Let me take a moment to flag your attention to the stunning deterioration of U.S. relations with Canada. Yes, you know about the tariff fight and the fact that the U.S. national anthem gets routinely booed at NHL hockey games. But a few additional points. The Canadian Liberals were on track for a massive drubbing in an election that had to happen soon. It’s not even really ideological. The Liberals had been in power for a decade. They’ve seen the country through the pandemic and it’s aftermath. All those parties are unpopular. Ask Joe Biden. They were behind by like 25 points. Now eight weeks later, solely and entirely because of a wave of defensive (in both senses of the term) nationalism driven by Donald Trump, the Liberals look on track to win an outright majority.
Defending the country against the United States is now the sole issue in Canadian politics.
Meanwhile, the country’s newly minted incumbent Prime Minister Mark Carney is seeking to join Europe’s new defense production and purchase consortium. The Europeans, seeing the new direction of the U.S., are trying to dramatically up their own military production and agree jointly to purchase most of their weapons within Europe. In other words, not from the United States. Canada wants in too. Carney also just signed an agreement with Australia to jointly develop over-the-horizon radar technology. That’s newly important as a climate-change era arctic becomes a zone of Great Power competition. And finally, Carney has put Canada’s agreement to purchase 88 F-35 fighter jets under review.
These aren’t precisely defensive military agreements. They’re military procurement and weapons development agreements. But the two are never that far apart. And these specifically and by design exclude the United States. The concept is simple: you can’t depend for your weapons on someone you might be fighting.
Now I don’t imagine the U.S. and Canada will literally be in a military conflict. NORAD, as far as I know, is literally the only binational military command in the world. NORAD is a joint operation of both countries to patrol the skies of North America, especially over the arctic — which is why Canada’s role is so critical. But these moves aren’t symbolic. And they’re not simply economic hits — losing an order for 88 fighter jets is a huge deal for Lockheed Martin. These are extremely serious and rapid moves for a country that feels radically endangered by its southern neighbor.
Their motivation is even more jarring when you focus on the difficulties involved. Choosing a different country to buy your weapons from isn’t like switching supermarkets. The best analogy from ordinary life is switching from PCs to Macs or vice versa. But even that greatly understates the challenge. They’re weapons systems. Your soldiers are trained on one fighter jet system and not another. They use different parts. The different systems are designed to operate together. It’s a huge change and one you only make under duress. And they’re doing that.
All of these moves are, to put it simply, unimaginable. Or they were until eight weeks ago. The U.S.-Canadian border has been undefended and mostly unmonitored for more than a century. The idea that Canada is making defense-adjacent security agreements for the purposes of excluding the U.S. is simply unimaginable. And yet it’s happening. Because the United States made it necessary. There is some level of political convenience. It’s leveraged the revival of the Liberal party. But it’s done that because no one in Canada at the moment can deny the very real threat. No one in the country is pushing that argument because everyone is in unison on not just the threat but the affront to national dignity and sovereignty. The fury one sees in Canadians’ public expressions of anger and betrayal is unmistakable.
Speaking for myself, when I see this I feel a mix of shock combined with bewilderment and shame. I find it impossible to believe but I fully understand. We did this. The United States did this.
