Troubling Signs : Republican Senators Want to Militarize CAN-US Border

I've written previously that I was in favour of the recently revealed border harmonization policies between Canada and the US. While I'm unhappy with the fact that the terms of this initiative weren't being discussed in the House of Commons, I said that I supported the specific details of this plan. Investing in the border infrastructure to speed up passage is not a risk to Canadian Sovereignty or culture, despite the knee-jerk reactions of politicians trying to capitalize on latent anti-American fear and sentiment for their own purposes (cough Ignatieff cough.) The same threat was said to be posed to Canadian culture and sovereignty by the 1988 Free Trade Agreement with the US, and again by NAFTA in 1994, and these have not been materialized either. Few today are woeing a precipitous decline of Canadian identity caused by these agreements. This border plan (as I understood it) would increase the efficiency of the economic transactions that are already in place in NAFTA, and increase prosperity for Canadian businesses.      

However, recent comments by US Republican Senators concerning the Canadian border are worrisome. Very worrisome. Jeff Duncan, Senator from South Carolina, said on 15 Feb 2011 that "the acceptable level for the American citizen is total control of our southern border, our northern border, our natural ports of entry, allowing the Americans to "determine who comes into this country, how many folks come here through legal means annually, what they come for, whether they're seeking citizenship." This militaristic view of unilateral border patrol is profoundly misguided, divorced from reality, and completely unacceptable to Canadian interests.

First off, this view is premised upon the American fear that Islamic terrorists are pouring across a porous northern border to conduct acts of terrorism against the US, like is alleged to have happened prior to 9/11.

This is just a plain selective interpretation of the facts. Granted, some of the terrorists had stop overs of a few months to a year in Canada prior to travelling Stateside. But it deemphasizes the utter failure for the CIA and FBI to share information in their possession and act in concert with one another in the years leading up to the attacks because of their own institutional egoisms. I read the Pulitzer Prize winning book "The Looming Tower" by Lawrence Wright for my International Terrorism class, which excellently details the schism between these two US agencies. The Americans had all the information they would have needed to have stopped the attacks before they happened, and tragically failed to do so.  The CIA had gathered information abroad about Al Qaeda operatives in the US, but did not relay this information to the FBI so that these people could be put under surveillance and detained. Most of the hijackers stayed for extended periods of time in the US before acting, regardless of which country they stopped over in.  The 'pilots' of the hijacked aircraft learned to fly at a Florida flight school over a period of several months, but were not arrested despite the flight school instructor reporting it suspicious that none of his students were particularly interested in learning how to land the plane. Downplaying their own country's responsibility and scapegoating others is a convenient approach for American politicians, but unfortunately neglects a more proximate cause of the 9/11 tragedy.

Second, the Republican view also discounts the effectiveness of the border controls that have been enacted since 9/11. We are all familiar with the new stringent air travel requirements. We no longer can take potentially sharp objects nail clippers or possible containers of explosives like eye contact solutions. While bothersome, I believe that these regulations are unfortunately necessary in the world we live in today and are a justifiable infringement on our Privacy rights. Air travel is not a human right, but a privilege, and if the cost of ensuring that we touch down safely at our travel destination is packing my toiletries in my suitcase rather than my carry-on, well thats fine by me. I believe it is reasonable to assume that these new regulations have been effective. The fact that terrorists have had to be increasingly inventive and resourceful in their plotting demonstrates that the new security measures have at least eliminated all the 'obvious' ways of committing atrocities. Unfortunately, the only way of knowing if the current regulations are effective or not  not is for a plot to be thwarted in action or for an attack to be 'successful'. Not exactly desirable metrics by which to support the argument for the current 'moderate' level of regulation.  

Third, the desire for some American politicians to militarize our border on top of the effective policies in place already would also further impede the flow of cross border trade. The main complaint since 9/11 emanating from Canadian businesses has been that the existing level of regulation at the border passages has slowed trade. This has hurt business on both sides of the border at a most inopportune time (ahem, the Recession.) "Total control" by the Americans would only further hinder this vital trade flow.  

Militarizing the border might be effective in the short term, but it would simply propel terrorists to search for more inventive ways of circumventing these restrictions as well. In case you don't know, the typical profile for Islamic terrorists is not a mindless uneducated religious zealot for a background of destitution, but rather a middle-class, well educated, religious moderate who has fallen under the sway of radical Islamist indoctrination.  These individuals most certainly will be able to put their educations to use and think of ways around the "Security Perimeter". Delegating border control to the US would not increase their security in the long-run, but would instead be another costly adventure further increasing their staggeringly high budget deficit and foreign debt.

What is needed is not further 'enforcement', but rather better intelligence sharing across borders.  The Canada-US border is too long to keep an omnipresent eye on, so working cooperatively with US agencies is perhaps the only way forward. Monitoring the actions of terrorist suspects is (or ought to be...) an issue of law and order like any other. That being said, Prime Minister Stephen Harper must resist becoming  implicit in shady American practices, liked "rendition" and water-boarding, and from unilaterally adopting American security laws and regulations. We also need to retain control over our own immigration policies, as migrants to Canada are a vital component of our economic development, but also of our cultural heritage. Any change to Canadian law must be done through deliberation in the House of Commons before Canada's elected representatives, who will (hopefully) deliberate over the issue in a way that reflects the interest of Canadian citizens, much as this Border Security deal should have been done in the first place.