The foundation of United States global power is facing an unprecedented internal challenge, driven largely by Washington’s strained diplomatic and economic relations with its closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico. Throughout modern history, maintaining friendly relations with adjacent nations has been viewed as a primary security enhancer, a driver of mutual economic prosperity, and an essential buffer for handling complex transnational challenges. Geopolitical strategists have long maintained that stable neighbors bolster regional security, whereas weak or unstable states tend to export trouble.
Today, however, that foundational advantage is eroding. In Canada, citizens and policymakers increasingly perceive the high tariffs imposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, combined with dismissive rhetoric regarding their sovereignty—such as characterizing Canada as a potential "51st state"—as direct assaults on their national economy and independence. South of the border, Mexico is experiencing a resurgence of deep historical anxieties regarding external economic coercion and threats of military intervention, reviving generational concerns about American hegemony.
This friction threatens a North American partnership that took generations to forge. During the nineteenth century, early U.S. foreign policy concentrated primarily on its home continent, where Washington competed with France, Mexico, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and indigenous populations for territorial dominance. As the United States ascended to global superpower status during the twentieth century, successive generations of strategists began to take North American relations for granted, turning their primary focus toward Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East.
It was only in the closing years of the Cold War that U.S. presidents formally recognized the critical need to reinvest in the stability and strength of North America. Ronald Reagan laid out this strategic rationale clearly in 1979 when launching his presidential campaign. "The key to our own future security may lie in both Canada and Mexico becoming much stronger than they are today," Reagan explained, adding, "It is time we stopped treating our nearest neighbors as foreigners."
Geopolitics fundamentally begins with geography, and America’s geography has historically granted it an enormous advantage over every other major global power. China and Russia each must manage complex, often tense relationships with fourteen neighboring countries, many of which harbor deep resentments stemming from histories of conflict. India must navigate six immediate neighbors, including a nuclear-armed rival. Furthermore, the global trade access of all three powers depends heavily on navigating vulnerable maritime chokepoints.
By contrast, the United States shares long, secure land borders with two benign neighbors and enjoys open maritime access across two vast oceans. Close cooperation with Canada and Mexico historically enhances homeland security, attracts robust investment, promotes technological innovation, and creates a massive, resource-rich market filled with vital talent. This continental alignment also equips all three nations to more effectively address transnational criminal networks, manage migration flows, and safeguard shared environmental resources, including clean air, water, and wildlife.
A safe, resilient, and adaptive North America serves as the logical starting point for any effective U.S. global strategy. Washington is best positioned to navigate an uncertain and competitive international landscape when the United States, Canada, and Mexico present a unified front. Yet, current confrontational policies risk alienating America’s most natural partners, effectively dismantling a precious geopolitical asset: the strong continental base from which Washington has traditionally projected global power.
CONTINENTAL VISION
The realization that amicable continental relations directly bolster global influence dates back to the nineteenth century. William Seward, who served as U.S. secretary of state from 1861 to 1869, was among the first to articulate this vision, asserting that to have "control of this continent is to be . . . the controlling interest in the world."
During negotiations for the U.S. purchase of Alaska in 1867, Seward observed that Alaska and the Aleutian Islands "extended a friendly hand to Asia." He similarly pursued the acquisition of Greenland, Iceland, the Hawaiian Islands, and strategic territories in the Caribbean, believing these acquisitions would secure the oceanic approaches to the United States.
Seward simultaneously recognized that American power could be expanded through economic integration rather than territorial conquest alone. He openly opposed European imperial conquests and the 1846–1848 U.S. war with Mexico. At the conclusion of the American Civil War in 1865, Seward actively prevented Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Philip Sheridan from launching an invasion of Mexico to depose the Habsburg archduke installed by the French. Seward reasoned that a U.S. invasion would inevitably trigger fierce Mexican resistance, whereas allowing the Mexican people to depose the foreign ruler themselves would yield a far more sustainable outcome—a prediction validated when Mexican forces overthrew the regime in 1867.
Seward applied a similarly diplomatic approach to the northern frontier. In 1867, the British government united its North American colonies to form the Canadian Confederation, a move motivated in part by a desire to deter a potential U.S. invasion in retaliation for London’s covert support of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Seward responded by choosing the peaceful path of international arbitration to resolve wartime claims against the United Kingdom.
Seward envisioned a North American union built on free choice rather than coercion or conquest, placing his faith in the magnetic, attractive power of the United States. Commerce, he maintained, would act as a new "god of boundaries," capable of redrawing political lines and drawing nations closer together—a concept his biographer, Ernest Paolino, termed Seward’s "law of imperial gravity."
The restoration of Mexican President Benito Juárez in 1867, coinciding with the birth of the Canadian Confederation, offered the genuine prospect of a democratic North America bound by expanding economic ties. While peaceful relations were established, Seward’s grand continental vision faded in subsequent decades as American political focus shifted decisively westward, temporarily dimming attention toward the immediate northern and southern neighbors.
