Many more people are linked by trade. In 1980, about a quarter of the world’s population was linked by trade. Two decades later, close to 90 per cent of the world’s population was linked by trade. (p. 425)

More exchanges in cultural values, more rapid and widespread diffusion of diseases, new security concerns, introduction of animal and vegetable species in parts of the world that did not know them, the emergence of the virtual global village. All of these flows may have happened previously but globalization has caused them to increase in volume, reach, and in their consequences. (p. 425)

For Brooks and Ménard, globalization is the political, economic, and social integration that comes from the increased international flow of goods, people, capital, and ideas. (p. 424)

It creates competitive and mutually exclusive interests (i.e., between the owners of the means of production and those who sell their labour); the gap between the rich and poor widens and greater polarization of interests occurs; capitalists search the globe for workers and resources and draw more people into the cycle of exploitation; governments become the protectors of capitalist interests and the instruments for the repression of the subordinate classes. (p. 426)

The new post-industrial model, spawned by globalization, is all about outsourcing. Thus, large companies establish dense and highly-specialized supply networks. Disruption in a crucial supply link could bring entire industries to a halt. According to Brooks and Ménard, this argument was demonstrated in 2008 by the American sub-prime crisis. (pp. 426–427)

Asymmetry here means that Canada is more dependent on the US economically than is the US on Canada. The table on page 425 shows this asymmetry. It shows, for example, that 75 per cent of Canada’s exports go to the US. By contrast, 19 per cent of the US’s exports go to Canada. (pp. 430–431)

Gotlieb’s recommendations are to aim influence at the highest levels of the US government (i.e., the president and top personal advisors) and to tighten formal integration with the US. (p. 431)

Multilateralism “involves the resolution of international differences and conflicts through structures and processes that represent many states and that give all of them a voice, though not necessarily an equal voice, in decision-making.” (p. 434)

It can depart up to the point when serious and enduring consequences, beyond the loss of goodwill, would fall on Canada. (pp. 433–434)

Soft power involves international influence based on intangible or indirect factors that include culture, values, and a sense of legitimacy ascribed to a nation’s international aims. It operates through “the complex machinery of interdependence, rather than . . . expensive new weapons systems.” (pp. 435–437)

Events since 9/11 have brought home to Canadians and people throughout the world the remarkable lopsidedness of the world’s power structure, dominated by the United States, and have forced them to think hard about what this means. American decisions relating to “homeland security” and in the name of combatting terrorism—for example, requiring passports for Canadians entering the United States since June 2009, the elimination of regimes deemed to pose a threat to American security, and the creation of a Canada–US security zone in 2011—carry costs. These costs affect individual liberties, such as personal privacy and equality rights, that may be jeopardized by practices like ethnic profiling. (p. 437)

The United Nations achieves a great deal in advancing Canadian policy positions, and it helps to reduce conflict and resolves differences between countries. However, economically, it has cost approximately $80 million in 2015, and there has also been harsh criticisms on Canada’ human rights records and treatment of indigenous communities. (p. 428)