Integration and Security in North America
| Date | 01 September 2006 |
| Published date | 01 September 2006 |
| Author | Monica Serrano |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200606100306 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Monica Serrano
Integration and
security in
North America
Do good neighbours need good fences?
| International Journal | Summer 2006 | 611 |
The social and political implications of regional integration processes have
been widely studied. In some cases, economic regionalization has been
driven by political considerations. In Europe, as is widely known, the inte-
gration process was explicitly propelled by grand political motivations. In
the words of Jean Monnet, “to create Europe” was to “create peace.”
In the early years of NAFTA, the political implications of the integra-
tion enterprise were also intensely debated. This was particularly the case
in Mexico, where a 70-year-old regime had resisted internal pressures
favouring democratization. NAFTA’s sway over these developments became
clear in 1994 as Mexico’s political opening gathered force. Notwithstanding
this, integration in North America, whether in Mexico, Ottawa, or
Washington, remained primarily predicated upon economic terms and
goals. In NAFTA’s original mandate, neither politics nor security was
expected to be part of the equation.
Although by the late 1990s the intensification of licit transborder flows
and the rising mobility of people in North America already presented a new
security environment, 9/11 provided, tragically, a new and unprecedented
sense of urgency. Without a doubt, the attacks transformed radically the
Monica Serrano is professor of politics at El Colegio de México and a senior research asso-
ciate at the Centre for International Studies, University of Oxford.
| Monica Serrano |
| 612 | International Journal | Summer 2006 |
context of integration between the US, Canada, and Mexico, placing securi-
ty at the fore.1
The terrorist attacks mobilized the NAFTA partners into a series of
decisions and measures that are likely to have important consequences for
regional security and security cooperation in North America. The attacks
prompted all three partners to agree on a basic framework aimed at reas-
suring the US while attempting to improve regional security in North
America. What became known as the “smart border agreements” were
swiftly negotiated and implemented, between Canada and the US at the end
of 2001 and soon after by Mexico and the United States. While in the short
term these measures may have helped reassure the US, their overall impact
remains uncertain.
This article attempts to provide a framework of analysis for the role that
security has played and will continue to play in NAFTA. As has become
painfully clear, in North America as elsewhere, security has become tied up
with the regionalization processes. The article thus draws attention to the
role of economic integration as a producer of regional security dynamics.
The chapter looks briefly at NAFTA as a producer of both security and inse-
curity in the region and reflects on those changes that have transformed
NAFTA into an avid consumer of security. The capacity of Canada, Mexico,
and the US to meet this sudden increase in the demand for regional secu-
rity may prove central not only to NAFTA’s future, but also to the nature of
the overall integration enterprise in North America. The trends that we
have recently observed in North America open up a series of questions
about the conditions under which security may act as an engine for, or a
brake upon, integration and about the role that security is likely to play in
future regional dynamics.
NAFTA AND THE PRODUCTION OF INSECURITY IN NORTH AMERICA
When it was ratified in 1993, NAFTA established the first integration
scheme (other than those based on colonial or ex-colonial links) between a
developing country, Mexico, and two developed states, Canada and the US.2
1 As in the past, the combination of free movement of goods and an increasingly mobile popu-
lation has prompted states in North America and elsewhere to respond with new border controls.
2 Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Nikki Craske, and Monica Serrano, eds., “Who will benefit,” in Bulmer-
Thomas et al eds.,
Mexico and the North American Free Trade Agreeement: Who Will Benefit?
(Basingstoke: MacMillan, 1994), 204.
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