Peter Andreas
The Mexicanization
of the
US-Canada border
Asymmetric interdependence in a changing security context
INTRODUCTION
It is perhaps paradoxical that the prominence of borders and border controls in North America has sharply increased in an era otherwise defined by
the breaking down of borders through continental economic integration.
Indeed, borders and border control politics define the relations between the
NAFTA (North American free trade agreement) partners.1 What began as
US drug and immigration control anxieties, mostly focused southward,
have now been extended northward, as US border security worries have
shifted in the post-9/11 era to focus on the potential entry of terrorists and
weapons of mass destruction. The result, I argue, has been a partial
“Mexicanization” of the US-Canada border and cross-border relations. In
the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Canada has experienced the kind of
intense US political scrutiny and alarmed media attention that has long
been familiar to Mexico. The politicization of the border has unsettled the
traditional special US-Canada relationship and brought to an end what had
Peter Andreas is assistant professor of political science and international studies at Brown
University.
1 For a recent account, see Peter Andreas and Thomas J. Biersteker, eds., The Rebordering of
North America: Integration and Exclusion in a New Security Context (New York: Routledge,
2003). Also, see David G. Haglund’s thoughtful analysis, “North American cooperation in an
era of homeland security,” Orbis (Fall 2003):675-91.
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| Peter Andreas |
been a mutually convenient low-maintenance approach to border control
matters.
The Canadian government has attempted to resist and reverse the
Mexicanization process, making great efforts (with some success) to differentiate and distance Canada from Mexico. Yet despite how very different
the two countries are in most respects, they inescapably have something
profoundly important in common: both have a long and porous border that
is increasingly viewed as a security concern by the United States, and both
are increasingly dependent on keeping their border open economically.
After the US border security crackdowns following the 9/11 attacks, Canada
and Mexico have become more painfully aware of the risks and vulnerabilities that have come with asymmetric interdependence: they are far more
economically tied to and dependent on the United States than the other way
around, and thus are much more vulnerable to security-related disruptions
in cross-border flows. This growing asymmetry, which has deepened and
accelerated under NAFTA, is the underlying material context that structures
their relations with the United States, limiting and constraining their policy options and giving Washington substantial leverage.2 In the following
pages, I trace the changing practice and politics of US-Canada border controls, arguing that the politicization of the US-Canada border has taken on
some of the characteristics of US-Mexico border relations. While enormous
differences between the two borders remain, what is most striking (and
most disturbing for many Canadians) are their growing similarities.
DEPOLITICIZED US-CANADA BORDER CONTROLS
IN THE PRE-9/11 ERA
US-Canada border controls during most of the 20th century can be characterized as low-intensity, low-profile, and a low priority.3 Border control
issues rarely took centre stage in bilateral relations. This minimalist and
2 This does not mean there is no room to maneuver or that the policy choices are simply
imposed and predetermined. Frank Pfetsch and Alice Landau argue that negotiations in a context of structural asymmetry can produce mutually beneficial outcomes. See “Symmetry and
asymmetry in international negotiation,” International Organization 5 (2000): 21-42.
3 The most prominent 20th century exception was the prohibition era. For instance, Ben Kerr of
Hamilton, ON—“the King of the Rumrunners”—was on the US coast guard’s “most wanted”
list. C.W. Hunt, Whisky and Ice: The Saga of Ben Kerr, Canada’s Most Daring Rumrunner
(Toronto: Dundrum Press, 1995).
