How Canada made America great

Time of India

02-05-2025

Donald Trump's provocative, pointless threats to annex Canada helped Mark Carney win that country's recent election. Now it will represent the prime minister's defining challenge.
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A hostile America presents a potentially existential threat to Canada, which is large but exquisitely vulnerable to US pressure. And while Americans understand the importance of the trade relationship, they may not realize just how crucial a friendly Canada is to their security and status as a global superpower — or just how much Trump risks squandering strategic blessings the US has long enjoyed.
The US-Canada border hasn't always been peaceful. Americans unsuccessfully invaded Canada, then under British control, during the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. In the latter contest, the Great Lakes saw ferocious naval combat.
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Raids, border disputes and military crises were common in the subsequent decades. The US and Britain nearly fought in the 1840s, over the placement of the frontier between the Oregon Territory and British Columbia. The forging of modern Canada from individual colonies in 1867 was partially a response to the surging strength of the colossus to the south.
Well into the 20th century, Canadian leaders curried political favor by taking a hard line against US influence. Strategists in other parts of the Anglosphere harbored dark visions of where an American takeover might lead. In 1904, Britain's Halford Mackinder published his seminal essay, 'The Geographical Pivot of History,' warning that an aggressive hegemon in the Old World would threaten freedom everywhere. Yet Mackinder also worried about the growth of American power in the New World.
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It was vital to keep the US from grabbing Canada, he wrote, because 'if all North America were a single Power Britain would, indeed, be dwarfed.' This American empire would overturn the global balance and ultimately break Britain's hold on the seas. An America nakedly acquisitive enough to grab Canada, Mackinder feared, might terrorize the larger world.
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That didn't happen, thankfully. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, a series of agreements settled and demilitarized the border. Americans and Canadians then bonded in battle against other, greater threats.
The two nations cooperated to stymie a succession of autocratic aggressors in two world wars and the Cold War. Canadian forces fought and died in America's Middle Eastern wars of the early 21st century. The emergence of strategic amity, in turn, enabled commercial unity: the emergence of a North American economic bloc that includes Mexico but features the US and Canada as its prosperous, developed core.
The benefits were obvious for Canada, whose prosperity, integrity and survival would have been at risk against a bellicose, peerless US. But Americans, too, should fear the malignant drift in relations, because the US has reaped a strategic bonanza from having a close ally to the north.
The military and security integration is profound. The US and Canada share intelligence as freely as any two sovereign states, through the larger, 'Five Eyes' alliance (which includes Britain, Australia and New Zealand). Canada hosts early warning radars and other military assets that protect the aerial approaches to the US; its vast, inhospitable Arctic is a formidable barrier against hostile encroachment. Whatever the contemporary deficiencies of Canada's military posture — and they are many — the country still constitutes America's first line of defense.
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Comity with Canada also frees the US to be a global power. Countries with insecure land borders deplete their strength near home. Countries that are invulnerable on their frontiers roam far and wide.
The US could not have ridden to the rescue of distant nations in World War I and World War II, or stationed its troops around the Eurasian periphery in the Cold War, had it faced serious threats along a 5,500-mile border that mostly lacks natural obstacles. A pacific relationship with Canada is a prerequisite to shaping the wider world.
There's no guarantee the US will keep reaping that benefit if Trump keeps threatening Canadian sovereignty. Carney isn't itching for confrontation; he won't preemptively rip up longstanding intelligence and military ties.
But the prime minister may de-risk US-Canada relations by forging new economic and security partnerships. His government has already been exploring closer ties to the UK and Europe. Trump is tempting an American neighbor to seek security by aligning with outside powers — exactly what US presidents spent more than two centuries trying to avoid.
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Finally, if the hard-power case for restraint is compelling, a broken relationship with Canada will tax America's diplomatic soul. Fundamentally, the persistence of an independent Canada speaks to the basic strategic decency of Americans, who chose — eventually — to coexist with a country that, by the 20th century, they probably could have conquered instead.
The US-Canada relationship is thus a marker of America's identity as a country that uses its strength responsibly, to uphold a tolerable, broadly beneficial world order. It is also a prime example of the difference between the US and the land-hungry revisionist powers Washington has typically tried to contain.
Trump may not see much downside in beating up on a weaker country. But in military, geo-strategic and moral terms, the embittering of US-Canada ties will bring a heavy price.