ABSTRACT
This chapter explains NAFTA successor agreement was crafted as a strategic bargain, fusing together Mexican and Canadian anxieties about diminished access to the US market with US preoccupation with national security in the wake of 9/11. It tracks how consensus was shaped around this strategic bargain in the months following 9/11 and how it ultimately failed to deliver on its twin agenda of security and prosperity for North America. The chapter describes how this interplay of imaginaries, discourses, and strategic action unfolded in North America in the aftermath of 9/11. The consolidation and performance of the SPP's security agenda was an entirely different story. The demise of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) does not signal the end of the North American DI project, although prospects for its revival in immediate future appear remote. The underlying pressures that initially gave rise to the SPP, increasingly integrated continental production processes, and intensifying global economic competition, continue to challenge North American policy-makers.
