Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Fun hypotheticals, complicated feelings, and harsh realities about a war with Canada, from a Canadian point of view
(for the purposes of this rant, "us/we" = Canadians and "you" = Americans)
I've seen lots of bluster and jingoism on our side of the border from politicians, the news media, and my former colleagues in the Canadian military about a hypothetical trade war/actual war with the US. Just because we're dealing with a bunch of nonsense from south of the border, doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about this rationally or delude ourselves about our actual position.
(1) Almost none of us should take the threats seriously. Bullying Canada (or Greenland, or Panama, or whatever but especially Canada) is just going to tank your own economy and food supply, as well as alienate the whole Western world and torpedo your whole project of world peace and economic dominance under a rules-based order. No one wins here except China and Russia. We Canadians should just chalk up all this talk to being just negotiation tactics.
(2) Okay that being said, second off, the Canadian military should and will actually take the threats seriously. An American invasion is just never, never going to happen... but if it does make no mistake, we will fight you, no matter how hopeless. For folks in the military, it's just the nature of the job. I myself would be among the first to rejoin so I can pick up a rifle and shoot back.
(3) We do not have much of a chance of "winning" a war with you, or even slowing you down all too much. The reason being, as every serving and former member of the CAF knows, we have neglected our military and our NATO commitments for decades. Folks will point to our history of making do with little at the outset of a war, and building ourselves up into a fearsome fighting force that punches above our weight. That's garbage talk. We'd be fighting you alone, with very little time to prepare, and inferior numbers and firepower in every way. The best we can do is be unruly subjects and resist an occupation after the fact.
(4) No one in the Canadian or American military wants this fight. Memes like this (currently top on r/NCD) pretty much sum it up. But an actual invasion would quickly harden our resolve against you, much like Ukraine, and I almost guarantee that the first 1,000 casualties will be American and happen in the days before you realize that yes, the Canadians are willing to shoot back at invaders.
(5) Although we will not join you willingly at the present moment (about 90% of Canadians do not want to join the US according to recent polls), Trump has touched on a nerve when he says the opposite. The fact is, after a decade of economic mismanagement, ruinous immigration policy, and rule by the current political/media class, we have very little left to be proud of as Canadians, and much to be envious of when we look at the how the US economy is doing. As such, the inconceivable has now become conceivable in that, if we were to continue down this path for another five or so years, I can see a future world where the majority of Canadians would rather become American than suffer their continued decline of quality-of-life.
(6) Trump is right to be upset. Those us who are able to put down ideology and jingoism and use our brains for a second are sympathetic. Canada has been a shitty ally and trading partner for decades now, and especially in the last decade.
(a) Despite being your largest trading partner, we subsidize our own industry to billions of dollars a year, then dump product on you and hope you will see it as benign enough to let the con go on for another year. At the same time, we are protective of our own shitty, low-productivity, low-growth industries and don't even let American companies enter key markets. Not that anyone wants to do business in Canada anymore anyways.
(b) Our security policy has been to "phone the US" if we ever get in trouble. We don't even have air defense assets. We have two entire working diesel submarines at any given time to patrol three oceans. As mentioned above, we have no effective military or deterrence capability.
(c) We let Chinese nationals who are easily compromised by the CCP infiltrate into high-ranking positions in our government, universities, and industry to spy on us and interfere with our policy. We let partially state-owned Chinese companies buy up our strategic resources. We let spies from the "near-Arctic" state cruise around the Northwest Passageway and scout out our (few) military installations.
(d) We let legitimate refugees and phony "asylum seekers" in by the millions, just so many of them can risk their lives trying to cross into the US the next month. For many Canadians, seeing the sheer numbers of people trying to cross into the US has been the wake-up call we needed.
(e) Our Five Eyes intelligence partners don't even tell us anything important because they don't trust us. Heck every couple of years, your intelligence agencies seem to uncover a plot against Americans being planned on our soil. And what do they do? They skip the official federal channels and just phone up the local police or RCMP, who can actually be trusted to do their jobs.
(7) We are entirely beholden to you for our economy and security. Despite a lot of talk generated the last time around that Trump was poking at us, we have done nothing to diversify the customer base of key exports such as crude. Although at the same time, you are fairly beholden to us for things such as electricity, potash, and uranium. So in a trade war, you lose some, but we lose everything.
(8) In the face of all this, our leadership at the highest level has responded by folding. But instead of just resigning and letting an immediate election happen, our PM has prorogued Parliament, nakedly to buy time for his party to regroup, meaning that we have no actual functioning government for the next two months and he stays in charge nominally, with no credibility to actually negotiate on our behalf. On the flip side, neither do you really... Trump and team are currently ruling by news conference and Twitter while your actual government sits by. I really hope Pierre Pollievre sees this as an opportunity to assemble his team and do the same.
(9) In light of all of the above, Trump's threat of annexing us by economic force deserves to be taken more seriously. What does that look like? I don't think Canadians will accept a hostile annexation into political union. It is more likely to be a "soft" annexation. I can easily see a world where you guys dictate a lot more of our economic policy, security policy, and foreign relations. Trump has already influenced our border and immigration policy in a big way.
(10) Now, for some speculation. What does Trump's team want from all this? Like good negotiators, I think they have been holding out on their true objective here. But once it's said out loud, it's going to look fairly obvious. Canada, Greenland, and Panama. What do all these places have in common? Control of key waterways for home security and projection of US Naval power. It's about the Northwest Passage, dummy! All you guys want is to run the Arctic, so you can keep the Chinese and the Russians out and profit from future Arctic trade routes. If this happens, the fact that we lost control and sovereignty over our portion of the Arctic will go down as a national embarrassment and historic tragedy, somewhere on par with our chronic inability to manage our oil wealth.
