"Making North America is an important contribution to our understanding of the security aspects of trade agreements and provides a useful bridge between the paradigms of realism and liberalism. As many of the leaders Thompson interviewed confirmed, nothing is done in isolation; trade agreements, especially in the context of the Cold War, always had security implications." -- Ian Rutherford, Department of Politics, Royal Military College of Canada

Much has been written about the trilateral relationship between Canada, the United States, and Mexico, and the free trade agreements that this relationship has spawned. In Making North America, James Thompson uses the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement of 1988 and the North American Free Trade Agreement of 1994 to demonstrate that there has been an often-unrecognized impulse behind the process of North American integration – national security.

Featuring interviews with key decision-makers from all three countries, including Brian Mulroney, George H.W. Bush, and Carlos Salinas, Making North America is a rigorous analysis of the role national security has played in North American integration. Furthermore, Thompson’s evidence suggests that the processes at work in North America are part of a global phenomenon where regions are progressively coalescing into larger-scale political entities.