized the pioneering works of Monro, Moffett, and McInnis. ²⁹ Canada and the United States will of course continue to be confronted with extra-regional opportunities and challenges, but the deep integration of the two economies and the evident convergence of priorities and values create powerful incentives for political leaders to focus on the maintenance of bilateral equilibrium. ³⁰ Concrete policy coordination proposals remain closely linked to questions of identity and values, and for the most part the expectation has been that while potentially divisive differences may persist, the underlying commonalities will provide for a certain baseline compatibility and predictability. ³¹ Thus, the first great debate over Canadian–American relations appears to be, at least for now, all but over.

Debate #2: Power and interdependence

The earliest writing on the question of power in the Canada–US relationship was concerned primarily with imperialism and the link between politics and everyday life. More specifically, in thinking about power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there existed a common working assumption that the United States dominated bilateral relations. The initial question, then, was whether such domination should be judged positively. Pioneers like Monro and Smith celebrated the United States’ economic and cultural penetration—and indeed betterment—of all that had been British North America prior to the American Revolution. Others were less enamoured with American traditions and hoped Canada would resist their encroachments. In 1929, the Canadian-born expert and critic of the American political system William Bennett Munro decried the United States’ influence on Canadians’ everyday lives. To him, Canada’s imperial ties did not hold the country back; the Empire’s regard for order and justice was superior to any other. ³²

The focus on imperialism declined in the 1930s and remained less common throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, for two reasons. First, as Canada became increasingly independent and less attached to Great Britain, Munro’s arguments lost some of their effect. Second, the relationship between President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King was particularly strong. After Roosevelt died, worldwide demand for Western unity to counter the Soviet menace and Canada’s temporarily influential global position made questions of the relative power of the two close allies less important. ³³

In the 1960s, however, Washington’s controversial approach to Vietnam caused power to re-emerge as a pivotal concern. In Canada, what had previously manifested itself as imperialist sentiment reappeared in the form of a nationalism that was often explicitly and passionately anti-American. James Minifie’s 1964 polemic Open at the Top: Reflections on U.S.–Canada Relations—a book based in large part on the English-born journalist’s experiences working as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Washington correspondent—was one of the first examples of such writing. ³⁴

In 1965—in the wake of severe tensions between the Diefenbaker and Kennedy governments—the Pearson government in Ottawa and the Johnson administration in Washington respectively assigned a former Canadian ambassador to the United States, Arnold Heeney, and a former American ambassador to Canada, Livingston Merchant, to develop a strategy to improve bilateral relations. Their report, Principles for Partnership, found that the Canadian–American relationship was unique. It was also growing stronger as the states became more interdependent. ³⁵ It followed, in their view, that the two countries should settle their differences quietly so as to avoid public disputes.

The suggestion was poorly received on both sides of the border. In the United States, a Maine congressman, Stanley Tupper, and an academic and public affairs consultant, Douglas L. Bailey, maintained that the United States had been primarily responsible for the deterioration of relations with Canada. Americans, they concluded, had failed to understand Canada as an independent state and to value and respect that capacity. ³⁶ In 1968 in Toronto, under the banner of the University League for Social Reform, a group of mostly left-leaning Canadian academics published the widely read An Independent Foreign Policy for Canada? One contributor, philosophy professor Charles Hanly, rejected the Canadian government’s approach to world affairs as “branch plant diplomacy” and criticized Ottawa for its refusal to think for itself on external issues. ³⁷ Like Minifie before him, Hanly proposed that Canada avoid becoming a victim of North American ideological convergence by doing exactly what Bailey and Tupper feared most: pursuing independence through neutralism.

The Merchant-Heeney Report also spawned a number of supporting studies. Canadian political scientist Peyton Lyon, writing what amounted to a dissenting opinion in the same volume, rejected Hanly’s argument and heralded “quiet diplomacy” as the best way to promote Canadian national interests. ³⁸ In 1971, having conducted a series of interviews with members of the Department of External Affairs in Ottawa, K.J. Holsti concluded that the two states were mutually dependent economically. ³⁹ Both Lyon and Holsti denied any impending American takeover of the western hemisphere while noting the political and economic opportunities that had become available to Canada thanks to its close association with the United States.