If I could sum up my rant, this whole affair is embarrassing as a Canadian. There really is a feeling that pervades every aspect of our lives right now that the chickens are coming home to roost after so many years of mismanagement and neglect by successive governments (especially, but not only by, the Liberals). Although the great majority are blinded by national pride and not willing to admit it, we've got a losing hand here and Trump & co have some legitimate grievances. So all in all, whether it's the Arctic or something else that you guys actually want, things are not boding well for us holding onto our current status in the world.
This is not being a shitty trading partner. This is beneficial to the US and we should stop doing it for our own sake. The US does the same thing by the way.
What are you referring to? Under international law, we don't have the right to prevent foreign ships from accessing the Northwest Passage.
We do have a government. The government is not the same as the Parliament. The Parliament shuts down all the time. It doesn't normally sit for the whole year. This just means they can't pass legislation.
Tell that to the WTO. Yes, the US does it too to some extent.
According to Wikipedia, the status of the Northwest Passage is disputed (mostly by the US). Seems we could assert a lot more control over the Northwest Passage if we put the resources into it, I'm mourning that we don't do this.
Yes but this is veering into semantics. With the legislative branch handcuffed and with a lame duck executive, no one is steering the ship at the federal level.
It's disputed by the Canadian government, but based on my understanding of international law, we're clearly in the wrong.
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Nice.
I still see this is a serious conversation about an unserious scenario. I will update when we see what Trump actually does. Americans broadly don't harbor ill will or want to bully Canada. Does that matter? I think so. Americans don't really care about bullying Iraqis or Cubans. We probably can't escape the geopolitics of it all. Still, there are no irreconcilable differences between the two nations that suggest conflict is inevitable or desirable.
A mutually beneficial, if lopsided, security arrangement is fine and to be expected. Canada is not likely to keep complete sovereignty over all its territory, no. Poland, a nation of proud and jingoistic people, doesn't maintain complete sovereignty either. They invite America to violate their sovereignty with broad smiles and wide open arms. Isn't that the deal? What does a Canada not beholden to America look like? A Chinese satellite?
I don't know what the Pentagon or State Department is thinking in terms of long term strategy. Whether it has any influence on Trump's current rhetoric is another question. Canada's security capabilities and its willingness to maintain those are a real concern. There is a strategic deficit that Canada is well positioned to fill. Canada should be the Arctic guys on this side of the Atlantic. They probably are. Canada doesn't need a 400 ship navy to be a reliable and indispensable ally.
Seems like as the nice guy neighbor Canada should also be well positioned to have competent and useful intelligence agencies. A go-between that can offer to whisper sweet nothings into the super power's ears, thus gaining valuable access it can leverage. Why isn't that a thing? The Brits fill this role already?
I might feel the same way if I were a Canadian. As an American citizen I'd rather see Canada prosper than become a subservient territory. Rising tides and all that. Once the Canadian subreddit started speaking more candidly about immigration I began to have serious concerns. A United States of NAFTA would be kinda cool, but meh.
And, hey, at least you're not Mexico.
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And this is what Trump is actually doing.
Deliberately ruining our economy so we become desperate and capitulate willingly? Maybe. But my point is he doesn't need to, we're doing it ourselves and he just needs to wait a few years.
He didn't "ruin" anything. Neither he is intending to. What he is intending to is to inject this possibility as something to be discussed and by this highlight the (unfavorable) comparison between Canada and the US that you have described very well, and by this hopefully push Canada more to the right and being more open to whatever he needs the next Canadian government to do. Actually adding Canada as a state (or a number of states) would be, even if realistic (which it is not), very problematic for Republicans at the first place, and I don't even believe a serious trade war is possible since it would hurt so many people with serious money, and they speak the same language that Trump speaks and will not let that happen. However, by dangling this possibility and initiating discussion about the US-Canada relationship, Trump can advance his agenda much more than if he just said "you know, maybe sometime in the next 4 years we might initiate some discussions about US-Canada relationships".
That's classic anchoring. If you come to the jewelry store and see a ring sold for $100K, they aren't actually trying to sell you this ring. I mean, they would surely be happy to, but that's not their main point. The point is to make the ring that costs $2K to seem like a bargain - you get almost the same thing and it's 50 times cheaper!
He said he wanted to apply economic pressure for us to join the US.
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I would really like to see this meme, but reddit linking is broken. Any chance you can post it somewhere else? comments here allow image posting, for example.
This is truly an excellent post, in any case. If I could sum up the general thus I get from it, it would be "Reality intrudes". You've noted the economic and military factors; and to me the cultural factor seems significant as well. The Culture War is in fact a war, and Canada (and the UK and Europe) chose to involve themselves in that war. They fucked with our politics, and now we're fucking with their politics right back. As I see it, the goal isn't to land the Marine Corps on Prince Edward Island, it's to communicate to Canada that involving themselves in the internal politics of America is a very, very bad idea.
In what way did Canada fuck with American politics?
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FTFY
I'm getting "It's a private community" and I would have to message mods to get in. No thanks.
Sorry, I was using "NCD" as the common shorthand for /r/NonCredibleDefense (and the Motte created the link automatically for me). If it makes a difference, you will probably remain a better person if you never visit this particular subreddit anyhow.
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I'm seeing an Imgur link that you can view directly? This one: https://imgur.com/a/L4uXZwX
Got it now, thanks
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