Québec's "America problem": Differential threat perception in the North American security community

American Review of Canadian Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 552-567

  Haglund, David G ^a  

^a QUEEN S UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FOREIGN POLICY; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; NATIONAL SECURITY; RISK PERCEPTION; SECURITY THREAT; SOVEREIGNTY;

CANADA; NORTH AMERICA; QUEBEC [CANADA]; UNITED STATES;

EID: 54649084206     PISSN: 02722011     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02722010609481407     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. John MacCormac, Canada: America's Problem (New York: Viking, 1940). The problem about which MacCormac wrote constituted the challenge to American strategy occasioned by Canada's participation in a "European" war from which the United States sought to remain aloof.
2. Though very few Canadians seem to prefer the option of economic retaliation, support for such reprisals is higher, at 21 percent, in Québec than elsewhere in Canada; see Campbell Clark, "Few Canadians Back Retaliation," Globe and Mail (Toronto), 25 October 2005, p. A4.
3. On recent trends in Quebeckers' attitudes toward the U.S. in general, see Paul C. Adams, "The September 11 Attacks as Viewed from Quebec: The Small-Nation Code in Geopolitical Discourse," Political Geography 23 (August 2004): 765-95.
4. See Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).
5. See Elizabeth Pond, Friendly Fire: The Near-Death of the Transatlantic Alliance (Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2004);
6. and Philip H. Gordon and Jeremy Shapiro, Allies at War: America, Europe, and the Crisis over Iraq (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2004).
7. See David G. Haglund, "North American Cooperation in an Era of Homeland Security," Orbis 47 (Autumn 2003): 675-91.
8. At the start of the 1990s it was common for analysts to detect a strong pro-American tendency in the province, even and especially among Québec nationalists; for evidence of such a reading of Québec opinion, see Robert Chodos and Eric Hamovitch, Quebec and the American Dream (Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991).
9. Although he does not use the label "differential threat perception," Walter A. McDougall provides an excellent account of DTP's impact during this earlier period; see his France's Rhineland Diplomacy, 1914-1924: The Last Bid for a Balance of Power in Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).
10. See David G. Haglund, "The Case of the Missing Democratic Alliance: France, the 'Anglo-Saxons' and NATO's Deep Origins," Contemporary Security Policy 25 (August 2004): 225-51.
11. The principal exponent of the thesis of the "democratic alliance" is Thomas Risse-Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies: The European Influence on U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
12. As is argued in Yvan Lamonde, Allégeances et dépendances: L'histoire d'une ambivalence identitaire (Québec: Éd. Nota Bene, 2001).
13. The cycle is a long-running one. See Gustave Lanctot, Canada and the American Revolution, 1774-1783 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967);
14. Louis-Georges Harvey, Le Printemps de l'Amérique française: Américanité, anticolonialisme et républicanisme dans le discours politique québécois, 1805-1837 (Montréal: Éd. du Boréal, 2005);
15. Louis Balthazar and Alfred Hero, Jr., Le Québec dans l'espace américain (Montréal: Québec Amérique, 1999);
16. and Gérard Bouchard, "Le Québec comme collectivité neuve: Le refus de l'américanité dans le discours de la survivance," in Québécois et Américains: La culture québécoise aux XIXe et XXe siècles, ed. Bouchard and Yvan Lamonde (Montréal: Éd. Fides, 1995), pp. 15-60.
17. Based on data gleaned from a multi-country opinion poll sponsored by La Presse, the results of which were published several weeks before the 2004 American presidential election.
18. Data reported in a survey conducted by Léger Marketing, and published in La Presse, 29 October 2001, p. A10.
19. Even after Canada assumed command of NATO's multinational brigade in southern Afghanistan in late February 2006, opinion in Québec was decidedly less supportive of the mission than opinion elsewhere in Canada. See Michael den Tandt, "Canadians Get Behind Deployment," Globe and Mail, 14 March 2006, pp. A1, A4.
20. Quoted in Adams, "The September 11 Attacks," p. 786.
21. Anne Legaré, Le Québec otage de ses alliés: Les relations du Québec avec la France et les États-Unis (Montréal: VLB Éditeur, 2003), pp. 280-81.
22. Adams, "The September 11 Attacks," p. 768.
23. On the univocal media coverage of the Iraq war in France, see Alain Hertoghe, La Guerre à outrances: Comment la presse nous a désinformés sur l'Irak (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2003).
24. Quoted in Robert Wolfe, "Most Safely on the Fence? A Round Table on the Possibility of a Canadian Foreign Policy after 9/11," Canadian Foreign Policy 11 (Fall 2004): 97-118, citation at p. 109.
25. Denis Monière, Les Relations France-Québec: Pérégrinations d'un intellectuel Québécois en France, 2001 2004 (Montréal: Chaire Hector-Fabre d'histoire du Québec, Université du Québec, 2004), pp. 94, 99 (my translation).
26. For the searing conscription crises of the two world wars, which saw majority opinion in Québec pitted against opinion in the rest of the country, see Elizabeth H. Armstrong, The Crisis of Quebec, 1914-1918 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937);
27. and R. MacGregor Dawson, The Conscription Crisis of 1944 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961).