As the war in Vietnam came to an end, most political scientists seemed willing to take a more pragmatic view. There was little doubt, they concurred, that Canada and the United States had entered an era of “continental integration,” but, as scholars, many were disappointed with the lack of rigour in the research that had been used to suggest that Canada was being Americanized. After significant theoretical and empirical analysis, a group of prominent academics considered the concept of integration in detail. Most concluded that cooperation, and not necessarily domination, was characterizing the economic and, by implication, political bilateral relationship. In 1974, Andrew Axline published their papers as Continental Community? Independence and Integration in North America. The volume’s strongest selections explored the concept of the “disparate dyad”—the idea that two closely integrated yet unequal states might actually become more independent on account of their increasing interaction—and concluded that a more cohesive North American system would not necessarily reduce Canadian independence in world affairs. ⁴⁰

Four years later, in one of the most comprehensive studies of Canadian–American political relations, Roger Swanson portrayed the two countries as having achieved a state of “unprecedented interdependence.” ⁴¹ Canada and the United States had little choice but to overcome the structural impediments that complicated effective communication between their governments. Not much after, Charles Doran considered the relationship in a broader, global context and came to the same conclusion. ⁴²

On the whole, neither the fear-mongering opponents of integration nor the overly optimistic theorists of interdependence were convincing. Those who foresaw an American takeover of Canadian society pointed to virtually the same factors in the 1960s as their forerunners had nearly 100 years earlier, and failed to explain credibly why Canada had been able to maintain its independence for so long. On the other hand, the arguments of these early advocates of interdependence were generally speculative, and implied a degree of equality in the relationship that could not withstand close scrutiny.

Proponents of what one analyst has called “asymmetrical autonomy” ⁴³ offered a more realistic alternative. The United States and Canada, Professor Gerald Craig’s 1968 contribution to the United States and the External World series, used its readership’s assumed knowledge of US history as a platform upon which to present a Canadian perspective on North American relations. In considering Canada’s economic stature, Craig acknowledged the substantial disparity between the Canadian and American economies. But he also noted how, relative to the rest of the world, the Canadian financial situation was rather enviable. It was difficult to describe a relationship between two states so different in size and power as a partnership. Nonetheless, to deny the constructive history of Canadian–American collaboration and interaction would have been misleading. The relationship could therefore be understood best as one of unequal dependence. Both Canada and the United States relied on one another in the international system. The Canadians certainly needed the Americans more, but America needed Canada just the same. ⁴⁴

Craig’s perspective gained greater theoretical weight and notoriety when it was echoed in the work of two American political scientists. In 1974, Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye argued that while there was a clear asymmetry of dependence between the two countries, there was also a degree of mutual need and vulnerability. ⁴⁵ Similar conclusions were reached in studies by Carleton University political scientists John Sigler and Dennis Goresky, and by a former US State Department official, John Dickey. ⁴⁶ In 1977’s Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, Keohane and Nye further developed their interpretation, arguing that the exceptional interdependence between the two countries had created significant constraints on the exercise of US power through the formation of transnational and transgovernmental (or inter-bureaucratic) coalitions and the entrenchment of conflict-defusing bargaining norms. ⁴⁷

Political scientists continued to take up the question of power in a more theoretically sophisticated and wide-ranging manner in the 1980s. A series of studies sought to explain Canada’s foreign policy choices in terms of its power position, especially vis-à-vis the United States. ⁴⁸ In their 1983 book, Canada as a Principal Power, US-trained and Canada-based political scientists David Dewitt and John Kirton integrated concepts and theories from international relations to outline three perspectives of Canada’s foreign policy potential: a “peripheral dependence” view which saw Canada as an appendage to American empire; a “liberal-internationalist” approach which saw Canada as a middle power, advancing its interests through international institutions, often but not always in collaboration with the US; and a “complex neorealist” interpretation which saw Canada as having all of the tools to be an effective, genuinely independent international player. ⁴⁹ These categories resonated with well-established perspectives on Canada–US relations: Canada was alternatively powerless and dependent; moderately capable and generally dependent, but with offsetting sources of leverage; or strong and independent.