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low-visibility approach to border policing was mutually convenient and tolerated, and persisted into the 1990s.4 The boom in legal commercial flows
across the border in the post-NAFTA era overshadowed illegal flows, including the smuggling of drugs, cigarettes, migrants, and arms. The clandestine side of the expanding US-Canada trading relationship was largely kept
out of the national political spotlight and never turned into a significant
source of cross-border tension. Both countries exercised mutual restraint
to avoid politicizing illegal border crossings while at the same time expanding and deepening cross-border law enforcement cooperation. Thus, at the
same time as Washington frequently chastised Mexico for being the primary trans-shipment point for cocaine entering the United States, Ottawa
quietly accepted the fact that the United States was the primary trans-shipment point for cocaine entering Canada (loud complaints would probably
do little good anyway). Moreover, the United States was the primary source
of unregistered arms in Canada, which many Canadians considered a security threat but grudgingly accepted as the price of living next to the world’s
largest arms producer—a country glutted with arms and regulated by much
looser gun control laws.5 At the same time, Canada, especially British
Columbia, became a substantial exporter of high-potency marijuana to its
southern neighbour.6 A small but growing number of illegal migrants also
entered the US through Canada.
The most lucrative clandestine cross-border activity in the 1990s was a
circular cigarette smuggling business, often routed through minimally
policed Indian communities that strategically straddled the border (the
Akwesasne reserve and the St. Regis reservation on the Ontario/Québec4 As described by the assistant chief of the border patrol in the Spokane sector in Washington
state, “In the past the [northern] border wasn’t an issue”; the border was “more of an afterthought.” Quoted in Dean Paton, “Along the other US border, problems rise,” Christian Science
Monitor, 22 September 2002.
5 One undercover Canadian investigation in 1994 found that most of the guns purchased on the
black market were smuggled into Canada from the United States. Clayton Mark, “To curb violence, Canada tries to block guns from US,” Christian Science Monitor, 14 March 1995.
6 A cover story in Forbes calls marijuana “Canada’s most valuable agricultural product—bigger
than wheat, cattle, or timber.” Quentin Hardy, “Inside dope,” Forbes, 10 November 2003.
Canadian officials calculate that US$4 to $7 billion worth of Canadian marijuana is sold in the
United States annually. DeNeen L. Brown, “Canada may allow small amounts of marijuana,”
Washington Post, 28 May 2003, a1.
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New York state border, and the Kahnawake reserve in Québec). Not unlike
the prohibition era, the smuggling incentives were overwhelming, given
the large differential between US and Canadian cigarette taxes.7 In 1994,
the Canadian government calculated that one third of all cigarette cartons
bought in Canada had been smuggled in (in contrast to only 1 out of 176
cartons in 1985).8 Virtually all of these contraband cigarettes had been
exported to the United States and then smuggled back into the country—
with Canadian cigarette manufacturers apparently well aware that the skyrocketing US market for their product was fictional.9 Some new border controls initiatives were launched, new technologies were deployed, and new
resources were allocated by Ottawa in response to rising concerns over such
smuggling, but these were relatively modest steps considering the sheer
size of the border and the volume of border crossings.
Meanwhile, conveniently for Canada and the bilateral relationship, US
border worries and policing resources focused southward. The contrast to
the lack of concern over controls at the northern border was dramatic. As
Stephen Flynn has noted, “[b]efore Sept. 11, half of the northern border’s
126 official ports of entry were left unguarded at night. Typically, orange
cones were simply put up in the center of the roadway to signal the border
crossing was closed.”10 Tellingly, there were more US border patrol agents
in Brownsville, TX, than along the entire US-Canada border by the end of
the 1990s. And indeed, in the rush to deploy more agents to the US-Mexico
border, US agents were often transferred south from their northern border
posts. By 2001, there were only 334 US agents assigned to police the 4,000
mile-long northern border compared to 9,000 agents on the 2,000-milelong US-Mexico border. Canada made great efforts to remain outside the
orbit of US border anxieties. Writing shortly before the terrorist attack on
9/11, Papademetriou and Meyers note that “Canada has been largely
insulated from America’s often wild and unpredictable tilting at the
7 Tax rates had been roughly similar until around 1983.
8 Ruth Jamieson, Nigel South, and Ian Taylor, “Economic liberalization and cross-border crime:
The North American free trade area and Canada’s border with the USA, part I,” International
Journal of the Sociology of Law 26 (1998): 256.
