Canada's Moral Equivalent Of War

On Tuesday, I linked to a paper at Ottawa's Carleton University site that seems to provide a good outline of Canadian policy since Justin Trudeau's reported 2024 remarks to Trump that a 25% auto tariff would mean "the end of Canada". The paper's basic point is that the US and Canada are effectifvely at war, because the US is already implementing strategies that will mean a takeover of Canada:

The threat of the U.S. relying on military coercion to control a NATO ally has become front-page news in Canada and elsewhere, suggesting that Canadians are deeply concerned about this issue. However improbable a war with America might be, the reality is that the U.S. already has in place a number of strategies that can and will be leveraged to its advantage to achieve its strategic objectives.

These levers of influence fall within the grey zone of conflict and render the need to formally occupy Canada redundant. The grey zone refers to coercive statecraft that operates between war and peace, using ambiguity, incrementalism, and unconventional tactics to achieve strategic objectives without triggering full-scale military responses.

But the point that's left unsaid is that Canada isn't capable of a military response:

Canadian military chiefs have wargamed a US invasion and concluded that they would be overpowered in only two days.

. . . The invasion modelling was first reported in The Globe and Mail, which cited two unnamed senior government officials. They said they believed it unlikely that Trump would order an invasion of Canada.

. . . Carney, in his speech at Davos, said the US-led world order was enduring a “rupture”. His country had benefited from the old “rules-based international order”, he said, but must adapt to the new reality.

“Call it what it is: a system of intensifying great power rivalry where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as coercion,” he said.

Canada, which he labelled a “middle power”, must move with the times, he said. “Middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

The speech was not well received by Trump. “Canada gets a lot of freebies from us, they should be grateful also,” the US president said in a speech on Wednesday. “I watched their prime minister yesterday, he wasn’t so grateful. But they should be grateful.

“Canada lives because of the United States, remember that, Mark, next time you make your statements.”

Elsewhere, that report suggests that Canada could rely on other "middle powers" like the UK and France if a military response were called for. At least as it applies to the UK, good luck. But Carney and Ontario Premier Doug Ford have inserted wartime rhetoric into the discussion:

"We cannot accept what they've offered, and we will not give what they've asked," Carney said on Saturday in Ottawa, adding that the United States 'asked too much and offered too little.'

The prime minister revealed that the U.S. had issues with Canada's subsidies for French culture; the prevalence of French-language media online and even the requirement to have bilingual labels on products sold in Canada.

"It was unacceptable right from the start, but the Americans kept trying and trying and we said no," Carney said. "Ultimately it's simple. That was never on the table for Canada and it would not have been acceptable to Canadians."

. . . Ontario Premier Doug Ford welcomed Carney's decision to abandon negotiations and insisted Canada would win a trade war with the U.S. because Canada is united and prepared for a fight.

"I'm glad he didn't sign that deal because it was a bad deal," Ford said in Toronto on Saturday. "It was a bad deal for Ontario. It was a bad deal for the auto sector, the steel sector and the manufacturing sector."

The premier said Canada needs to inflict pain on the U.S. to remind the Trump administration that Canada is its best customer and should be treated as such.

The U.S. team also wanted to introduce measures into the pact that would significantly undermine Canada's sovereignty, the prime minister said.

Conservative Treehouse reports on a CBC interview of US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer:

Most Americans have no idea that Canadian media is controlled by the Canadian government; it’s what they call “cultural protection” where the rules and regulations of permissible speech are controlled by govt regulators and media are subsidized by govt. The overall objective is to control information and censor viewpoints that might be averse to the interests of the Canadian govt. That’s why most Canadians have no concept of granular details on policy matters; they just don’t get the information.

In this interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), U.S Trade Representative Jamieson Greer is discussing the trade conflict and breakdown with Canada’s version of Baghdad Bob, Rosemary Barton. I’m a little surprised the CBC would even entertain the discussion. However, as noted in the past few days there is increasing skepticism amid Canadians about who and what actually blew up the trade talks. Canadians are starting to show signs of suspicion; enter Ms. Barton on behalf of the Canadian government to try and control things.

USTR Jamieson Greer answers the questions in a most unfortunate manner; meaning, he told the truth. Greer outlined exactly why he suspects the trade talks broke down, and it has nothing to do with economics or trade, it’s all politics on the Canadian side. As Greer noted, there was no change to the trade agreement between President Trump and Prime Minister Carney’s lengthy phone call on Tuesday, and the Canadian decision to walk away on Friday.

Canadian skepticism about Carney's anti-American rhetoric precedes the latest trade breakdown:

With the United States and Canada presently dancing around trade negotiations that will have consequential outcomes for both countries, any public statements issued by the countries’ leaders should themselves be considered a negotiating tactic.

Hence, it was a bit surprising to see Mark Carney release an extended video address in which he declared Canada’s historical ties with the United States to be a source of national weakness in need of correction. As if to drive the point home, he pulled out an action figure—excuse me, “figurine”—of Sir Isaac Brock, the British army general charged with defending Upper Canada from the United States during the War of 1812[.]

. . . This agonistic position toward Canada’s neighbour and most important trading partner has prompted accusations of either hypocrisy or expediency—hypocrisy because Carney (and frankly many Laurentian elites) retains strong personal ties with the United States; expediency because many suspect the PM is cynically relying upon this oppositional rhetoric to distract from growing economic problems at home, largely unrelated to American tariffs.

But this is not the first strong statement Canada’s leader has issued when it comes to the United States. He both diagnosed and endorsed a changing world order in his acclaimed speech at Davos and repeatedly referred to the necessity of “fighting” on Canada’s behalf. It is worth considering that he is quite sincere. One cannot help wondering at the alacrity and persistence with which the PM has pursued this approach: How much is a response to ongoing events and how much was already predetermined?

But why has Canada begun to speak so openly about the need to "fight" the US to protect Canada's "sovereignty"? I asked Chrome AI mode, "How common was Canadian rhetoric on the need to fight the US between 1860 and 1960?" It answered,

Between 1860 and 1960, Canadian rhetoric regarding the need to fight the United States shifted drastically from a widespread, existential necessity to an outdated, strictly classified formality, before disappearing entirely into peaceful economic and military integration.

Carney's position is clearly that things have changed. But what's changed? On one hand, Canadian forces stormed Juno Beach on June 6, 1944, while UK forces stormed Gold and Sword Beaches. Neither the UK nor Canada could remotely repeat that effort now. At the same time, if in the past a US president cogitated invading Canada, he might have the British Empire and the Royal Navy to contend with. That's changed.

The root cause is the precipitous decline of British prestige. In the 2000s, the "Anglosphere" was a popular concept. No longer. Part of the problem is that official policy in both Canada and the UK has been to dilute native British and Canadian culture with heavy migration. In part due to this, the UK in particular has been reeling from repeated "national embarrassments", and King Charles will never have his mother's prestige. More important, though, Carney recognizes the Canadian armed forces can't protect Canada from economic reality. So he has to talk big and hope nobody notices the small stick.