The end of the Cold War brought into sharp relief the sometimes-hidden effects of the global strategic context on Canada–US relations. Denis Stairs, for example, argued that the United States’ willingness to defer to Canada lessened after the early 1960s, with the declining importance of Canadian territory for US strategic defence, and deteriorated even further after the end of the Cold War, along with the declining importance of diplomatic and strategic allies for the world’s only remaining superpower. ⁵⁰ The events of 9/11 and the launching of the US-led global war on terror might have temporarily restored the old strategic interdependence of the early Cold War years, but the intense bilateral tensions of the 2000s suggest the need for a more nuanced conclusion.

None of the three perspectives outlined by Dewitt and Kirton still commands a strong base of support among Canada–US specialists. The peripheral dependence view has been undercut by recent exertions of Canadian autonomy, as in the dispute over the 2003 Iraq War. The liberal internationalist perspective struggles to explain the Chrétien government’s quiet withdrawal from, and the Harper government’s more direct rejection of, traditional multilateral commitments. The principal power school, never well rooted among academic experts, has receded further with the widespread recognition of Canada’s declining post-Cold War capacity and fading global influence, in spite of the Harper government’s rhetoric to the contrary. ⁵¹

There are, therefore, indications that this second great debate has also reached a settling point, if not necessarily a consensus. The old arguments, first articulated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and then re-examined with greater forcefulness and intellectual rigour in the 1960s and 1970s, have resulted in a compromise. Few still contend that Canada is utterly dependent on the US, or that Canada’s annexation by the US is inevitable. None today would argue that the two states are equals, and few would maintain that Canada is or could soon become a genuinely independent actor, in the sense that it could make its own policies or steer its own international course without worrying about the reaction in Washington. ⁵² Recent studies have tended to reaffirm the basic “asymmetrical autonomy” thesis developed by Craig, and refined by Keohane and Nye, albeit in subtly—but often importantly—different formulations. Brian Bow’s The Politics of Linkage, for example, starts with Keohane and Nye’s argument about the implications of asymmetrical interdependence, but argues that since the early 1970s US self-restraint has been driven mostly by domestic politics, not by bargaining norms. Some, like the authors of Canada and the United States: Ambivalent Allies, follow Doran’s argument that power explains the two countries’ different roles in the international system, and that this in turn shapes their bilateral relations. Patrick Lennox’s At Home and Abroad, on the other hand, argues that it is the profound asymmetry of interdependence in the bilateral context that shapes Canada’s international choices. ⁵³ There is no doubt today that the great disparity of power between the two countries has important effects on the relationship, but that asymmetry does not necessarily translate into domination; each side may have its own leverage, which stems from factors like economic interdependence, transnational coalitions, and legal or institutional constraints. Thus, rather than debating whether Canada is thoroughly dependent or independent, contemporary analysts are concerned with teasing out exactly when, where, and how Canada can exercise a limited form of autonomy within the overall context of bilateral asymmetry.

Debate #3: Cooperation and conflict

The third significant debate within the scholarly literature on Canada–US relations, and the only one that remained largely implicit until after the First World War, is concerned with whether the bilateral relationship is characterized primarily by cooperation or conflict. In 1921, the University of Toronto’s George M. Wrong highlighted the overwhelming commonalities among English-speakers in North America. ⁵⁴ In 1925, in a speech specifically designed to improve relations between the British Commonwealth and the United States, Wrong’s former colleague Robert Falconer agreed, stressing the “community of ideals and manners” that was shared by citizens of the two countries. ⁵⁵ Herbert Bolton’s conclusions were similar, as were those of Henry Angus and Edgar McInnis. ⁵⁶ The entire Carnegie Series—a product of the internationalist spirit of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s—tended to reflect these same ideas.