9 See Margaret E. Beare, “Organized corporate criminality: Corporate complicity in tobacco
smuggling,” in Margaret E. Beare, ed. Critical Reflections on Transnational Organized Crime,
Money Laundering and Corruption (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 191.
10 Stephen Flynn, America the Vulnerable (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 187.
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windmills of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and more recently, foreign terrorism—although not without a great deal of effort and skilled
diplomacy.”11
One downside of this general neglect of the border was the failure to
sufficiently invest in much-needed basic infrastructure and upkeep for the
ports of entry to function well. This situation was tolerable and manageable
as long as most cargo and passengers were simply waved through with minimal scrutiny in a context of low security concerns. Given the anaemic
inspection capacity at the border, Canada reacted with great alarm when a
provision in the 1996 illegal reform and immigration responsibility act
called for documenting the entry and exit of all non-US citizens at border
crossings. The provision was originally intended to target only the USMexico border, but much to the dismay of the Canadian government, was
extended to include the northern border. Canadian policymakers, border
communities, and business lobbies quickly mobilized to successfully block
implementation of the new law, arguing that it would cause massive disruptions in cross-border trade and travel.
The episode that most threatened to unsettle this mutually convenient
oversight of border controls was the Ahmed Ressam affair in December
1999. Ressam, an Algerian national who had been living in Canada for five
years, was arrested after attempting to enter Washington state on a ferry
from Victoria, BC, with a trunk full of explosive material. His capture was
“the border-control equivalent of winning the lottery.”12 Ressam happened
to be driving the last car off the ferry, and therefore the inspector at the
booth was not in a rush to keep the traffic moving. Ressam also happened
to be sick with malaria, and was therefore sweating heavily. When border
inspectors opened Ressam’s trunk and found large quantities of a powdery
substance along with other bomb making materials, they were so focused
on counter-narcotics rather than counterterrorism that they thought they
had made a drug bust. Ressam was almost let go when the explosives tested negative for drugs. Only then did it occur to law enforcement officials
to also test for explosives.
11 Demetrios Papademetriou and Deborah Waller Meyers, “Introduction: Overview, context, and
a vision for the future,” in Papademetriou and Meyers, Caught in the Middle: Border
Communities in an Era of Globalization (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace, 2001), 36.
12 Flynn, America the Vulnerable, 137.
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The political ripple effects from the Ressam affair marked the beginning of the new politicization of border control issues in the bilateral relationship. The incident prompted a series of hearings in the US congress
on northern border security, and unleashed the first barrage of attacks in
the US media charging that Canada was soft on terrorism, especially after
it was revealed that Ressam had lived for years in Canada as a refugee applicant. The Washington Times quoted unnamed US officials on its front page
claiming that “Canada’s soft laws on political asylum opened a back door”
for Ressam. In the Los Angeles Times, commentator Edward Luttwak
charged that in Canada, “security controls are famously lax because politically correct Canadians do not differentiate between 76-year old Madame
Dupont coming to visit her grandchildren and bearded young men from
Islamic countries.”13 Such highly charged finger-pointing would become
much more common and pronounced in the aftermath of the terrorist
attacks on 11 September 2001.
T H E P O L I T I C I Z AT I O N O F U S - C A N A D A B O R D E R C O N T R O L S
I N T H E P O S T- 9 / 1 1 E R A
Although Canadians have long complained of being ignored and taken for
granted by the United States (treated as if the border did not exist and
Canada was the 51st state), after 9/11 they quickly discovered that the only
thing worse than no attention is negative attention. Marking and maintaining the border had been such a low priority that it had famously been
dubbed “the longest undefended border in the world.” This openness,
which had historically been a source of mutual pride and even celebration,
was suddenly a source of high anxiety. Canada found itself in the awkward
and unfamiliar position of being perceived as a potential security threat.
The porosity of the border would now become highly politicized and
intensely scrutinized, giving Canada a heavy dose of the kind of negative
attention in the US media and in Washington policy debates that Mexico
had long experienced and grown accustomed to.
