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disregards international trade rules, allows its firms to dictate policy, or has turned its back on the “special relationship” it has with Canada.
With the exception of a relatively small number of people in the U.S. forest-products industry and the U.S. officials charged with handling this dispute, virtually no one in the United States has heard of the softwood lumber dispute.
One of the enduring virtues of Charles Doran’s treatment of Canada-U.S. relations is his argument that the only way to appreciate the significance of partnership is to place the relationship in a broad international setting. Doing so, Doran argued, helps one appreciate how differing perceptions emerge from both the distinct foreign policy role and the capacity each county has within the international system. Partnership is not a dyad that lends itself to straightforward analysis. Indeed, the Canada-U.S. dyad is part of a much larger system in which Canada and the United States periodically fail to understand the other’s foreign policy role and capability.
Consideration of this broader setting has greatly facilitated the shift away from the imprecision of clichés rooted in special relationships or undefended borders that litter many depictions of the relationship. It is in this broader context, in which Canada-U.S. relations are most usefully placed, that all the pieces in this volume are set.
The Dimensions of Partnership
In addition to casting partnership against the backdrop of international relations, Doran established a three-part framework for the analysis of Canada-U.S. relations that resonates even today. That same framework comprises an overarching set of reference points for this volume that bears repeating here. The contributing authors have spent many years of their professional lives thinking, writing, and teaching about Canada-U.S. relations. Moreover, nearly every one of them has had some significant connection to Charles Doran or to the Center for Canadian Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University. Hence, the selection of authors