Principled intervention: National security and the ideal of liberty in the diplomacy of the United States and Canada

The United States and Canada have numerous common security concerns, and jointly participate in an extensive network of security arrangements. However, they have not always agreed on how to establish lasting international security, on the extent of their obligation to promote liberty abroad, or on the nature of the relationship between national security and suppression of liberty in foreign lands.;The twin goals of security and promotion of liberty abroad have been linked explicitly in the 20th century experiment with international organization. The United States played a unique role in the United Nations in compelling formal--though not actual--acceptance of the notion that liberty and security are indivisible. In contrast, Canada initially was hostile to the idea of UN involvement with individual liberties. It eventually embraced the idea, however, out of more general support for collective security. For Washington, the UN was valuable insofar as it helped extend the realm of liberty, and thereby of security; for Ottawa, promoting liberty through the UN was useful in sustaining the interest of democratic populations in otherwise failing international security arrangements.;Chief Executives in the United States historically have been more reluctant than Congress to intervene in Russia. Congress intermittently has set itself up as a "high court of indignation" to try Czars or Commissars for Russia's lasting habits of internal persecution and suppression of the national liberties of its neighbors. Successive Presidents, including Woodrow Wilson, have better understood the limits to America's moral authority, the complexity of diplomacy, and the breadth of American interests. More fundamentally, America has accepted the Soviet system and sphere of influence in practice, while rejecting both in principle as morally and politically illegitimate. Canada has adopted essentially the same approach, but with an overlay of considerable parochialism. Also, Ottawa has been more concerned with Washington than Moscow, on occasion viewing improved relations with the latter as a counterweight to the preponderant influence on its affairs of the former.