28. An argument I have made in "'Are We the Isolationists?' North American Isolationism in a Comparative Context," International Journal 58 (Winter 2002-2003): 1-23.
29. For the "Jacksonian" ideal type in U.S. grand strategy, see Walter Russell Mead, Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World (New York: Knopf, 2001).
30. Jean-Sébastien Rioux, "Two Solitudes: Quebecers' Attitudes Regarding Canadian Security and Defence Policy," a paper prepared for the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute's (CD-FAI) Research Paper Series, February 2005, p. 23. The words in single quotations are taken from a 2004 opinion survey commissioned by CDFAI, "Visions of Canadian Foreign Policy."
31. The European variant of missile defense bears the name MEADS, which stands for "medium extended air defense system," an analogue to the system currently being deployed in North America by the U.S., in that it utilizes non-space-based weaponry in a bid to hit incoming missiles and warheads.
32. Michael Walzer, "On the Role of Symbolism in Political Thought," Political Science Quarterly 82 June 1967): 191-204, quote at p. 196.
33. See Pierre Martin, "All Quebec's Fault, Again? Quebec Public Opinion and Canada's Rejection of Missile Defence," Policy Options 26 (May 2005): 41-44.
34. Michael den Tandt, "Foreign Policy Initiatives Will Help Woo Quebeckers, Pettigrew Says," Globe and Mail, 22 October 2005, p. A11.
35. Michael Adams, "Bash Thy Neighbour," Globe and Mail, 19 October 2005, p. A21.
36. Although he does not use the term, this is a specter to which Jim Judd, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), was alluding when he told a Montréal audience in late October 2005 that some Canadians had left the country to join the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq, and that it is likely that they would one day return to Canada, trained in terrorist methods. Jeff Sallot, "War Could Spawn Terrorists, CSIS Chief Says," Globe and Mail, 21 October 2005, p. A4.
37. One distressing scenario can be glimpsed in Graham Allison, "Is Nuclear Terrorism a Threat to Canada's National Security?" International Journal 60 (Summer 2005): 713-22.
38. Also see Martin Collacott, "Canada's Inadequate Response to Terrorism: The Need for Policy Reform," Fraser Institute Digital Publication, February 2006.
39. His story is told in Stewart Bell, The Martyr's Oath: The Apprenticeship of a Homegrown Terrorist (Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
40. See Colin Freeze, "The Khadr Effect," Globe and Mail, 3 October 2005, p. A10.
41. See C. P. Stacey, "Laurier, King, and External Affairs," in Towards a New World: Readings in the History of Canadian Foreign Policy, ed. J. L. Granatstein (Toronto: Copp Clark Pitman, 1992), pp. 17-27;
42. and John MacFarlane, Ernest Lapointe and Quebec's Influence on Canadian Foreign Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
43. As is argued in Robert A. Spencer, "Triangle into Treaty: Canada and the Origins of NATO," in Ten Years of NATO: Four Articles by Couve de Murville, Lester B. Pearson, Robert A. Spencer, Michael Barkway (Toronto: Canadian Institute of International Affairs, 1959), pp. 9-20.
44. At least, if one critical letter writer to the editor of the Globe and Mail can be taken as exemplary. Calgarian Bruce Foster, commenting on a Preston Manning op-ed piece ripping the federal government for cowardice and hypocrisy on defense policy, argues that what really lies behind the policy short-sightedness decried by the founder of the Reform Party is the constraining influence of Québec. "Irrespective of which party forms the government," argues Foster, "there remains a deep desire to be in tune with public opinion in one province above all others: Quebec. This 'Quebecization' - for lack of a better word - has remained a de facto principal influence upon Canada's foreign and military policies for more than 30 years. Not surprisingly, our cowardly, hypocritical national political leaders never admit to this curious, not to mention expedient, state of affairs." Bruce Foster, "Letters to the Editor," Globe and Mail, 21 March 2005, p. A12.
45. A sovereignty movement, it should be noted, that would be mostly fuelled by Albertan economic grievances with, and differentiation from, the ROC, and not by foreign policy disagreements with Québec. See Gordon Gibson, "Why the Wealthy West Contemplates Separation," Globe and Mail, 21 October 2005, p. A23.
46. See Carl Berger, The Sense of Power: Studies in the Ideas of Canadian Imperialism, 1867-1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970).
47. Michael Adams, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values (Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2003).
48. John Saywell, The Rise of the Parti Québécois, 1967-1976 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 26, 79.
49. Stéphane Roussel and Charles-Alexandre Théorêt, "A 'Distinct Strategy'? The Use of Canadian Strategic Culture by the Sovereigntist Movement in Québec, 1968-1996," International Journal 59 (Summer 2004): 557-77, quote at p. 574.
50. Quoted in The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation: Facts and Figures (Brussels: NATO Information Service, 1989), appendix 1, p. 378.
51. For the significance of that agreement, see the "American Assembly Final Report," published in International Journal 60 (Spring 2005): 516-30, quoting at p. 521: "The NORAD role was preserved on 5 August 2004 when Ottawa quietly agreed to NORAD's providing the information to the missile defenders, much as it has long done for US strategic nuclear forces."