One continent, indivisible...

We are coming up next year, on the 20th anniversary of NAFTA. It has created tens of millions jobs, more integrated a continent, and dramatically increased trade. Yet, for politically expedient reasons, we constantly seem to be re litigating these issues.

Arguably we should be looking at the success of NAFTA as a jumping off point for greater geopolitical and economic integration of the North American continent.

The World is changing. With technology growing and business becoming ever more global, the future economic and national security of the US will be dependent on cooperation with our neighbors to the North and South.

National security and Latin American expert, Dr. Robert Pastor makes the case for this future in his new book, The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future.  The world is changing he argues and we can't go forward and make progress as human beings, while being held back by arbitrary political borders and nostalgia for archaic ideas such as isolationism and opposition to globalization.

My conversation with Dr. Robert Pastor:

Mexico and the United States, and the Road Ahead

The Mexico / U.S. relationship  is front and center today in the US Congress. But how much do you think members of Congress know about what’s really happening in Mexico?

If you were to think about a country that has made remarkable economic progress; a nation whose once closed economy has become one of the most open in the world; a country that has a growing middle class, a thriving multi party, competitive democracy and a growing skilled workforce that is helping to restore manufacturing; most likely you would not think of Mexico.

Rather, when we think of Mexico we often think of one of the most dangerous nations. A place were over 70,000 people have been killed in criminal violence and whose law enforcement and judicial system has broken down. The fact is that all of these things are true of Mexico.

It’s complexity and it’s future are open questions for the 21st century.  Few understand this better than Shannon K. O’Neil.  She is a senior fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. She has degrees from Yale and Harvard and is the author of Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, the United States, and the Road Ahead.

My conversation with Shannon K. O'Neil: