Introduction: Non-Security Governance

Abstract

Frontier-mindedness speaks loudly—not only of US history but apparently also of globalization. We are familiar with how the US western frontier opened lands and lore in the late nineteenth century. It, apparently, did not turn out to be the “last” US frontier needing cultivation. Marshall McLuhan and Bruce R. Powers argued convincingly in the mid-1960s that the “Canadian North ha[d] replaced the American West” in that capacity.² In this volume, we similarly argue that the “Mexican South” is currently displacing the “Canadian North” in Washington policy-making calculations. While the McLuhan/Powers argument paved the way for introducing their global village thesis, ours is simply an assessment of how the southern US frontier shows so many of the symptoms of a global village within a regional context, and what policy-making framework may permit a more effective governance. For us, this frontier stretches not just along the official US boundary with Mexico, but also what George W. Bush called the third US border, that is, along Central America and the Caribbean, embracing parts of South America as well.³