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as the foundation for dealing with them is becoming less and less apparent.
A major premise of this book is that Doran’s analysis is worth revisiting. In 1984 Doran lamented the deterioration of partnership as the basis of Canada-U.S. relations. Decades of postwar cooperation and amity had given way to conflict and discord amidst stagflation in the U.S. economy, a challenging global agenda, and Canadian economic and political nationalism. What is the status of partnership in 2011? On several fronts, the last two decades of Canada-U.S. relations have been tumultuous and transformative. The existential debates over the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 NAFTA debate arguably deepened ties while also exacerbating the ambivalence of the partnership. As Canada seemingly retreated from global affairs behind the rhetoric of human security and the exigencies of fiscal restraint in the early 1990s, the globe’s only superpower was confronting a complicated and uncertain post–Cold War international agenda. In many ways, the aftermath of deeper integration and the renewal of partnership in the late 1980s and early 1990s gave way to divergence and tension because the two countries’ priorities changed. In short, the two nations had returned to a 1984 state of affairs; partnership had been forgotten.
Added to the renewed decline in partnership were the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and the ensuing security paradigm that now infuses so much of the Canada-U.S. relationship. It is hard to imagine how the enormity of the attacks could not have thrust security to the top of the bilateral agenda; it is equally difficult, however, to avoid pondering what might have been if September 11 had occurred a generation or more ago, at the height of partnership.
Why Revisit Partnership?
The purpose of this volume is not to produce hundreds of pages about why Doran was right or wrong about the essential character of Canada-U.S. relations in 1984. Instead, each of the pieces in this volume represents a slice of the status of Canada-U.S. relations in the first