The Phantom Menace
Why did I decide to call my blog "Frozen Punditry?" One reason is its currently 0 degrees F in my part of Minnesota for one thing. For another, if you freeze something it retains some freshness which is what I hope my blog entries to be. Finally I just couldnt' think of anything else.
Last week I visited another type of Frozen Punditry -- the State of the State conference at University of Manitoba, the other U of M if you're from Minnesota.
It was an examination of the power and health of the state in the 21st century. I unforunately missed the topics discussing states in Latin America which everyone praised but was there in time for discussions about western states as well as the problems of states on the African continent. Speakers were mostly Canadian academics but there was a Canadian military officer an American military officer as well.
I may discuss the substance of the presentations later on, in particular the insights of Dr. Ian Spears and Dr. Adam Harmes (who I'd like to thank for answering my questions) but right now I want to talk about the Canadian/American dynamic.
The first day I was there, nobody knew I was Canadian and the second most of the speakers still didn't. I'm hispanic, generally not found this far north but there are certainly hispanic populations in Canada. It was interesting to see some views on the power of the United States. For example, one speaker argued that if Americans were policing the world, it was because the other nations of the west had abrogated their responsibilities to us. In part this was because Europe was a wreck in 1945 and other nations just wanted to be left alone.
There was also a great deal of talk on the role of the US in the UN in regards to its self-interest, positions on Human Rights as well as the idealism of mulitlateral action that proves more disfunctional when confronting states that aren't liberal democracies.
There were a few shots taken but the tone was more informative and scholarly than confrontational, even during questions by the Canadian students. The one exception might be the endnote speaker, who refered to the Americans as the Phantom Menace. That in so many discussions of state power the specter of the United States looms behind it, influencing it. But he also reminded that as the Empire brought order to a fractious Republic, so did the US bring order to the chaos of the post-WWII era in terms of things like the Marshall Plan, Bretton Woods and others.
All things considered I think the Canadians, at least the academic ones, are viewing the US in a scholarly light rather than as just the "anti-americanism" that the media here sometimes plays up.
Oh yeah, the Canadian customs agents were twice as nice and less intimidating than their US counterparts. Also about 10 minutes faster.
