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Canada and the United States: Their Binding Frontier

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Annette Baker Fox  and
Alfred O. Hero Jr.
Annette Baker Fox
Affiliation:
Research associate in the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University
Alfred O. Hero Jr.
Affiliation:
Director and secretary of the World Peace Foundation in Boston. Together with Joseph S. Nye, Jr., they are the editors of this volume.
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Extract

Without a counterpart for any other country there is in the United States government a deputy assistant secretary of state for Canadian affairs, a post created in December 1972. This, like the lower-level Office of Canadian Affairs established in 1965, was an institutional recognition of the increasing importance of Canadian-American relations. Were these offices also harbingers of increased state-centric attention to relations between the two countries, which until then had been subject primarily to transnational and transgovernmental management of affairs? Or were they rather recognition that in addition to the uniquely complex web of transborder relationships outside of or at levels below those dealt with by high political authorities, state-centric relations were increasing because of the importance of and increase in unofficial and bureaucratic transactions?

Type
Part V. Conclusions
Information
International Organization , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1974 , pp. 999 - 1014
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1974

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References

1 Another was the appointment as ambassador to Canada in February 1974 of a career diplomat who had been undersecretary of state for political affairs, the third highest post in the Department of State.

2 As the first occupant of the new State Department position commented, all the while a “‘so-called impasse on trade issues’ ” was being discussed by the media, “ ‘trade worth $23,000,000,000 has crossed the border’ ” (interview with Mr. Rufus Smith in Chronicle-Herald [Halifax], 27 January 1972, quoted in International Canada, December 1972, p. 227).

3 Heeney, Arnold, The Things That Are Caesar's, Memoirs of a Canadian Public Servant (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972), pp. 163ff.Google Scholar As one of the prestigious authors of the report that was to point to ways to improve Canadian-American relations, and one who was appalled at widespread Canadian misrepresentation of one recommendation about “quiet diplomacy,” he wondered if “spasms of emotional outburst among Canadians against their big neighbor were not endemic, an inevitable aspect of our national psychology” (p. 198).

4 Examples are the Mercantile Bank, the Time and Reader's Digest tax exemption, and the Michelin tire exports to the United States.

5 In particular, John Holmes, Robert Gilpin, Robert Cox and Stuart Jamieson, Isaiah A. Litvak and Christopher J. Maule, and Anthony Scott.

6 As the control over scarce resources increases Canadian bargaining power in the future, it is conceivable that linkages will no longer be eschewed.

7 To be found in International Perspectives, Autumn 1972.

8 See, for example, Bouvier, Francois and Donneur, Andr´, “Relations Qu´bec Etats Unis: Perspectives d's Avenir” (tentative title), in Choix (Spring 1975),Google Scholar Centre Qu´b´cois des relations internationales, Qu´bec, Canada.

9 As it was put in the Report on the Fifteenth Meeting, 4–8 April 1973, Canada United States Interparliamentary Group, by McGee, Senator Yale W., chairman of the Senate delegation, US Senate, Committee Print, 93d Cong., 1st sess., 1973, p. 4.Google Scholar

10 From his own experience Arnold Heeney made this judgment of the joint commissions (p. 201). However, a number of other Canadians do not accept the one-to-one personal relationships as ameliorating differences in bargaining power.

11 For example, on law of the sea issues Donald E. Milsten has pointed out that Canada and the United States have a joint interest in a stable international regime, whatever its rules (“The Law of the Sea: Implications for North American Neighbors,” American Review of Canadian Studies, Autumn 1973, pp. 9–10). This observation is generally applicable to other issue areas as well.