Mutual constitution or convenient national interest? The security strategies of Canada and the United States since 1991

Abstract

The end of the Cold War marked the beginning of one of the most intensive periods of overseas operations for the Canadian forces, encompassing two decades of near continuous deployments in zones of conflict. The War in Iraq stands as an aberration amid a number of multinational operations in which Canadian forces have operated alongside their American counterparts since the end of the Cold War. In all other instances from Somalia to Libya and the many stops in between both Canadian and American forces have been actively engaged in the same multilateral operations and have seemingly taken a very similar response. In this paper we take a closer look at the factors that have led the American and Canadian governments to dispatch their forces to these conflicts and humanitarian crises. To do so, we examine the influence of international institutions and collective security agreements that bind Canada and the US together, such as the UN and NATO, as well as domestic debates on the relative merits of values and interests in accounting for these deployments. Our ultimate goal is to assess whether the respective commitments of the Canadian and American governments reflect a common approach to contemporary security issues and the consequences of their respective strategies for the future defence relations of the two nations.