Trump administration 2024-2028

[GR66]

Canada should be embracing Trump's America and joining with it to establish an economic and military superpower of North America. This can be done while maintaining sovereignty and re-emerging as a strong, respected, middle power with clout. Ego, stupidity, and foreign adversarial influence are getting in the way of that.

That will be a HARD NO from me on "embracing" Trump, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do what it takes to independently secure our portion of North America from any foreign incursion and I have no issues continuing to cooperate with the US in NORAD, etc. so long as they drop their stupid annexation rhetoric (which I believe they would if we were seen and honestly being responsible for our own defence).

I also have no issues with continuing to trade with the US where it's to our mutual benefit. Ideally that trade would be as free as possible in my opinion, but if the US moves to protect its key industries then I would expect us to do the same.

However, with Trump pulling back from the wider World and trying to create some type of "Fortress America" I have no desire to join with him in that. In such a scenario we'd be locking ourselves in as the perpetual junior partner in the relationship and forever beholden to their political whims.

Instead we must strive to be as strong as possible so that they don't see us as a weak back door through which foreign powers can threaten them and we must reach out and engage with as much of the rest of the Western World as possible to diversify our trade and influence and make us less dependent on the US.

 

[Portnord]

...foreign adversarial influence...

Those are the only three words you wrote that I agree with.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

Canada should be embracing Trump's America and joining with it to establish an economic and military superpower of North America. This can be done while maintaining sovereignty and re-emerging as a strong, respected, middle power with clout. Ego, stupidity, and foreign adversarial influence are getting in the way of that.

How is US ambitions wrt Canada NOT "foreign adversarial influence"?

 

[Eaglelord17]

Are we starting a pool?

Seriously DJT might be in the crosshairs.

And not by who you think.

I too am excited for what might be the next 007 movie.

On July 1 1867 Canada became a nation.

The first question might have been:

“Do we really need a military?”

Early Canada took it very seriously, just look at Kingston area as a example of that. We also had a very armed and gun crazy population (the American NRA was strongly influenced by Canadian militia shooters of the era). We just lost our way as time progressed and the population became more urban less rural/frontier.

 

[Halifax Tar]

No way we would be able to achieve the necessary Uranium-235 separation or Plutonium-239 production covertly.

Then let's not be covert. We're an independent country. We decide what weaponry we want to defend our nation.

For that to happen we need to start instilling in our children, the littles entering kindergarten straight through to the end of high school that this is the best fucking country in the world to live in and for that we need to defend it and keep it as our own and carrying a big fucking stick.
Sadly, I expect the teachers unions, the same ones that openly support Hamas, to give massive push back against this. So good luck.

That's definitely part of it. We also need a proud and patriotic political class that will be seen promoting the merits and accomplishments of our nation. There is an inch of patriotism in this country right now we need to seize on that and grow it!

 

[IKnowNothing]

How is US ambitions wrt Canada NOT "foreign adversarial influence"?

Because when your primary identity is a Trump supporter rather than a Canadian, you don't see Trump as foreign or threats against Canada as adversarial.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Canada should be embracing Trump's America and joining with it to establish an economic and military superpower of North America. This can be done while maintaining sovereignty and re-emerging as a strong, respected, middle power with clout. Ego, stupidity, and foreign adversarial influence are getting in the way of that.

I'm willing to work together as equal partners with the USA, if we share the same political beliefs. But I think we need to bring ourselves out from under their sphere.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Trump might be. Trumpism though is likely going to be around for a while.

It already was. Protectionism and cuts to defence spending have been Democratic aims for decades.

 

[armrdsoul77]

Seriously DJT might be in the crosshairs.

The USPS will sort him out...

 

[QV]

Because when your primary identity is a Trump supporter rather than a Canadian, you don't see Trump as foreign or threats against Canada as adversarial.

I do not see America as an adversary. Not even now.

I see Canada's laggard handling of it's role in continental defence and NATO and it's neglect to foreign CCP influence as a threat to our way of life and sovereignty and by extension the American's have reasonable national security concerns.

 

[Brad Sallows]

No, Trump has all the potential to make himself a longer term issue.

Are you proposing that Canada should pivot to align with Trump now, so that will somehow make him change from his transactional approach to a transformational approach and he will adjust his position to fully respect Canada’s interests?

No. Canada doesn't have to align with Trump to continue to pursue the parts of a relationship with the USA that everyone is saying were laudable and useful before Trump.

Everyone who is arguing that Trump ought to be undermined should themselves be ignored if they are arguing that we should undermine the Canada-USA relationship. Canada unfortunately has plenty of prominent people who are reflexively anti-American, and that noxious characteristic has come to the fore and is influencing the public debate which in turn is eroding our self-interests. It is obvious in the way they talk about the USA and Americans without taking care to focus on Trump and Trump's acolytes.

Roughly half the voters didn't vote for Trump; some fraction of those who did doubtless do not endorse all of his positions and utterances. I can guess that every time he utters some egregious anti-historical nonsense there are many among his team who quietly shudder and try to avoid having to address the issue, and some who work to soften the edges of his counter-productive initiatives. He doesn't control the views of members of Congress or the courts. Public institutions are full of people who will quietly work to blunt his policies while choosing not to self-destruct spectacularly and publicly over his provocative HR policies.

Many of the people who supported our self-imposed economic impediments are frustrated that their cherished policies are now up for re-examination and alteration. Trump yanked away the basis on which they could afford to impose those inefficiencies, and they are angry about that. Don't give countenance to the ruinous alternatives they propose. Focus on policies and undertakings that will increase trade liberalization in Canada and abroad, including with the USA.