Nevertheless, the view of the relationship as overwhelmingly positive and cooperative was never unanimous. In 1929, one of the first comprehensive studies of the history of Canada and the United States focused almost exclusively on conflict. The introduction to Hugh Keenleyside’s Canada and the United States: Some Aspects of the History of the Republic and the Dominion was clear: “Indeed,” claimed historian W.P.M. Kennedy, “it is not too much to say that the very width of those things which the United States and Canada have in common has been influential in befogging the past, in charging the present with friction, and in loading the future with apprehension.” ⁵⁷ Unlike Wrong and Falconer, whose histories of North America began before the Seven Years’ War and stressed the importance of language to the cooperativeness of Canadian and American societies, Keenleyside’s chronology opened with the American Revolution, thus creating an impression that Canada and the United States were products of international conflict. While Falconer had noted that Canadian–American disputes had generally been settled diplomatically, Keenleyside emphasized the hard feelings that typified bilateral relations through the War of 1812. Admittedly, Keenleyside’s conclusion was hopeful, and predicted improved relations for the future, but the final chapters of the monograph seemed detached from the analysis that preceded them. ⁵⁸

Much of the early literature therefore presented a dichotomy. Some analysts characterized the history of Canada and the United States as one never-ending conflict, while others saw the peaceful resolution of their disputes as evidence of their exceptional ability to cooperate. With time, a third group of writers claimed to see both sides. In 1937, American historian James Callahan’s American Foreign Policy in Canadian Relations conceded the United States’ desire to conquer British North America during the War of 1812. After the Treaty of Ghent, however, Washington had become more tolerant of its northern neighbour. And, in time, Canadians came to feel the same way. By the early twentieth century, with the establishment of the International Joint Commission, disputes were consistently settled through negotiation and, when necessary, arbitration, setting an example for the rest of the world. ⁵⁹

Callahan’s approach was endorsed by the pre-eminent historian of the Canadian military Charles Stacey, in a 1953 booklet for the Canadian Historical Association. ⁶⁰ But political scientist James Eayrs, Stacey’s colleague at the University of Toronto, was more critical. If Canada and the United States were “friends,” he argued, it was “in spite of history, not because of it.” The two countries had been enemies for most of their existence. The only reason that their conflicts had rarely turned violent was that both states had learned to view one another as “friendly foreign powers,” co-existing within a greater international system. ⁶¹

The ability of Canada and the United States to avoid many of the difficulties in the twentieth century that had plagued their relationship in the earlier days was addressed repeatedly over the next decades. In 1966, a Canadian journalist, Bruce Hutchison, credited the thoughts and actions of the government in Washington. The White House understood that its relationship with Ottawa was often viewed by the rest of the world as evidence of its ability, or lack thereof, to exercise competent global leadership, and it behaved accordingly. ⁶² In contrast, Holsti attributed the lack of conflict to what he called a “diplomatic culture,” characterized by a shared language, free exchange of information, relative ease of political access, a series of long-standing unofficial understandings, and a variety of institutions for joint consultation and policy making. ⁶³ In 1974, John Holmes offered a third interpretation, arguing that the key to peace had been the Canadians’ ability to withstand increasing American global economic power. ⁶⁴

Seven years later, Holmes presented a more comprehensive explanation of his thinking in a series of lectures at the University of Toronto’s Trinity College. He noted how the causes of the conflicts in the Canadian–American relationship of the late 1970s and early 1980s were hardly different from those of a century or two before. Canadians remained overly concerned with asserting their autonomy, and Americans were still too ignorant of events taking place outside of their own borders. Holmes did not foresee significant change. There was a certain inevitability to Canadian–American relations that had proven itself over time. ⁶⁵ Recent histories of the relationship have similarly highlighted the steady oscillation between amity and discord. ⁶⁶