Canadians breathed a collective sigh of relief when it turned out (contrary to some initial media reports) that none of the 19 hijackers entered the
United States from their country—a point that Canadian officials made
sure to emphasize repeatedly. Nevertheless, the US-Canada border was a
13 Quoted in Andrew Phillips, “Border crackdown,” Maclean’s, 10 January 2002, 22.
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ready-made political target for those who blamed lax border controls for
America’s vulnerability to terrorism. The openness of the US-Canada border became a political prop. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) held up a rubber cone at a congressional hearing on northern border security in late
2001 to show what meets those who arrive at some checkpoints after 10
pm. “This is America’s security at our border crossings,” he said. “America
can’t effectively combat terrorism if it doesn’t control its borders.”14
Although the focus was the US-Canada border and the issue was terrorism,
the new border security discourse echoed the older and more familiar drug
and immigration control discourse that has characterized US border relations
with Mexico.
The relabelling of Canada and the border as a security threat even
entered the realm of Hollywood entertainment. A special post-9/11 episode
of a popular television series, The West Wing, focused on the infiltration of
terrorists who had sneaked into the United States across the “VermontOntario” border. Apparently nobody told the scriptwriters that there is no
such border, since Vermont actually shares a border with Québec. (This
mix-up, while probably not even noticed by most viewers, became a source
of many jokes in Canada about how geographically challenged their southern neighbours were.)
In the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the US congress
pushed to triple the number of border agents deployed to the northern border, and national guard troops were also sent to help with patrols and
inspections at border ports of entry. The coast guard was instructed to stop
all boats crossing the Great Lakes and escort gas and oil tankers. Along with
new enforcement personnel, new surveillance equipment has arrived. New
cameras with night-vision lenses have been installed along some portions
of the border and a satellite tracking system has also been used to detect
unauthorized entries. There are also initial signs of militarizing the border:
five US air and marine bases are being established along the border. The
first base opened in August 2004 in Bellingham, WA and by the end of
2005 is expected to have 69 pilots, marine and law enforcement officers, a
plane, speedboat, and two helicopters. A second base was scheduled to be
opened in late 2004 in Plattsburgh, NY. “We’re closing off both ends, then
we’ll fill in the middle of the States,” Gary Bracken, communications director
14 Portland Press Herald, Maine, 4 October 2001.
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for the US Office of Air and Marine Operations, told the Montreal Gazette, 27
August 2004. “We’re working with partners in the US and Canada to curb illegal activity all along the border.” The other three bases will be near Detroit, MI,
Grand Forks; ND; and Great Falls, MO. Similar bases have operated along the
US-Mexico border for years, but are new to the US-Canada border.
Nevertheless, the deterrent value of these new US border security
measures remains questionable. Given that a far larger border enforcement presence along the southern US border has failed to keep out hundreds of thousands of illegal entries every year, it is unclear how a much
smaller force along the country’s much longer northern border would keep
out a handful of determined terrorists. But just as the border enforcement
build-up along the southern US border had a politically useful placebo
effect in the 1990s, the same may now be true of the new build-up along
the northern US border.
New security measures have also been put in place on the Canadian
side of the line. Immediately following the terrorist attacks, Ottawa ordered
a high state of alert at border crossings. Since then, it has enhanced the
level of security at airports, added new funding for detection technologies
and personnel, initiated legislation to combat the financing of terrorism,
and frozen the assets of known terrorist groups. Two thousand officers of
the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were also deployed to border patrol and
counterterrorism tasks. Tougher immigration control measures have
included the introduction of a fraud-resistant resident card for new immigrants, increased detention capacity and deportation activity, greater security screening for refugee claimants, and a tightening of the visa regime—
including adding a requirement that Saudi and Malaysian visitors obtain
visas. The most substantial changes in Canadian law have been the 2001
antiterrorism act, and the 2002 public safety act, which have given new surveillance and enforcement powers to police and security agencies.
