The Comparative “Continentalization” of Security and Defence Policy in North America and Europe: Canadian Multilateralism in a Unipolar World?

Abstract

This essay seeks to assess the comparative significance of defence and security “continentalism” in both North America and Europe. In particular, it invokes the European example to shed light on the North American one, as a means of taking the measure of contemporary Canadian defence and security dispensations. This essay departs from, and indeed turns on its head, the traditional (mythic) conceptualization of continentalism as a dispensation that betrays internationalism and, even worse, betrays Canada. Instead, the term is employed here as a tool of grand strategy that implies the pursuit of an internationalist, though hardly altruistic, agenda through deliberate but not exclusive reliance upon cooperation within a continental setting. Nor is Canada alone in using continentalist means to obtain broader internationalist ends; European states have been doing this for some time. Will Canada continue to be able to incorporate elements of “continentalism” in furthering an internationalist security agenda? Here there must be some room for doubt, in large part for reasons that are beyond the control of policymakers in Ottawa, as they are to be found within the domestic American context. Still, there are some things Canadian leaders can and should do to minimize the geostrategic risks to Canada implicit in a “unipolar” world.