 

[Brad Sallows]

This is the time we secretly sign a deal with the French for six Suffren class attack subs and two of their SNLE 3G with the missilea included.

If cutting deals with nations that serve their own interests first is the idea we're wrestling with, France is one of the worst offenders.

 

[Good2Golf]

Don't give countenance to the ruinous alternatives they propose. Focus on policies and undertakings that will increase trade liberalization in Canada and abroad, including with the USA

This.

But that also means taking an honest look at what Canada should consider as necessary elements of diversification and societal impact risk reduction and adding resiliency to future (hopefully improved, at some point) prosperity.

I make an effort not to conflate anti-Trumpism with Canadian assessing and developing a more resilient place in the global social/political/economical interactive space.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

I do not see America as an adversary. Not even now.

As the CDS said in the Foreword to the PDC2:

The CAF must be able to develop an effective PDC2 capability to be able to compete, contest, confront, and if necessary, defeat adversaries, or it risks becoming irrelevant to Allies.​

​

Any entity we compete with is essentially an adversary - this is the essence of the matrix of competition and the Four Cs (defeat was originally written as combat, but watered down prior to final release, and there is a 5th C which is cooperate). This is doubly true when your potential adversary has a one-dimensional zero-sum approach to everything.

Another way to look at it is that any actor attempting to gain an advantage at your expense is an adversary.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Canada needs to own it's failures in defence, CCP influence and failures to deal effectively with drug smuggling. But it is clear we need to economically distance ourselves from the US as much as possible, so they have to come to the table more as customer, than as someone who can blackmail us. We need more marine terminals, pipelines and railways, going East <> West. We need to be willing to use energy products as counterweights to tariffs, charging export taxes that reflect unfair tariffs. Someone like Trump will only respect strength and stubbornness.

 

[brihard]

No. Canada doesn't have to align with Trump to continue to pursue the parts of a relationship with the USA that everyone is saying were laudable and useful before Trump.

And is that how Trump sees it? Because he seems rather disinclined to navigate our bilateral relationship on an issue by issue basis. He’s approaching the whole thing rather hamfistedly.

 

[QV]

As the CDS said in the Foreword to the PDC2:

The CAF must be able to develop an effective PDC2 capability to be able to compete, contest, confront, and if necessary, defeat adversaries, or it risks becoming irrelevant to Allies.​

​

Any entity we compete with is essentially an adversary - this is the essence of the matrix of competition and the Four Cs (defeat was originally written as combat, but watered down prior to final release, and there is a 5th C which is cooperate). This is doubly true when your potential adversary has a one-dimensional zero-sum approach to everything.

Another way to look at it is that any actor attempting to gain an advantage at your expense is an adversary.

In the foreword the CDS also states we must be able to develop PDC2 or we are at risk of becoming irrelevant to our allies and she pointedly states a priority is to improve interoperability with (specifically) the US and other allies.

 

[PPCLI Guy]

In the foreword the CDS also states we must be able to develop PDC2 or we are at risk of becoming irrelevant to our allies and she pointedly states a priority is to improve interoperability with (specifically) the US and other allies.

Yes indeed she did. Having said that, the sentence was written in early 2024, before the shift in US policy, approach, desired end-states, methods etc. We are now at a point where no one in the West is sure if US is still an Ally, but Russia sure is.

 

[FJAG]

As the CDS said in the Foreword to the PDC2:

The CAF must be able to develop an effective PDC2 capability to be able to compete, contest, confront, and if necessary, defeat adversaries, or it risks becoming irrelevant to Allies.​

​

Any entity we compete with is essentially an adversary - this is the essence of the matrix of competition and the Four Cs (defeat was originally written as combat, but watered down prior to final release, and there is a 5th C which is cooperate). This is doubly true when your potential adversary has a one-dimensional zero-sum approach to everything.

Another way to look at it is that any actor attempting to gain an advantage at your expense is an adversary.

My problem with this paper, and by inference with Canadian defence efforts, is that it talks about what we must do rather than what we are doing. It's just another paper. Canada's problem is that DND's motto can best be described as "verba non acta."

Let's get real. Even if we spent the same 3.4% of GDP like the States (Yeah. They're nowhere near the much touted 5% and DOGE and Trump plan to shave billions off their budget) we'd still be only 1/10th their size. That doesn't bode well for two countries with a west to south 5,500 mile border and with Canada's north-south strategic depth being about 150 miles.

Should we do better on defence matters and foreign affairs? Of course we should regardless of the situation in the US. But it's a narrow walk between being a pseudo-ally of the US or a threat to this administration.

Remember how the US became what it is. The Monroe doctrine's primary warning was for European interests (and by extension any foreign interests) to stay out of North America while Manifest destiny was the belief in American exceptionalism and romantic governance that caused them to believe that they had every right to expand westward (and prior to the coining of the term, northward.) We are seeing a resurgence of those concepts. MAGA means that North America needs to become self-sufficient in order to reform the world's greatest society. That means securing the full human and natural resources of the continent.

Like any corporation facing a hostile takeover we need to develop either a poison pill or a white knight defence. Good luck with that.

 

[HavokFour]

White House official pushes to axe Canada from Five Eyes intelligence group

A top White House official has proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network to ramp up pressure. Read more

financialpost.com

Continuing the new trend on how to treat supposed longtime friends and allies.