A SEARCH FOR STABILITY
By the early twentieth century, the United States had grown accustomed to taking continental harmony for granted. That sense of security was abruptly shattered by the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The ensuing decade of violent conflict—marked by cross-border raids on American towns and the seizure of U.S. property by various revolutionary factions—forced Washington to launch two separate military expeditions into Mexico, narrowly avoiding a protracted military quagmire.
U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s famous 1916 reelection campaign slogan, "He kept us out of war," referred as much to the volatile situation in Mexico as it did to the unfolding conflict in Europe. The persistent instability along the southern border left the United States acutely vulnerable. In 1917, Imperial Germany transmitted a secret proposal of alliance to the Mexican government—intercepted and decoded by British intelligence—promising German assistance in reclaiming Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas if Mexico sided with Berlin in the event of U.S. entry into World War I.
Washington eventually stabilized relations following the consolidation of a one-party authoritarian state in Mexico during the 1920s. As political scientist Pamela Starr observed, Washington accepted its neighbor’s autonomy, but "within limits." As long as Mexico did not directly threaten U.S. security, Washington refrained from interference, prioritizing Mexican stability over challenging the country’s limited democracy, prickly nationalism, and closed economy.
This pragmatic arrangement endured for roughly half a century, facilitating practical bilateral cooperation. Between 1942 and 1964, for instance, the U.S. Bracero Program issued guest worker permits to approximately 4.6 million Mexicans, successfully filling severe domestic labor shortages in American agriculture and railroad industries.
Concurrently, the twentieth century witnessed Canada’s steady transition from a British dominion to a sovereign North American partner and military ally. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the United States and Canada constructed vital infrastructure bridges and tunnels to expand economic exchanges. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull subsequently negotiated comprehensive reciprocal trade agreements with Canada in 1935 and 1938.
Following World War II, Canadian forces fought alongside American troops in the Korean War while Ottawa strongly supported the creation of NATO, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the United Nations, and other foundational institutions of the postwar international order. During the 1950s, the two nations partnered to construct the St. Lawrence Seaway and established an extensive radar network across the Arctic to monitor potential missile threats. In 1965, they signed the landmark Automotive Products Trade Agreement, establishing a duty-free, integrated continental automobile market.
TIES THAT BIND
The pace of North American economic and institutional integration accelerated significantly during the Reagan administration. President Reagan’s diplomatic outreach to Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney encouraged Mulroney to propose an ambitious free trade agreement in 1985. Mulroney took a substantial political risk; while Canadians remained historically wary of becoming economically dependent on or dominated by the United States, they simultaneously sought binding rules to discipline U.S. trade practices and encourage domestic investment. The two nations finalized the agreement in 1987, and the U.S. Congress approved it the following year, turning the 1988 Canadian general election into a de facto referendum on free trade that Mulroney ultimately won.
In Mexico, President Carlos Salinas, who took office in 1988, recognized that a similar bilateral pact could fundamentally open his country’s economy and attract essential foreign investment. Facing severe debt crises, declining energy revenues, and the structural exhaustion of the ruling party’s corporatist model—which had long fostered a centralized and closed economy—Salinas made the bold decision to propose a free trade agreement to U.S. President George H. W. Bush in 1990.
Canada formally joined the negotiations in 1991, culminating in the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1992. For Washington, NAFTA represented far more than a standard commercial accord; it was a historic reconciliation with Mexico, which had remained deeply suspicious of the United States since losing half its territory in the 1848 war. Mexico viewed the partnership as a vehicle to accelerate its internal economic, social, and political modernization. Mexican negotiators sought to import the rule of law through robust protections for foreign investment, market competition, and intellectual property, while reformers drew institutional inspiration from the U.S. and Canada to foster a multiparty democracy and an open society.
President George H. W. Bush championed NAFTA as a cornerstone of U.S. post–Cold War strategy, declaring in 1992 that the agreement marked "the beginning of a new era" designed to help the United States prepare for the economic challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century. The Bush administration believed the partnership would deliver substantial economic dividends while easing continental cooperation on foreign policy, environmental protection, immigration enforcement, and counter-narcotics efforts. Unlike the European Union model of shared sovereignty, NAFTA’s economic integration was carefully structured to respect national sensitivities regarding independence and sovereign authority.
Bush’s successor, President Bill Clinton, successfully steered NAFTA through a contentious congressional approval process with strong bipartisan support, particularly from congressional Republicans. Clinton deepened Washington’s institutional commitment to the North American project during the 1995 peso crisis by extending a substantial emergency financial loan to Mexico, preventing economic instability from spilling across the border. Following the September 11 terrorist attacks, amidst widespread concerns that security hardening would cripple cross-border commerce, President George W. Bush launched subsequent initiatives to guarantee safe and efficient transit for commercial transport along both borders.
BETTER TOGETHER
Although domestic critics of NAFTA warned that American jobs would inevitably migrate to Mexico in search of lower wages, those catastrophic predictions failed to materialize. Instead, the agreement proved to be both an economic and strategic triumph. By 2000, six years after NAFTA took effect, U.S. unemployment dropped to 3.8 percent, reaching its lowest level in decades. Inflation declined, productivity surged, and real wages increased, with notable gains achieved by lower-wage workers.