Not unlike their Mexican counterparts, Canadian officials have attempted to impress and appease Washington with new security initiatives (some
more symbolically than instrumentally useful), while at the same time
repeatedly emphasizing the importance of national sovereignty and policymaking autonomy and trying to avoid the impression that their policy
changes reflect conforming to US pressures and expectations. For example,
signalling that Canada would not simply cave in to US pressures when
informed of Washington’s plans to tighten border security, Prime Minister
Jean Chrétien told reporters in October 2001 that “the laws of Canada will
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be passed by the parliament of Canada.”15 Similarly, former Canadian immigration minister Elinor Caplan insisted that US-Canada policy discussions
be about information sharing (such as visa screening and pre-clearance of
flights abroad and sharing passenger information prior to flight arrivals)
rather than policy harmonization: “Let there not be any misunderstanding.
Canadian laws will be made right here in the Canadian parliament.”16
Nevertheless, the incentives under conditions of asymmetrical interdependence are clear: either take stronger measures to enhance border security or risk a unilateral US hardening of the border, with potentially devastating economic consequences. Canadians interpreted a post-9/11 warning
by secretary of state Colin Powell as a thinly veiled threat: “Some nations
need to be more vigilant against terrorism at their borders if they want their
relationship with the US to remain the same.”17
The enormous economic costs from any security-related disruptions in
border flows became immediately evident in the wake of the 9/11 bombings. US border inspectors were put on a level 1 alert, defined as a “sustained, intensive, antiterrorism operation.” This immediately created enormous havoc at the border, given that Canada and the United States conduct
US$1.3 billion in trade per day, most of which is shipped by truck across the
border. Some 40,000 commercial shipments and 300,000 people cross
the 4,000 mile-long US-Canada border daily. In the days following the
attacks, delays for trucks hauling cargo across the border increased from
one or two minutes to between 10 and 15 hours, stranding parts, shipments,
and perishable goods. Trucks were backed up for 36 kilometres at the
Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor and Detroit—the single busiest border crossing point in the world (27 percent of US-Canada trade crosses the
bridge). The auto industry was particularly hard hit by the border enforcement squeeze. Automobile companies, many of which manufacture parts
in Ontario and ship them to US assembly plants on a cost-efficient, just-intime basis, were particularly vulnerable. Due to post-9/11 parts shortages,
Ford closed an engine plant in Windsor and a vehicle plant in Detroit.
But while both countries suffered from the sudden border security
crackdown, the costs of such disruptions are much higher for Canada than
15 Jessica Reaves, “Should we keep them out?” Time, 11 October 2001.
16 Howard Adelman, “Governance, immigration policy, and security: Canada and the United
States Post-9/11,” in John Tirman, ed., The Maze of Fear (New York: New Press, 2004), 111.
17 Toronto Sun, 20 September 2001.
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for the United States. While about 25 percent of US trade goes to Canada,
87 percent of Canada’s trade is US-bound. Even more importantly, foreign
trade represents a much greater percentage of the Canadian economy than
it does of the American economy. Forty percent of Canada’s GDP is tied to
exports to the United States, while only 2.5 percent of US GDP is tied to
exports to Canada. Although many have pointed to the cross-border interdependence of the automobile industry as evidence of mutual vulnerability
to border shut-downs, there is little reason to believe that the industry
would not eventually respond to continued border disruptions by simply
moving Canadian-based parts manufacturing plants south of the border—
eliminating Canada’s single most important source of exports to the United
States.
No longer able to quietly ignore the border as was the case in the pre9/11 era, US and Canadian policymakers are now ambitiously trying to have
it both ways: create a border that performs as a better security barrier and
as a business-friendly economic bridge at the same time. This goal is clearly articulated in the “smart borders” agreement between Canada and the
United States, signed in December 2001. Director of homeland security
Tom Ridge and deputy prime minister John Manley signed a 32-point
action plan designed to “enhance security of our shared border while facilitating the legitimate flow of people and goods.”18 Meeting with Prime
Minister Jean Chrétien at the Detroit-Windsor border crossing, President
George W. Bush similarly declared, “This great and peaceful border must
be open to business, must be open to people—and it’s got to be closed to
terrorists and criminals.”19 To facilitate “low risk” border crossers, the
NEXUS program along the border allows frequent travelers who have
undergone background checks to quickly cross through designated border
ports of entry. Those enrolled in the program receive a computerized photo
identification card that can be electronically scanned at border crossings on
dedicated lanes. A similar program, the free and secure trade program, is
being put in place to ease truck congestion at border ports of entry. Canada
and the United States are also launching a joint NEXUS program for air
travelers that includes an evaluation of iris recognition biometric technology at the Ottawa and Montreal international airports.
