The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America

Abstract

I. Introduction On March 23, 2005, U.S. President George Bush, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, and former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin jointly announced the establishment of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP). (1) The SPP is a framework for trilateral and bilateral cooperation in North America. While not a formal international treaty, nor an overarching binding legal agreement, it does contain two important agendas relevant for the post-September 11 era: one revolving around national security and the other around economic prosperity. Three key principles support these two agendas: improved security from external threats to North America; strengthened internal security measures; and bolstered economic growth for the region as a whole, particularly in the face of growing global competition. Negotiators made reports to each state's leaders on the initial SPP-related international collaboration in late June 2005. Officials are currently developing additional agendas for future work and pursuing limited implementation of some policy objectives. The SPP's security track includes three main priority areas: 1) securing North America from external threats through traveler and cargo security and bioprotection; 2) preventing and responding to threats within North America by developing common approaches to critical infrastructure protection, port security, intelligence sharing, and transnational threats; and 3) streamlining low-risk travelers and cargo across borders. (2) On the prosperity front, the SPP's major initiatives involve 1) measures to improve productivity through regulatory cooperation and business collaboration; 2) efforts to reduce the costs of trade by more efficiently moving goods and people across borders; and 3) policies related to quality of life, such as environmental, disease, and food safety management. (3) Movement on both the security and prosperity agendas occurs through a number of inter-agency and bi- or tri-national working groups. Work thus occurs on multiple levels, across inter-governmental lines, and across the U.S.-Canada international border with the goal of harmonizing some regulatory regimes. We argue the SPP is important and interesting in terms of both policy formulation and the wider U.S.-Canada bilateral relationship. This is the case for a variety of reasons. First, it represents a modest reinvigoration of the North American integration project, pursuant to the new security conditions of the post-September 11, 2001 period. In some ways it signals the next step in advancing historical trade and security relationships, many of which were last articulated significantly through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Smart Border Accords. Like some scholars have viewed NAFTA itself, many policy-makers see the SPP as a way to lock-in integration gains achieved through NAFTA and then deepen some economic and security arrangements among the three partners. Second, the SPP operates under the assumption that security and trade are compatible, explicitly detailing goals in both areas. Third, the SPP integrates unique degrees of bilateral and trilateral flexibility to accommodate the differing political and economic conditions of the three NAFTA countries. Finally, the SPP's objectives are largely being negotiated and pursued through executive-to-executive branch arrangements and multi-agency working groups that solicit some stakeholder input from a limited set of groups. The negotiation process proceeds in an incremental manner, backed, at least at the moment, by high-level political will in Ottawa, Washington, D.C., and Mexico City. This paper addresses the following broad research questions. First, what is the historical lineage the SPP draws upon in regards to the wider U.S.-Canada relationship? In other words, are there lessons from history that can inform the SPP process as it proceeds? Second, what theoretical insights from the field of International Political Economy (IPE) and political science more generally can be used to understand the SPP and the process of policy-making and negotiating it entails? …