Canada and the Security of the Americas

Abstract

Since 1940 the Americas have been fairly peaceful compared to other regions of the world. Although Central America was racked by extremely violent civil wars during the 1980s, over the past few decades the region as a whole has not experienced many military conflicts between states. Barely a handful of the various territorial disputes, past or present, have led to open warfare. The last significant episode, the 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador, lasted no more than a week. Yet this relative tranquillity must not obscure the fact that over the years, the regional security agenda has undergone major changes.From 1945 to 1990 the security of the Americas essentially meant defending the region against what was perceived by many governments as a communist threat. But with globalization and the end of the Cold War, the nature of the threat changed radically. The central concern of the United States, particularly after September 2001, shifted to the prevention of terrorist attacks. For the Americas overall, organized crime, in both its local and transnational variants, became the major security issue, primarily but not exclusively as it relates to drug trafficking and drug-related phenomena such as criminal gangs, money laundering, and corruption. Citizen security thus became a dominant concern in most countries of the region.1This article presents an analysis of Canada's involvement in the security of the Americas, particularly after 1990, and examines the impact of Canadian policy and actions on the hemispheric security agenda. After it joined the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1990, Canada identified security as one of three top objectives in its policy for the western hemisphere, along with economic prosperity and the promotion of democracy. The same objectives are mainstays of Canada's Americas strategy, announced in July 2007, and are major components of current Canadian foreign policy regarding the region.2 Our aim in this paper is to show that although Ottawa has given higher priority to security issues since 2007, the Canadian contribution in this area thus far remains modest. To this end the paper is organized as follows. The first part provides an overview of the evolution of security issues in the Americas since 1945. The second part looks at the cooperative security approach that prevailed during the 1990s and examines Canada's role during that period. We then assess Canada's policy since 2001 in the context of the new hemispheric concept of multidimensional security. Finally, we summarize our thoughts on Canadian involvement to date in the security of the region, and we consider Canada's possible contributions in the future.SECURITY IN THE AMERICAS: A HISTORICAL OVERVIEWFrom a security point of view, the situation of the Americas during the 20th century was characterized by two main elements. The first was the asymmetry of power between the United States and the other countries of the region. This asymmetry of power had two consequences, starting with Washington's belief that it could freely intervene in neighbouring countries to restore order or fight communism in application of the Monroe Doctrine or the Roosevelt Corollary.3 US authorities used these precepts to justify and legitimize US interventions in the Caribbean Basin (as part of the so-called dollar diplomacy that prevailed in the early decades of the 20th century) and, later on, to oppose left-wing governments accused of importing communism in the region. The other consequence of the power asymmetry was the impossibility for Latin American governments to compete militarily with the US, obliging those governments to use alternative and generally less effective strategies. The most prominent alternative strategy was the development of a corpus of Latin American international law through instruments such as the Calvo Clause and the Drago Doctrine, which reaffirmed sovereign immunity against external intervention.4The other major feature of the 20th century security environment in the Americas was the perceived threat of and the fight against communism. …