Not since the Second World War has such tension existed between Canada's interests and instincts vis-à-vis the United States. Canada's interests are closely aligned with those of the United States, but its instincts are those of continental Europe.

That Canada and the U.S. differ is nothing new. They agreed on the Soviet threat in Europe, and the Korean and Persian Gulf wars; they disagreed over Vietnam -- and now Iraq. Today's tensions are more acute, however, because Canada's interests have never tied it so closely to the U.S., while Canada's instincts have never been so offended by U.S. foreign policy.

Interests are bread-and-butter issues largely about citizens' personal security and economic well-being. Instincts are matters of values and ambitions and of how countries want the world to be. Interests and instincts -- or self-interest and ideals, if you prefer -- are both important in foreign policy. A democratic government that forgets about either will eventually lose domestic support for its foreign policy.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks made Americans feel more vulnerable and more patriotic than ever. Their world became Hobbesian: full of danger, with a hidden enemy unlike any the U.S. had previously faced. To this fresh danger was married a world-view articulated in conservative enclaves of universities, right-wing policy journals, of America über alles,a country whose unmatched supremacy should be more robustly reflected in its foreign policy.

George W. Bush, as Republican Party presidential candidate, argued that the United States should avoid being dragged into fights all over the world. Mr. Bush the candidate and Mr. Bush the President have not talked much to each other. A charitable interpretation would be that Sept. 11 educated him to the new Hobbesian world. A less charitable one would be that Mr. Bush knew little of the world on entering the White House and, prodded by Sept. 11, married his moralistic, evangelical convictions with the world-view of hard-liners whom he appointed to almost every senior administration position.

If there was one place that should have swallowed its disappointment with this world-view, it was Canada. Osama bin Laden put Canada on his hit list, and terrorists have entered Canada en route to the U.S. The interests of Canada and the U.S. are identical in fighting terror.

Another interest is economic. Canada sends about 85 per cent of its exports to the United States. Millions of jobs depend on access to that market. Canada's No. 1 foreign policy objective after Sept. 11 was to keep open that border. The U.S. has a legitimate concern about border security and must be assured that Canada has met that concern.

So if foreign policy were only about interests, Canada would urge even closer economic integration (customs union? continental perimeter? harmonized standards?) and would line up with every U.S. foreign policy objective.

But foreign policy is also about instincts -- and Canada's cannot be squared with those of the Bush administration. Canada sees the world, as modest-sized states do, in terms of influence; the U.S. now sees the world almost exclusively in terms of power. Robert Kagan, a conservative U.S. analyst, observes that the U.S. is now Mars and Europe is Venus -- as is Canada.

For centuries, large European countries saw the world in terms of power, while the U.S., removed by the Atlantic Ocean from conflict, thought in terms of influence. The savage wars of 1914-1919 and 1939-1945 were the last gasp of Great Power military conflicts in Western Europe. The collapse of the Soviet Union ended the Cold War.

The Great Powers of Europe built up their militaries to fight in Europe, or extend and protect their empires abroad. Once the fighting bled Europe and the empires imploded, only one reason remained to keep up military spending. With the Cold War's end, that reason evaporated.

Only the British and French retain some domestic support for military spending -- to sustain their illusion of remaining Great Powers and to intervene in former colonies such as the Falklands or Sierre Leone -- or, as the British are doing in what they used to call Mesopotamia, now Iraq.

By contrast, the 2003 U.S. budget calls for military spending of $379-billion (U.S.), roughly what the next 20 countries will spend, according to The Defence Monitor. The U.S. will spend six times more than Russia, 12 times more than Britain, and 55 times more than Canada. Even as the U.S. military budget carries all before it, U.S. governors are forced to cut money for universities, schools, welfare, and health care for the uninsured.

Mars may choose these priorities; the Venuses of the world, including Canada, do not. The result is a growing capability gap when power is needed. The gap leads to U.S. scorn of those countries such as Canada that it considers preachy but powerless. Diplomatic setbacks before the Iraq invasion will invite Americans to worry even less about support from other countries.

Canada's instincts, by contrast, are those of a modest-sized international player. They nudge Canada toward solving world problems through international laws, diplomacy, treaties and multilateralism. Canada doesn't have any power, military or otherwise, so how else would it see the world?

The instincts of the world's only superpower is to use existing multilateral frameworks only if they endorse what the U.S. had intended to do anyway. For Canada, these frameworks are essential; for the U.S., they are optional.

Europeans, now safely embedded in the enlarged European Union, have put aside Great Power rivalries, to become a series of medium- or small-sized countries that do their work multilaterally, through endless negotiation and compromise.

They now extrapolate their domestic practices onto the world (when the French President tells Eastern European countries to "shut up," it's a reflex of Great Power pretensions). But, by and large, the Europeans see the world more or less as Canadians do, and as Americans do not.

But the Europeans have their own continent and union. And they have size. They may be puny militarily compared to the U.S., but their internal market is greater. Canada's instincts may incline it to Europe, but Canada can never go there. Worse for Canada, transatlantic relations are at a record low. The institutions that got Canada into Europe, including NATO, were essentially U.S.-European. Those relations are now so badly frayed, the entire postwar institutional architecture may not last, leaving Canada isolated from Europe and marooned with the U.S.

Canada has a natural geographic partner: the United States. But the disparities of country size within North America have prevented political integration and often thrown political obstacles in the way of further economic integration. While the communality of economic and security interests should make Canada a closer partner of the U.S., and supporter of its foreign policy, the reverse is happening.

Canada has a budgetary surplus, the U.S. a yawning deficit. Canada has slowed its tax cutting, the Bush administration is accelerating them. Canada is again expanding the role of government; the U.S. continues to trim it, except in the military and security spheres. Canada's domestic spending priorities are more aligned with those of Europe than the U.S., although Canada's fiscal position is much stronger than the major countries of the continent.

In foreign policy, Canada's instincts can't be reconciled with those of the Bush administration. Canadian conservatives may pound out editorials seeking to recreate the Grand Alliance of Anglo-Saxon countries that "won the war and kept the peace" -- but this cannot be squared with Canadian instincts.

Until governments change in either or both countries, tensions between Canada's interests and instincts vis-à-vis the U.S. will remain and perhaps grow. Canada will pay for this -- but less so if it can keep tensions in check, work constructively on bilateral interests such as the fight against terror, resist moral superiority, and wait for international complexities to temper, as they always have, the temptations of hubris.
jsimpson@globeandmail.ca

ALSO SEE "THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM AND US" by Jeffrey Simpson