Common challenges and threats to the national interests of the United States and Canada (late 20th – early 21st century)

The article attempts to outline the main challenges and threats to the national interests in the late XXth – early XXIst century on the example of the USA and Canada. A review of the period from the end of the Cold War to the present day in two major dimensions, axiological and geographic, has been carried out. The former is focused on identifying the basic and essential features of those threats and challenges which are distinguished for the American and Canadian foreign policies. This dimension has been analyzed within the context of core values to which American and Canadian politicians appeal on both domestic and international arenas. The latter outlines those major regions detached as menacing the United States and Canada. Both leading democratic states combine “national” and “international” values in substantiating of their foreign policy. The basic democratic and universal human values are subject to special attention. It is generalized that the main modern dangers for both countries represent mostly axiological, not geographic dimension. That is why among the main threats to the American and Canadian national interests one can distinguish those as follows: terrorism, climate change, proliferation of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, challenges to the cyber-security, uncontrolled migration, international crime, failed states etc. It is concluded that the universal nature of the values, the protection of which is the basis of the current foreign policy of both states, is coherent to the universal nature of the dangers that arise for the American and Canadian national interests.