Controversy remains, but it revolves around the narrower question of whether recent developments have increased the overall level of conflict, and whether any such change might be long lasting. Charles Doran argued in the early 1980s that the United States’ relative decline as a global power made Washington less forgiving of Canadian provocations, and intensified bilateral tensions. ⁶⁷ America rebounded during the late 1980s and in the 1990s, yet most analysts agreed that it emerged less willing to pay the costs of global leadership and less tolerant of free-riding by allies and trade partners. The financial crisis and protracted recession that hobbled the United States after 2009 has again raised concerns about more conflictual relations, encouraging some Canadian observers to argue for reducing reliance on the US and seeking new partners among fast-growing economies like China, India, and Brazil. ⁶⁸

Also beginning in the early 1980s, political scientists considered the impact of domestic political changes in the United States on bilateral diplomacy. In Life with Uncle, Holmes argued that because of Congress’ new assertiveness after Vietnam and Watergate, the US was “increasingly incapable of conducting rational relations with any foreign country.” ⁶⁹ His argument was echoed in the memoirs of Canada’s ambassador to the United States during the 1980s, Allan Gotlieb, who recounted with obvious frustration the way that, even when bilateral relations were good, the fragmentation of power in Washington could impede cooperation on issues like softwood lumber or acid rain. ⁷⁰

Edelgard Mahant and Graeme Mount surveyed the archival record in the US and found that American policymakers had “no policy” on how to manage the bilateral relationship. ⁷¹ Some hoped that a reassertion of the “imperial presidency” after 9/11 might override these domestic political obstacles and smooth the way for bilateral cooperation in the new millennium. But the most prominent new forms of concentrated executive branch power on security issues—the Department of Homeland Security and US Northern Command (NORTHCOM)—turned out to be disturbingly indifferent to Canadian sensitivities and interests. Most observers agree that while the number and intensity of conflicts have not necessarily increased dramatically over the last decade, neither has there been much interest in reciprocal concessions that might allow for the kind of intensive cooperation seen during the Cold War years. ⁷²

Reflections and new directions

Looking back from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, some of the early debates over Canada–US relations appear, at best, implausible. It is stunning that there were credible analysts in the late nineteenth century that worried about a slide back to the militarized confrontation that led to the War of 1812. Goldwin Smith’s call for the US annexation of Canada is equally off-putting. And those who looked forward to a natural partnership based on equality and common purpose now seem hopelessly naïve. Over time, such extreme perspectives have been set aside, and there has been a quiet convergence within each of the three great debates. There is general agreement that Canada and the US are tightly tied to one another by culture (and the institutions that go with it) and by geography (and the economic ties that go with it). Each has been shaped by the legacies left by the European immigrants that settled them, but together they stand apart from the rest of the world as uniquely (upper) North American societies. ⁷³ Bilateral economic and social ties are the core of the relationship, and the asymmetry of the two states’ interdependence sets up the basic power relationship—an “unequal co-dependency.” ⁷⁴ The actual leverage that each has in bilateral bargaining is shaped by a variety of factors, and likely to vary widely from one issue to another. And the relationship is characterized by both cooperation and conflict, with the pattern over time suggesting a steady oscillation between crisis and correction.

Nonetheless, it is worth recognizing that the perceived “extremes” tend to shift over time. A number of developments that would have been dismissed as unthinkable a century ago—or even just 30 years ago—have come to pass. Moreover, they have since been accepted, are now generally taken for granted, and some analysts now even portray them as inevitable. A free trade deal, once thought to be an untouchable “third rail” for Canadian politicians, was signed and ratified, and has since faded into the background. The Canadian military has been thoroughly integrated with its American counterpart, and the two governments are currently exploring closer police cooperation to support a common security perimeter. These developments are compatible with a variety of theories and periodizations; the free trade agreement, for example, has been interpreted by one group of authors as a reflection of Canada’s (continuing) autonomy and by another as its subordination to an “external constitution.” ⁷⁵ Perhaps, then, the problem is not with the theories but rather with the questions they were built to answer.

