Guest post: In the splash zone
Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on As the US hurtles toward autocracy.
The United States, under Mr. Trump, cannot be considered an idle bystander in the great twilight struggle between the democracies and the dictatorships, as it was in the 1930s. It is now on the side of the dictatorships.
It is not just that the democratic world can no longer count on America. It is that America, under Mr. Trump, is no longer necessarily part of the democratic world: neither fully democratic in its own affairs, nor committed to the welfare of other democracies, but hostile to both. If the international order is to be preserved, then, it will have to be preserved, in part, from the United States. Certainly it will have to be rebuilt without it.
The democratic world must therefore regard and treat [America] as it does the other non-democracies: not as an ally to be consulted but as an adversary to be contained.
Why do I get the strange feeling that Canada is about to be cast in the role of “Poland” in this reboot?
So here I am, vacillating between hopeless despair and wondering if I should start making Molotov cocktails.
It makes me think of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who fought in the two World Wars, in hopes that their children and grandchildren would never have to. They fought overseas so that we would not have to fight in the streets. How many of them would have guessed that our country would be end up being next door to an emerging dictatorship, hungrily eyeing us and repeatedly threatening our annexation? We are oceans away from the peoples we helped to liberate; we can’t expect anything more from them than moral suppport, and I can’t blame them. The nation that threatens us is the most powerful on Earth.
As a matter of realpolitik, Canadian sovereignty, such as it is, has been at American sufferance since at least 1945. There is no way that we could meaningfully defend ourselves against a country with ten times the population, armed with nuclear weapons. Not that that was, as far as I know, ever a serious consideration. Apart from the Fenian Raids of the late 19th century, defence against a serious atteck from the US stopped being a real threat with the War of 1812.
Part of our role in the early years of the Cold War was to act as the buffer zone over which Soviet nuclear bombers flying sorties against the United States would shot down. With the advent of ICBMs, and the time during which any Soviet attack might be blunted being reduced from hours to minutes (not to mention American vulnerability to Soviet submarine-launched missiles that would bypass Canada altogether), our value as a buffer zone diminished. To the degree that mutually assured destruction worked, being under the American umbrella which, geographically, would have been impossible to avoid in any case, wasn’t something we had to “choose” or do much about. Whatever happened, Canada was along for the ride, with the US in the driver’s seat. We were the polite neighbour who didn’t usually make much of a fuss, whose recognition of Cuba and Communist China, while irksome, didn’t threaten the long term strategic balance between East and West.
As far as I know, we’ve never had to think of the consequences for Canada of the breakdown of American democracy because we probably never thought it was possible. But the ascendancy of Trump has shown just how fragile the American system is. Its rules and limits only work when they are respected and enforced, and right now there seems to be precious little respect or enforcement in evidence. These are no longer normal times in the US. They are no longer our friendly neighbour. Benign, indulgent neglect has been replaced with an unconcealed, rapacious covetousness, tempered only by noises that we are to be taken over economically rather than militarily, but I can’t help but think that the former will be followed by the latter.
Perhaps the sort-of false alarms of the Reagan and Bush II presidencies (which were each portrayed as incipiently fascistic) dulled the sensibilities of the Democratic Party, but the excess of caution that resulted in the failure to successfully prosecute Trump’s insurrection was a fatal mistake. Now we suffer the consequences along with those Americans who did not vote for Trump. What they can do at this point I’m not sure, but whatever it is, it has to be more and better than what they’re doing now.
Canada is no longer in a balcony seat; we are in the splash zone. We didn’t choose this seats, but we’re in it whether we like it or not. From our perspective, the best we can hope for is that Trump loses interest in us, or that the Trump administration comes apart through some combination of self-generated implosion (Trump vs. Musk?), actual enforcement of the Separation of Powers, and or popular resistance and non-compliance. With any luck, this will happen without violence or loss of life.Trump didn’t have the guts to actually go to the Capitol on January 6, 2021; maybe he will suffer a similar failure of nerve at some critical juncture of his current coup against the Constitution.
Good luck to us all.
I am not a licensed Strategic Analyst, just an erstwhile student of history, so take the following with caution, and a large amount of salt.