18 White House, “Summary of smart border action plan status,” 9 September 2002.
19 Kathleen Millar, “FAST processing at the border,” U.S. Customs Today, October 2002.
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At least three potential future US-Canada border control trajectories
can be identified. At one extreme, there could be a substantial unilateral US
hardening of the border, with security essentially trumping all other considerations—the equivalent of imposing a security tariff on all cross-border
flows. The spectre of creating such a “fortress America” haunts Canadian
policymakers and business leaders alike. At the other extreme would be a
full-blown process of multilateral policy harmonization and a “pooling of
sovereignty” similar to the European Schengen system—where common
visa and asylum policies, a shared information system, and standardized
border procedures provide a common security perimeter. Some variant of
this Europeanization option—the “Schengenization” of North America—is
enthusiastically promoted by major Canadian business interests. Most
Canadian officials, on the other hand, favour more incremental and piecemeal border security measures rather than embracing an entirely new border security paradigm. Many in Canada consider the European solution to
be heresy, partly because of fears that Europeanization in the North
American context would in practice actually mean Americanization, with
Canada simply adopting US policy approaches and preferences.
Based on current trends, the more likely scenario is a compromise
position somewhere in the murky middle: a continuation of smart bordertype initiatives involving a mixture of enhanced border security collaborations and partial policy convergence. This includes a further extension of
border controls beyond the physical borderline and more intensive utilization of new high-tech cargo tracking systems, inspection technologies, and
traffic management strategies. Although some of the initiatives to build a
more technologically advanced border control system were already in place
before 9/11, both the pace and the ambition of the construction project have
increased. These initiatives could eventually produce a de facto continental
security perimeter, but without the formal trappings and highly institutionalized and bureaucratized nature of the European model. The viability of
this border compromise position, however, has yet to be tested. It is not at
all clear that it would withstand the fallout from multiple terrorist incidents,
especially if such incidents are directly linked to a perceived failure of USCanada border controls.
CONCLUSION
Tensions and conflicts over border control issues have long been defining
features of US-Mexico relations. The same is now increasingly true of US-
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Canada relations. Before 9/11, US-Canada border control-related issues
were generally handled in a low-profile, low-visibility, and depoliticized
manner out of the public and media eye. After 9/11, however, border control matters have become much more high-profile, visible, and politicized—
in short, more Mexicanized. The main US worry is that the expansive commercial cross-border networks and routes (both legal and illegal) can now
be exploited to smuggle terrorists and weapons of mass destruction into the
United States.20 Traditional border law enforcement issues have therefore
been elevated to security issues. One consequence is that while travelers
entering the United States from Canada once viewed the experience as little more than passing through a highway toll booth, more intensive US
scrutiny has often made it a less predictable, more time-consuming, and for
some—particularly landed Canadian immigrants—more uncomfortable
border crossing process.
The relabelling of the US-Canada border as a security threat—a process
I have characterized as Mexicanization—has involved heightened US political attention and media coverage, and the deployment of more border
enforcement and surveillance resources and technologies. Mexicanization
has also been evident in greater US pressures and expectations that Canada
will help it achieve its border control objectives, and in new Canadian policy measures meant to simultaneously pacify Washington and signal maintenance of Canadian sovereignty and policy autonomy. As has long been
the case along the US-Mexico border, new policy initiatives to secure the
US-Canada border may have more of a symbolic and perceptual effect than
a deterrent effect. The Mexicanization process has thus had multiple
dimensions, involving changes in political pressures, border policies, and
their consequences.
