Australia, Canada, and the (Re)Construction of a US-Led Global Order

In the context of a collaborative project on the meaning and legacy of a cultural construction commonly called ‘the West,' and specifically its key Anglo-American dimension, this paper provides a comparative examination of two key bilateral relationships at the core of that construction: US-Canada and US-Australia. In building relationships with Canada and Australia, the United States has dealt with two quite distinct national experiments in either assimilating or accommodating non-Anglo cultures—indigenous peoples in both cases and the descendants of early French settlers in the Canadian case. In theoretical terms, we argue that bilateral relations with the United States, moreover, are evolving in ways that strain concepts like sensitivity-interdependence and vulnerability-interdependence. Viewed over a long period of time, Canada and Australia are less sensitive and less vulnerable vis-à-vis the United States than they have been to their own internal cultural challenges. Their deepening interaction with the United States, and the liberal enlightenment project it has long symbolized, has been more about the reconstitution of their own identities than about any policy implications. The concept of complex sovereignty and a departure from a strictly rationalist analysis evoke the fundamental political implication of that interaction in the contemporary environment. Larger systemic lessons are suggested by the essentially pluralist practices, including open-ended negotiation, through which unique cultures (re)construct their identities and integrate themselves at the centre of what was once called the Anglo-American world