Canada–Mexico Relations: Interdependence,Shared Values … and the Limits of Cooperation

This article offers a historical overview of the evolution of the relationship between Canada and Mexico, emphasizing its exiguity, its fundamental economic nature and the consequences of sharing borders with the United States. It is organized as follows: the first section covers the period going from the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1944 to the late 1960s, a period during which the bilateral relation failed to consolidate despite sporadic efforts; the second section deals with the period starting with the convergence of political visions in the two capitals in the early 1970s up to the period immediately preceding the starting of the negotiations leading to NAFTA. The period during which the most significant engagement between the two countries has taken place to the present is reviewed in the third section. The article concludes presenting some thoughts on the possibilities and limits of cooperation between the two countries.     

Canada–United States Energy Relations: Making a MESS of Energy Policy 1 , 2

Energy policy-making has become ever-more challenging over the last three decades, comprising a larger and more complex set of inter-related dimensions. Energy policy-makers have to deal with energy as a discrete market sector, pursuing competitive, efficient, safe, and affordable energy. They also have to address environmental imperatives, ensuring energy is developed with due regard for sustainability, ecosystems, air quality, climate change, and the like. In addition, energy policy must address security objectives, which themselves have broadened over time. Finally, energy must be developed in ways that are socially acceptable. This article examines how these four policy dimensions—Market, Environment, Security and Social acceptability, the acronym MESS—have come to characterize energy policy-making in the twenty-first century. It then explores what kind of MESS the Canadian and American governments are making of energy policy—both domestically and bilaterally—and offers some proposals for key sectors and activities that could benefit from greater collaboration.     

The return of the Indo-Pacific strategy: an assessment

ABSTRACT

Eleven years after it was abandoned, the so-called Indo-Pacific concept is back with a vengeance in regional security debates. At the 2017 Shangri-la Dialogue, there were only five mentions of the ‘Indo-Pacific’ at the annual defence ministerial forum. In the following year, the figure had jumped to 92. The Indo-Pacific Four countries promoting the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (FOIP) concept share many principles, including freedom of navigation and overflight, connectivity and economic growth, and respect for the rule of law. There are, however, clear points of divergence between them, such that there are actually different Indo-Pacific strategies among the Indo-Pacific Four. Even if the Indo-Pacific Four manage to resolve these issues (and the possibility of this is low), it is not likely that ASEAN would endorse the FOIP concept. The reality remains that Indonesia and ASEAN have taken a different approach to the Indo-Pacific. The ASEAN approach is to appropriate elements of FOIP strategy which are more attractive to ASEAN (for example, connectivity and infrastructure), yet reject elements of FOIP strategy which ASEAN deems inappropriate (the exclusion of China and the loss of ASEAN centrality). This does not augur well for the adoption, in its entirety, of the FOIP concept by ASEAN.     

Both Sides Now: “Parallel” Lines Across Bi-National Pasts

Originally presented at the Bridging Distances conference at Western Washington University, April 29, 2011, this article addresses the changing ways that Canadian and US histories, policies, and public images have reflected continental and national images of connected and separate pasts. It combines the author's personal and professional experience as a US citizen and American historian teaching in Canada to suggest the challenges and promises of transnational histories. The article explores how the 49th parallel has been constructed through the historiographies of the US and Canadian Wests, the impact of 9/11 on how the border has been imagined and policed, and the experience of Canadian women who crossed the border to claim US homesteads in the late-nineteenth century. These examples illustrate the larger point that bridging the distances between the US and Canada requires respectful understanding of historically constructed power imbalances and national policies, and the willingness to confront distorted national self-images and images of the neighboring country. Such tensions have always been present in the history of the US-Canada relationship, but they have mattered differently at different times to people pushed and pulled across a selectively porous border.     

Unitarian materialism. Christoph Stegmann,Joseph Priestley,and their concepts of matter and soul

ABSTRACT

This paper describes the affinities between Socinian and Unitarian materialism. Based on different philosophical traditions, the Socinian Christoph Stegmann and the Unitarian Joseph Priestley developed a strong “system of materialism” which fit very well with Christian doctrines and the Bible. The conviction that the whole man is material and therefore mortal became the common basis for these radical thinkers. Stegmann formulated within the Aristotelian tradition a “non-reductive” materialism in which matter, not form, became the fundamental principle of all living things. Priestley, on the other hand, created his “absolute” materialism by developing a new understanding of the concept of matter according to the philosophical rules of Isaac Newton. The paper will discuss the affinities and differences between these two different concepts of materialism. The idea of a thinking matter, most prominently formulated by John Locke, will serve as a link between them.     

INTEGRATING INDIGENOUS AND SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE BASES FOR DISASTER RISK REDUCTION IN PAPUA NEW GUINEA

In investigating ways to reduce community vulnerability to environmental hazards it is essential to recognize the interaction between indigenous and scientific knowledge bases. Indigenous and scientific knowledge bases are dynamic entities. Using a Process Framework to identify how indigenous and scientific knowledge bases may be integrated, three communities impacted upon by environmental hazards in Papua New Guinea, a Small Island Developing State, have established how their vulnerability to environmental hazards may be reduced. This article explores the application of the framework within the communities of Kumalu, Singas and Baliau, and how this could impact upon the future management of environmental hazards within indigenous communities in Small Island Developing States.     

Brokering a Buffer State: Afghan Neutrality and American Diplomacy, 1973–1979

This article argues that during the 1970s, the United States Department of State and other US officials sought to promote and maintain Afghan political neutrality as a means of Soviet containment in Central Asia. This piece follows the evolution of this diplomatic model through the 1970s, how it interacted with various Afghan regimes and ultimately became an impediment on the imagination of US officials in predicting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.