The pact stimulated massive capital investments in railroads, pipelines, electrical grids, and modernized border infrastructure, rendering continental supply chains—particularly in manufacturing—highly efficient. Total merchandise and service trade between the United States and Canada expanded dramatically from $169 billion in 1988 to approximately $900 billion by 2024. Similarly, U.S.-Mexican trade surged from under $100 billion prior to NAFTA to nearly $1 trillion.
Cross-border foreign direct investment fueled this unprecedented growth. U.S. direct investment in Canada climbed from $61 billion before NAFTA to roughly $750 billion, while Canadian investment in the United States grew from $27 billion to approximately $500 billion. American direct investment in Mexico rose from $15 billion to a range of $130 billion to $150 billion, and Mexican investments in the U.S. economy jumped from $1 billion to between $40 billion and $50 billion.
Because the United States accounts for up to 60 percent of Canadian imports and roughly 40 percent of Mexican imports, robust economic growth among its neighbors directly stimulates the U.S. economy. Growth in more distant markets yields comparatively minor returns for American exporters; when China increases its imports, for example, the U.S. economy captures only a small fraction of every additional dollar spent.
Furthermore, NAFTA’s architects intended the agreement to generate viable economic opportunities within Mexico, enabling citizens to find sustainable employment domestically rather than migrating northward. Amid persistent economic distress, the population of Mexican-born immigrants in the United States had surged from approximately 760,000 in 1970 to nine million by 2000. However, by 2010, net Mexican migration had dropped to zero, with subsequent arrivals primarily originating from Central America and beyond, while Mexico evolved into a critical cooperative partner in U.S. immigration enforcement.
Although Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to scrap NAFTA entirely during his first term, the agreement had become too structurally entrenched to abandon. His administration ultimately settled for a renegotiation, replacing NAFTA with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) in 2020. The updated accord modernized provisions governing digital commerce and established formal mechanisms for labor dispute resolution. However, its complex rules of origin designed to protect regional auto producers ultimately undermined the global competitiveness of the North American automotive sector. Additionally, the revised agreement weakened protections for foreign investors operating in Mexico, casting uncertainty over domestic adherence to the rule of law.
REPAIRING THE RIFT
Although the USMCA formally remains in effect until 2036, the underlying concept of deep North American integration is increasingly strained. The Trump administration declined to approve a scheduled extension of the trade pact, and ongoing policy unpredictability now discourages long-term capital investment in both Canada and Mexico. A more fundamental challenge stems from Washington’s asserted flexibility to bypass treaty obligations when politically expedient.
During 2025 and 2026, the administration levied sweeping tariffs on Canadian automobiles, steel, aluminum, iron, metal-intensive manufacturing equipment, lumber, and pharmaceuticals, citing national security concerns. Given that the United States has spent seven decades fostering the integration of these very industrial sectors and that Canada has served as a steadfast military ally for over a century, this national security designation has caused widespread shock and deep resentment across Canada.
A weakening or potential fracturing of institutional ties between the United States, Canada, and Mexico would constitute a profound strategic miscalculation. Combined, the physical, human, and economic assets of the three nations make North America a dominant global player. Stretching from the Arctic Circle to the tropics, the continent houses nearly half a billion citizens within three stable democracies, boasting growing populations that contrast sharply with the demographic declines seen in other major industrial economies.
The region possesses a highly skilled workforce, fully integrated infrastructure, and competitive capacities spanning agriculture, mining, advanced manufacturing, and professional services. Furthermore, North Americans enjoy unparalleled access to cutting-edge technologies, deep financial capital markets, energy self-sufficiency, and the capacity to expand production across oil, natural gas, and renewable energy sectors.
This structural advantage represents an enviable geopolitical hand, making current adversarial policies counterproductive. Washington must cease antagonizing Ottawa and resume close cooperation on Arctic and maritime security, critical mineral extraction, and technological innovation. Canada’s advanced artificial intelligence capabilities, premier research institutions, and vast energy reserves naturally complement those of the United States, mirroring the successful resource and manufacturing partnerships of the twentieth century.
Simultaneously, the United States must actively assist Mexico in realizing its full economic and institutional potential. While NAFTA helped Mexico cultivate world-class economic institutions and a more open society, deep-seated corruption continues to pervade state and local governments, legal systems, police forces, and educational institutions, leaving significant portions of the population trapped in the informal economy. Transnational criminal networks and drug cartels routinely exploit these systemic vulnerabilities. With targeted U.S. intelligence sharing and technological assistance, however, Mexico can substantially improve internal security and strengthen the rule of law. Cultivating robust, trustworthy institutions will accelerate mutual economic growth and cement Mexico’s status as an indispensable strategic partner.
From William Seward to Ronald Reagan, the Bush family, and Bill Clinton, successive generations of U.S. leaders have recognized that a strong, cohesive North America provides the United States with an indispensable strategic anchor in an increasingly uncertain world. While a transactional approach to international economics and a zero-sum view of geopolitics have recently strained these historic ties, future U.S. administrations will retain the opportunity to alter course. Restoring and expanding a constructive continental partnership will require reviving America’s traditional powers of attraction and treating its closest neighbors with enduring mutual respect.
