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Abstract

While multilateralism is often identified as a defining element of Canada’s postwar foreign policy, even the strongest advocates of Canadian multilateralism have recognized that Canada’s single most important relationship, that with the United States, has been strongly bilateral in character. Tom Keating, for example, in his classic study of the multilateralist tradition in Canadian foreign policy, argues that “with the noteworthy exception of the United States, multilateral contacts have generally taken precedence over bilateral ones and multilateral diplomacy has been the preferred instrument for the pursuit of foreign policy objectives” (Keating, 1993: 9-10, emphasis added). Indeed, as he states in his essay in this volume, Canada’s early support for multilateralism in the postwar period was largely oriented toward supporting efforts that would constrain US excesses while simultaneously depending on US enforcement of order in the military and economic domains. As this analysis suggests, bilateralism and multilateralism in the North American setting are not two distinct and contradictory trends, but have been closely linked together in a delicate balancing act since the Second World War. During the postwar period, a specific combination of external and domestic political factors permitted multilateralism and bilateralism not just to co-exist but to flourish together in a symbiotic relationship. In recent years, however, the fine balance between multilateralism and bilateralism has been threatened as a result of changes in the regional and global political economies, and the political repercussions of the events of 9/11. Keating, like other commentators, raised concerns that the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA) would tip the balance away from multilateralism toward bilateralism (1993: 243-244). The creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which converted CUSFTA from a bilateral to a multilateral agreement, seemed to offer some prospects for a renewed, if narrowed, multilateralism. In NAFTA’s highly asymmetrical context, some observers thought that the weaker partners, Canada and Mexico, might be able to work together to counterbalance US predominance. In practice however, NAFTA has been characterized more by dual bilateralism than by true multilateralism. Despite the effects of 9/11, which seemed to expand US foreign policy to include the entire North American region, recent Canadian policy under Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has signalled a strong shift toward bilateralism and away from the constrained multilateralism of the NAFTA regime. Theories of multilateralism have not been commonly used in debates on North American integration, which have more typically drawn upon theories of regionalism and regional economic integration. I argue in this article, however, that multilateralism’s theoretical tradition may provide some guidance for explaining the relative weakness of North American regionalism and recent backsliding towards dual bilateralism. The article begins with a review of some of the ideas of the main theorists of multilateralism and provides a 111