Review: The North American Idea A Vision of a Continental Future

AuthorGreg Anderson
DOI10.1177/002070201206700122
Published date01 March 2012
Date01 March 2012
Subject MatterDebatesReview
| 272 | Winter 2011-12 | International Journal |
| Reviews |
THE NORTH AMERICAN IDEA
A Vision of A Continental Future
Robert A. Pastor
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 288pp, US$24.95 (cloth).
ISBN 978-0199782413
In June 2001, two Roberts met at the off‌ice of the United States trade
representative in Washington, DC. One was President George W. Bush’s new
hard-charging, internationalist United States trade representative, Robert
Zoellick, now president of the World Bank. The other was Robert Pastor
of Emory University, himself no shrinking violet in intellectual combat. It
seemed an auspicious time for such a meeting. At Zoellick’s initiative, the
Bush administration was poised to breathe new life into a US trade agenda
that had stalled since the completion of NAFTA and GATT’s Uruguay round
in 1994. Pastor was one of the best-known scholars on North American
integration and had just completed a new manuscript on the topic. After
a discussion with Zoellick and his staff about the American trade agenda,
including the pursuit of fast-track authority (on which subject Pastor remains
the expert), the two Roberts parted ways.
At the time of the meeting, I was a doctoral student and intern in the
trade representative’s off‌ice of the Americas, working mainly on North
American issues. In early July, a draft manuscript of Pastor’s book made its
way to my off‌ice. Zoellick had requested that someone read it and prepare a
summary. The job was quickly delegated to me.
The staff seized this opportunity to keep their intern busy for several
days. In Toward a North American Community: Lessons from the Old World
for the New (2001), Pastor argued that the US could learn many important
lessons—many of them negative—from European economic integration.
The postwar imperatives of recovery and security had initially driven Europe’s
experiment, which subsequently became a victim of its own success. Over
time, sclerotic decision-making within the EU’s supranational structures
came to overwhelm the benef‌its of trade liberalization, labour mobility, and
a common currency.
By contrast, NAFTA left North America incomplete. The agreement
had stimulated enormous economic activity and deepened ties among the
United States, Canada, and Mexico. But the continent’s potential remained
unrealized because no governance structures had been established to
manage it. Over-governance in Europe undermined competitiveness, but
under-governance in North America generated a paralysis of its own. Pastor’s

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