I had a dialog final week with a Canadian journalist concerning the tradition conflict on American campuses. After we completed speaking about that, she had one ultimate query for me.
“What the hell is Trump occupied with Canada?”
She wasn’t simply asking about President Trump’s tariff threats. She was additionally asking about Trump’s obsession with referring to Canada because the 51st state. The tariffs have been considerably comprehensible, even when terribly misguided. They’re, in spite of everything, one in all Trump’s few constant coverage obsessions. He likes tariffs maybe much more than he likes partitions.
But when anybody thinks that Trump is merely trolling or joking along with his fixed references to Canada because the 51st state, I refer you to my newsroom colleague Matina Stevis-Gridneff’s report that Trump instructed the previous prime minister of Canada Justin Trudeau “that he didn’t consider that the treaty that demarcates the border between the 2 international locations was legitimate and that he desires to revise the boundary.”
Trudeau instructed Canadians that Trump wished “to see a complete collapse of the Canadian economic system, as a result of that’ll make it simpler to annex us.” The president’s assertion is just not one a world chief flippantly makes, even when that world chief is called Donald Trump.
And why wouldn’t Canadians be alarmed? Trump has been fairly clear along with his intentions and his reasoning.
Let me quote Trump’s recent conversation with Laura Ingraham, a Fox Information host.
“Right here’s my drawback with Canada,” Trump instructed Ingraham. “Canada was meant to be the 51st state, as a result of we sponsored Canada by $200 billion a 12 months.”
When a baffled Ingraham pressed him, saying, “You’re harder with Canada than you might be with a few of our greatest adversaries,” Trump responded with the identical speaking level: “Solely as a result of it’s meant to be our 51st state.” Later, he stated, “One of many nastiest international locations to cope with is Canada.”
So, how did I reply my new Canadian good friend? “Canada is Donald Trump’s Ukraine.”
Apparently, Trump agrees. On Friday, he made the comparability specific. Whereas speaking to the press within the Oval Workplace, he as soon as once more known as for Canada to turn out to be the 51st state after which in contrast Canada’s bargaining place to Ukraine’s. “The expression I take advantage of is a few folks don’t have the playing cards,” he stated. “I used the expression a couple of week and a half in the past” — referring to his infamous exchange with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, when he instructed Zelensky: “You’re not in a great place. You don’t have the playing cards proper now.”
I didn’t imply that Trump is making ready to invade or use pressure in opposition to Canada. However he does intend to dominate Canada, to render it little greater than a vassal of the US, making it solely nominally unbiased. In reality, you may’t totally perceive Trump’s strategy to Ukraine with out understanding his view of Canada (or Mexico or Greenland or Panama) — and vice versa.
By phrase and deed, Trump treats Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping as his solely actual friends. Our allies, against this, are our subordinates. It’s as if Putin, Xi and Trump are feudal lords, and every is entitled to his personal feudal area.
It’s straightforward to neglect that Trump’s open hostility to Ukraine isn’t the complete story of his response to the Russian invasion. The day after Putin signaled his intent to assault and because the Russian Military massed on Ukraine’s border, Trump told a pair of conservative radio hosts, “That is genius.”
Within the same interview, he even declared his admiration for Putin’s ruse of declaring the independence of Ukraine’s japanese areas. “However right here’s a man that claims, you recognize, ‘I’m going to declare a giant portion of Ukraine unbiased,’” Trump stated. “He used the phrase ‘unbiased,’ and ‘we’re going to exit and we’re going to go in and we’re going to assist maintain peace.’ You bought to say that’s fairly savvy.”
It’s a mistake to think about Trump as a pupil of historical past, however he does study, and he does rigorously observe the boys he thinks of as his friends (and they’re all males). Consequently, his second time period is already considerably totally different from his first. He had some concepts in his first time period, however a lot of his international coverage and home coverage gave the impression to be rooted in impulse quite than ideology. His senior group typically resisted these impulses — typically to the purpose of public disagreement and submitting a resignation.
Trump’s first secretary of protection, Jim Mattis, resigned in protest in opposition to Trump insurance policies, for instance, and his second secretary of protection overtly broke with Trump when Trump proposed sending active-duty troopers to police American streets in 2020. It’s laborious to think about Pete Hegseth allowing any daylight between him and his boss.
The Biden years remodeled each Trump and his motion. Trump nonetheless has his impulses, however he’s surrounded by folks with plans, and we are able to now see a way more coherent plan in operation.