Mexicanization has even been increasingly evident in the heightened
politicization of the drug issue in the US-Canada relationship. Claiming
that the United States is faced with a “flood of illicit substances” across the
northern border, David Murray, special assistant to President Bush’s drug
20 Reflecting the heightened level of border anxieties, in late December 2002, New York Senator
Hillary Clinton harshly criticized Canada for lax border security after it was reported that five
men with alleged terrorist links had crossed into the state from Canada. An immigrant-smuggler later confessed that he had made the story up, but the senator did not retract her comments. Joseph Hall, “Border points ‘porous’ despite September 11,” Toronto Star, 18 January
2003, a1.
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policy director, warned that if Canada loosens its marijuana laws,
Washington may retaliate with tougher border inspections.21 In December
2002, US antidrug czar John Walters similarly warned that the adoption of
more liberal marijuana laws in Canada would make it “probable we will
have to do more restrictive things at the border.”22 Even if such heavy-handed language represents little more than rhetorical bluffing, it very much
echoes past US efforts to use the threat of tougher border inspections to
pressure Mexico to crack down on illegal drugs.
The process of Mexicanization, however, is still at a fairly early stage.
Many factors inhibit further Mexicanization, including a long history of law
enforcement cooperation, similar levels of economic development, and a
(mostly) shared language and culture. The US-Canada border control relationship remains qualitatively different from the US-Mexico border control
relationship. This is evident, Papademetriou and Meyers note, in the areas
of “intelligence cooperation, similar enforcement priorities, ability to deliver on commitments, similar levels of technological capability, [and] a habit
of working together on matters large and small.”23 In the end, the enduring
differences in the profiles of Canada and Mexico may limit further
Mexicanization and may remain more important than the growing similarities in their relations with the United States. Nevertheless, it remains to be
seen whether and how much those factors restraining further
Mexicanization can successfully transcend the politics of fear and blame in
a new age of heightened insecurity and border anxieties. Regardless of their
substantial and persistent differences, Canada and Mexico are increasingly
viewed and evaluated through the same US counterterrorism security lens.
Border relations have inescapably become more securitized, resulting in a
greater convergence in the US approach toward its northern and southern
borders.
Interestingly, even as the US-Canada border has become partly
Mexicanized, Mexico has been aggressively pushing to de-Mexicanize its
border relations with the United States, strategically using the NAFTA
21 Colin Nickerson, “Ottawa’s marijuana plan irks US,” Christian Science Monitor, 10 May
2003, a1.
22 Donna Leinwand, “U.S., Canada clash on pot laws,” USA Today, 8 May 2003.
23 Papademetriou and Meyers, “Introduction: Overview, context, and a vision for the future,”
82.
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partnership as a rhetorical device to make the case for equal treatment on
border matters. The Fox government has even boldly pushed for a trilateral embrace of multilateral security mechanisms and the creation of a continental security community. Thus, in this case, ironically, Mexico has supplanted Canada as the most enthusiastic promoter of multilateralism.24
In March 1969, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau said of
the United States: “Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an
elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, if I can
call it that, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.” This observation
would seem to be even more relevant in the post-9/11 context of inflated
border insecurities. Today, the elephant is far less even-tempered while the
mouse is far more vulnerable. Canada has in the past masterfully negotiated asymmetric interdependence in a manner that has produced
favourable outcomes, but navigating the less stable and predictable post9/11 politics of insecurity, fear, and blame is far more challenging. Thus, the
old Mexican lament, “poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United
States,” may increasingly resonate in Canada as well.25
24 On this shift, see Athanasios Hristoulas, “Trading places: Canada, Mexico, and North
American security,” in Andreas and Biersteker, The Rebordering of North America.
25 This was noted by Thomas J. Biersteker in “The Rebordering of North America? The
Implications for Reconceptualizing Borders After September 11,” in Andreas and Biersteker, The
Rebordering of North America, 154.
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