ABSTRACT
The literature on international relations has largely considered North America as a region formed by Canada and the United States, despite the fact that from a geographical perspective Mexico is also part of the region. The inclusion of Mexico as part of North America in the academic debates is mostly derived from the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the attempts by scholars and decision makers to create regional arrangements to deal collectively with common challenges. The expectations of developing a North American community 1 was based on the assumptions that increasing economic interdependence would encourage the establishment of regional institutions and eventually deeper integration in the economic area would spill over to other sectors of the trilateral agenda. Contrary to such expectations, North America has been facing an institutional void since NAFTA came into effect almost two decades ago. While lip service was paid to the ideas of greater regional cooperation between the three countries, tangible steps for further economic integration remain at the lowest level of the Balassian 2 integration stages (free trade), and the spillover effects have not taken place. Security cooperation is not an exception to the overarching milieu of the relationship among the three countries. In fact, threats to stability such as those of terrorism or organized crime have produced and reinforced the bilateralization rather than the trilateralization of cooperation. In order to explain the dominant trends in regional security in the area, this chapter aims to explore the reasons why the North American partners are facing obstacles for developing deeper cooperation in the area of security from a regional perspective. By adopting a Wendtian 3 approach, this chapter argues that in the area of security, a cooperative system has emerged in the US-Canadian relationship while the US-Mexican relationship remains anchored in the logic of an individualistic system. The chapter starts with an overview of the theoretical approach to studying security in North America, followed by the analysis of ideas, perceptions, principles and policies regarding the security of North America.
