Advancing the North American Community

Abstract

In this essay I have chosen first to write on emerging North American community as if it were a fact. (1) The signs of this emergence are all around us and, in my view, some sort of community already exists. If so, it can be defined as a community with a small c, unlike European Community, with its political and regulatory institutions, but integrating into a complex, interdependent system nonetheless. Like Europe, integration of nations sharing same geographical space is driven by trade and competition, but without geopolitical imperatives that brought European nations together. There, process has resulted in an institutional Union, Brussels-driven from top down (although Great Britain and others oppose it). Here, process is much less formal and bureaucratized. Fundamentally, North American process is incremental, occurring in context of three large federal states with convergent interests and an accelerating density of transborder flows at most basic societal level. However, idea of a North American community is still very new and not well understood. So my second task will be to advocate and advance it, and then conclude with some suggestions for making this new community work. Realists will scoff. The very idea of community among partners of such unequal wealth, power, and demographic weight is so wildly improbable as to foreclose debate. Or so it was argued before Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1988, and before Mexico requested a similar arrangement with United States, which soon became North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994. Canada, one-tenth economic size of its everpresent referent to south, and Mexico, one twenty-fifth economic weight of inescapable giant to its north, would not enter into binational partnership, let alone a three-way deal. In event they did, a true partnership could not prosper, or so argument now goes. Canada and Mexico may seek partners; United States seeks only customers. By definition, United States and its neighbors will have difficulty moving beyond finely ground, short-term convergence of national interests that produced NAFTA. As for a true community, forget it. But can realists be wrong? Partnership has survived its first true test with Mexican financial crisis--the Peso Crisis--of January 1995, and measures taken by United States and Canada to bolster their partner's economy are working. Meanwhile, NAFTA-mandated institutions have been set in place, providing new forums: trade dispute panels and, eventually, a trade secretariat in Mexico City, labor secretariat in Dallas, and Commission for Environmental Cooperation in Montreal. (2) Interministerial relations are close: despite a host of nettlesome bilateral issues, the tone of this year's meeting [between Mexican and U.S. officials in May 1996] was almost celebratory, with a great deal of back-slapping and well-wishing, a way of operating which in last few years has come to resemble Canada-U.S. relations. (3) Social and cultural convergences are underway and cannot be ignored. This points to working of deeper-running trends. The question we should be asking is: When does a partnership become a community? Nationalists regard with distaste very idea of North America. The yoking of self-interest with partnership and cooperation is intensely irritating, perhaps a trap. Fearful of convergences, they worry about maintaining integrity of national borders and decry strains on national concept of self. Derailing North American juggernaut had best start now, argument goes. True enough, old ways of doing things are fundamentally at risk, but this is because old ways are obsolete. Like it or not, convergence is upon us in multiple dimensions and task ahead is to make it work and to reap benefits from something that is really new: North American community. …