We therefore conclude with suggestions about some new core debates which probe more aggressively into the grey areas and sharpen the focus on post-Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, post-9/11 policy challenges. Perhaps by reformulating the core questions, analysts can break out of old impasses and reinvigorate the field, without losing their grip on key insights from the classics. First, how do the two societies think about who they are, and how they relate to one another? More specifically, how have changes to communications technology, demography, and immigration affected political discourse and priorities within and between the two societies? Stephen Azzi’s recent history of the bilateral relationship, which emphasizes the second half of the period under consideration here, is a good example of the more balanced and nuanced way we think about Canada–US relations today. ⁷⁶ Azzi tracks the politicization and depoliticization of Canadian nationalism and its impact on bilateral diplomacy over the decades, providing useful perspective on and context for the mix of ambivalence and indifference that characterizes contemporary Canada–US relations. ⁷⁷ Recent social science research, based on opinion surveys, has led to a variety of insights into the diversity and complexity of Canadians’ ideas about their country’s place in the world and the way it relates to the United States, including unexpected differences between anglophones and francophones, westerners and those from other regions, men and women, different generational cohorts, and self-identifying ethnic and religious groups. ⁷⁸ Although it had yet to be published when we completed this article, Robert Bothwell’s “unified” history of Canada and the United States frames some of these changes in a longer, historical perspective. ⁷⁹

Second, how should analysts understand the complex mechanics by which policies are coordinated (or not)? When and how are particular policy frictions resolved through formal agreements, informal understandings between political leaders, or technical fixes managed by transgovernmental networks? And how does this multi-level governance framework affect the struggle between interest groups within each society? This approach recalls the focus on transgovernmental and transnational relations in Keohane and Nye’s path-breaking work in the 1970s, and that legacy is built upon in recent work by Geoffrey Hale, in his 2012 book, So Near Yet So Far, and in a 2010 volume he co-edited with Monica Gattinger, Borders and Bridges. ⁸⁰ Hale’s approach begins with the recognition that bilateral policy coordination is driven by cross-border networks and shifting coalitions, but adds new layers of complexity by also considering domestic political cultures, institutions, and international legal and regulatory regimes. ⁸¹

Finally, how do bilateral relations relate to broader global dynamics? How is the Canada–US relationship constrained or channelled by international treaties and institutions, disembodied pressures like globalization, or various transnational actors like non-governmental organizations or terrorist groups? Doran’s work in the 1980s represents a useful template for thinking more systematically about the bilateral relationship’s embedding in a broader global context, but the conception of the context itself must be updated to include economic globalization and the institutionalization of trade and investment, US hegemony and uncertain relations with potential challengers like China and Russia, and the growing importance of non-state actors like transnational advocacy groups and terrorist organizations. ⁸² Jonathan Paquin and Patrick James’ 2014 volume, Game Changer, is a genuinely useful updating of our perspective on Canada–US security cooperation after 9/11. ⁸³ Contributors to the volume recognize the bilateral partnership’s emplacement within the (highly contested) trilateral space created by NAFTA, and—more important—consistently focus on the concrete incentives facing political leaders trying to solve complex global-scale policy “problems” under pressure from narrow-minded and impatient domestic audiences. From a more historical perspective, Michael Behiels and Reginald Stuart’s Transnationalism explains how borders, be they real or imagined, have and have not affected Canada–US relations over the last two centuries. The book’s inclusion of a section on First Nations is evidence of how much still needs to be written on North American indigenous peoples’ shared and distinct experiences and the impact of those experiences on North America’s place in the world. ⁸⁴

These three new sets of questions are no less daunting than those that drove the original great debates, but they are more tractable as guidelines for teaching and research: They are premised on complexity and contingency, rather than theoretical or normative absolutes. They are concerned with concretely measurable phenomena, rather than metaphysical abstractions. And, while they set up interesting comparisons with the past, they are also directly relevant to some of the two countries’ most pressing contemporary policy controversies. The challenge for students of Canada–US relations today is to continue to unearth insights from the original great debates, but also to question and revise the broader debates themselves so that they can develop a more robust understanding of the relationship past, present, and future.