Domestically, his administration is making an attempt to revolutionize the constitutional order, putting the president on the head of the American authorities and subordinating the legislative and judicial branches to his needs and whims and granting himself unchecked energy, together with — most lately — the ability to yank folks off American streets and ship them to El Salvadoran prisons without due process.
Economically, Trump has praised the Gilded Age. Simply after his inauguration, Trump said: “We have been at our richest from 1870 to 1913. That’s after we have been a tariff nation.”
In international coverage, his actions not seem like isolationist as a lot as they’re a revival of Manifest Destiny, the assumption that God had destined the US to unfold throughout the continental United States and the remainder of North America, and the Monroe Doctrine, a declaration to the European powers that the US was the dominant energy within the Western Hemisphere.
That is one motive the Trump administration refuses accountable Russia for beginning the conflict. On this formulation, assertions of precise independence by neighboring international locations are deemed a risk even when they don’t supply a army problem. They’re a risk to the nice energy’s want to unfold its dominion. On this formulation, Zelensky and Trudeau each dedicated the identical sin — they refused to subjugate themselves when the feudal lord was entitled to their subservience.
The MAGA motion is pushing America again to the nineteenth century on quite a few fronts, however it’s value noting that this was a century by which we invaded Canada throughout the Battle of 1812 and threatened to go to conflict once more over the border with the Oregon Territory within the 1840s. The slogan “54-40 or struggle” (the northern border of the Oregon territory was at 54 levels 40 minutes latitude) turned intently related to the Polk administration, probably the most militaristic and expansionist presidencies in American historical past.
Canadians keep in mind this historical past nicely. I have to confess it was a jarring expertise to go to the Canadian Naval Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia, a number of years in the past and see displays celebrating victories over American forces within the Battle of 1812. The profitable protection of Canada in opposition to American aggression helped establish Canadian national identity.
The sample is unmistakable. Trump has questioned our defense commitments to Japan, an allied nation just a few hours away from China, and Taiwan holds its breath as Trump has accused the nation of stealing from America’s semiconductor business. Trump threatened to impose crippling tariffs on Taiwan till the Taiwanese semiconductor producer TSMC agreed to construct new manufacturing crops in Arizona.
There’s an outdated international coverage time period for this new Trump strategy: spheres of affect. Underneath this principle of international relations, every nice energy has its personal zone of dominance. Suppose, for instance of the Warsaw Pact within the Chilly Battle — the international locations within the pact have been nominally unbiased, but when they exercised precise unbiased will, they’d quickly see Soviet tanks in their streets.
Or consider the competing spheres of imperial affect within the nineteenth century. Imperial France, Russia, Britain and Germany have been consistently colliding with each other.
America hasn’t been immune from the need to dominate. I’ve already referred to previous conflicts with Canada, however the historical past of Latin America is checkered with armed American interventions.
The issue with spheres of affect is that they’re inherently unstable. Smaller nations chafe underneath domination. Bigger nations don’t agree on the boundaries of their respective zones of affect. Consequently, an strategy that theoretically separates the nice powers really causes them to collide, as they deploy violence to find out the complete extent of their attain.
In apply, the spheres of affect aren’t separate. They’re extra like a Venn diagram, with overlapping areas — and it’s typically in these areas the place wars start.
The inherent injustice and instability of spheres of affect (see August 1914 and September 1939) are one motive the Western alliance reached for voluntary cooperation as a competing mannequin. The USA is essentially the most highly effective nation within the Western alliance, however it exerts disproportionate affect, not Soviet ranges of management.
Consequently, it’s been eight many years for the reason that nice powers have gone to conflict in opposition to each other. As well as, free commerce and mutual cooperation have helped carry the nations of the Western alliance and our Asian allies to extraordinary ranges of prosperity.
I’m hardly the one particular person to see the similarities between Canada and Ukraine. The Bulwark’s Will Saletan wrote an excellent piece final week noting the outstanding similarities between Trump’s rhetoric about Canada and Putin’s rhetoric about Ukraine. However extra folks want to acknowledge the patterns.
The MAGA motion has actual concepts, and people concepts will outlast Trump’s impulses as soon as Trump lastly leaves the political scene. These concepts have been tried — and been discovered wanting.
We already know what occurs when nice powers really feel entitled to their zones of management, and the robust attempt to dominate the weak.