My wife came across something online (which I have been unable to find) that suggested that Trump’s positions and “policies” should be viewed through the lens of his thwarted, current, or prospective goals a a rel estate huckster. His animosity to wind power? The result of the Scottish government’s devolopment of an offshore wind farm beside one of his golf courses. The Panama thing? The foiling of a deal with Russian financiers to build hotels. Gaza? He really does want to “develop” it as a money-making property. So I wonder what we’ve done to have him fixate on Canada to this degree? Not that I believe for a moment that we owe him anything, or that his bullying should be rewarderd; I’m just wondering what put us on his shit list?
Or, maybe he’s just following Putin’s orders and destroying NATO, while making it look like he’s “freeing” America from European entanglements. An “America First” policy which results in the abrogation of the US’s European commitments would suit Putin perfectly. Trump will claim that cutting Europe loose will “save” America billions of dollars in expenditure helping to protect Europe from Russia, but it will not result in any reduction in defence spending. And at a stroke, nearly eighty years of US foreign policy will vanish in a puff of narcissistic short-sightedness. Putin will have defeated NATO without firing a shot, having taken full advantage of the unique opportunity that Trump’s rise to power has afforded him. Fiendishly clever, and a destructively decisive riposte to those who would claim that individuals cannot change the course of history.
Trump and Hegseth are too stupid to realize that they’re being played, and Trump’s domestic fascist enablers are too busy consolidating power and destroying the Constitution to be very worried about the international scene just yet. American military might means they are pretty well insulated. They can concentrate on their internal agenda before turning towards (or on, as the case may be) Russia and China. As long as the Russians and Chinese don’t interfere with what they’re doing inside the US (and let’s face it, why would they look on the destruction of American democracy with anything but satisfaction?), they are of little concern. If this means the United States retreats from those international commitments which prevent the Russians and Chinese from pursuing their own interests, that’s just fine for them. That doesn’t mean there won’t be some future reconning, but that might not come until Trump’s third term.
The third term bit is one of the few things I’m at least partially sanguine on… but only because Trump is so fucking old. He’ll be dead at some point within the next ten years (and yeah, that does leave a potential six more years coming up) but a dying Trump isn’t a Trump that can effectively leverage his magic on everyone around him, and that’s coming relatively soon, even if it’s not remotely soon enough. The question then becomes “what happens then?” and I don’t think anyone has a good answer to that. I strongly suspect most of the DOGE stuff is being done to enable a Shadow President Elon power grab via technological infrastructure but there’s a lot of people whose competing interests add a lot of uncertainty.
His age and infirmity combined with all the impending economic destruction due present the only real light at the end of the tunnel even if it’s just an oncoming train.
Yeah, it’s a nest of vipers, working together within an alliance of convenience. Once Trump is gone, one way or another, this bunch will turn on each other, each scrambling for what he or she can grab for themselves. This is the sort of person Trump has attracted, and in this regard he’s done a fine job of leading by example. There is no obvious heir to the MAGA crown, which is also the way Trump wants it. An heir apparent would represent a competing ambition and a divided loyalty, neither of which Trump would ever abide or countenance.
But then why is he so keen on Musk?
I keep waiting for him to notice that Musk is getting at least half the attention, and rip him to shreds.
I suspect the same thing that put Europe on his shitlist. Trump is a cleptocrat, but he’s also a malignant narcissist. He knows that almost everyone in the democratic world (outside of the far Right) loathes and despises him, and this is the punishment.
No real idea what’s going on with Musk generally… Not sure if I’m better or worse off knowing what his deal is. There’s a reason I’m mixing my media diet to incorporate people who have a more rosy but what seems like honest outlook on this stuff. I’m mostly convinced the worst will happen almost all the time and a little hope occasionally keeps me from falling off the edge.
My take is Canada needs a nuclear deterrent. We know what American assurances are worth, just ask the Ukrainians about the Budapest Memorandum. They should never have given up their own nuclear shield.
Canada’s on Trump’s shitlist because Trudeau is younger, better-looking, and smarter than him.
Naif:
Canada has what is in many ways the best nuclear power reactor, which is also very good for producing eg: medical isotopes.
I’m not sure how helpful that is for making nuclear explosives. The existing used fuel rods have plutonium in them, but that plutonium includes lots of Pu-240 which interferes with using the plutonium to make an effective explosive. Breeding some weapons grade plutonium *might* not be too difficult with the power & research reactors that exist in Canada, but would take time. It might be easier to get one from Britain.
takshak: but a combination of personal arrogance, right wing noise (it’s not just the US) and social justice nonsense has pretty much destroyed Trudeau? Conservative Canada is not as crazy as the American Party of God and Greed, but…