In May 2006, the governments of Canada and the United States agreed to reconfirm the NORAD agreement. Commentators took this act as a final step, and then largely ignored it. In fact, this agreement does not end a process, but continues one. It is significant but little known.
To understand where we are, it helps to know where we have been. Lucien Bouchard once said that Canada was not a real country. When it comes to foreign policy, he was almost right: Canada is not a normal country. Canadians never have had to be responsible for their own security. We have not needed to defend our vital interests through our power alone, nor could we ever have done so. Our military forces sometimes have been great but rarely, since the Riel Rebellion, have we used them in
direct service of our narrow interests, not even in the emblematic case of 1939. Instead, we have loaned our power to some international organisation, the British Empire, the United Nations or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, so to help it maintain a liberal political and economic order across the world. That is the Canadian way of war. We define our interests as being general, those of the world, but this is not entirely so. We have particular interests of our own. We believe power is bad and strategy unCanadian. In fact, they have been central to our survival.
Canadian security and continental defence are not synonymous. The relationship between these matters has varied with world orders. Always, they have been shaped by power in North America and the world. During the nineteenth century...
