US-Canadian Tensions

Political tensions have exploded between the US and Canada, two neighborly and hitherto friendly states, as a result of their briefly threatened tit-for-tat tariffs that have now been mutually suspended for 30 days. The same just happened with Mexico, but it’s Canada that forms the focus of this analysis given its socio-cultural similarity to the US. The pretexts upon which Trump implemented these tariffs are that Canada is exploiting the US and isn’t helping to curtail illegal immigration and fentanyl. 

 

The first refers to what Trump described as the US’ “subsidization” of Canada by importing energy, cars, and lumber that it could otherwise easily produce at home according to one of his recent posts, without which “Canada ceases to exist as a viable country”, ergo why it “should become our cherished 51st state”.  The second concerns the growing influx of illegal crossings across the world’s largest undefended border, while the last involves the drug that tens of thousands of Americans overdose on each year. 

 

Canada’s status as a liberal-globalist bastion ties together the three aforementioned pretexts. What Trump considers to its economic exploitation of the US is a typical globalist wealth extraction strategy, the increasingly problematic illegal immigration issue connects back to “deep state”-linked Democrats who have political stakes in this, while the fentanyl one concerns dangerous Mexican cartels and “Khalistani” gangs. Each of these factors represents a challenge to his populist-nationalist policies. 

 

Trump’s most immediate goals in this dispute are to rebalance trade in order to keep more wealth inside the US, stop the weaponized replacement of Americans with civilizationally dissimilar individuals who in many instances don’t want to assimilate or integrate, and keep his citizens safe. More broadly, his campaign against Canada can be interpreted as part of his war against the “deep state”, which also includes a British dimension in this case considering Canada’s membership in the Commonwealth. 

 

Although by no means the primary imperative, Trump has had a bone to pick with some of the Brits after the “deep state” cooked up former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s infamously fabricated dossier and then exploited it as the pretext for “Operation Crossfire Hurricane”, which sabotaged his first term. More recently, the Labour Party sent party members to the US to campaign for Kamala during the last US election season, in response to which Trump’s campaign filed an official complaint at the time. 

 

King Charles’ silence in the face of US-Canadian tensions has perturbed some of the latter’s citizens per CTV News, which urged their country’s monarch to finally intervene. It remains unclear whether he or his Prime Minister Keir Starmer will, especially since Trump’s close ally Elon Musk recently began to wage a social media campaign against the latter’s government. His backing of populist-nationalist movements against incumbent liberal-globalists, including in the UK, might even be coordinated with Trump. 

 

King Charles and Starmer might therefore not want to get involved out of fear that Trump could turn his regime change sights on the UK after he’s done with Canada unless he’s able to first tame or neutralize the British “deep state” that conspired with the Democrats against him over the past decade. Trump likes the Royal Family, but he despise the UK’s “deep state” and their liberal-globalist figureheads, though his latest call with Starmer went well so the Brits might be willing to find common ground with him. 

 

Any intervention on their part against the US in support of Canada would risk a crisis in bilateral relations so the UK might hang its fellow Commonwealth member out to dry in defense of its own interests. Moving along after having addressed that British dimension of the latest US-Canadian tensions, it’s important to discuss the reasons why Trump wants to annex his country’s northern neighbor. Everything boils down to energy geopolitics, minerals, and geo-economics. 

 

As regards the first, Canada is one of the world’s largest energy producers and also still has enormous reserves, both of which the US wants to control or at least have predominant influence over. The purpose is to deprive its Chinese systemic competitor of these resources as well as Canada’s similarly impressive mineral wealth, much of which remains untapped and even undiscovered.  Some of these, like its lithium and cobalt reserves, are indispensable for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”. 

 

On the geo-economic front, the continued melting of polar ice will lead to more transit across the Northwest Passage that runs through Canada’s Arctic islands, and it’s important for the US to control this new trade route. The US and Canada have had a long-running dispute over the Northwest Passage since the former insists that it should be considered international waters through which anyone can transit while the latter maintains that these are its internal waters over which it retains control. 

 

They reached a compromise decades ago whereby the US will always ask permission to sail across this route and Canada will always grant it but nobody can guarantee that this will hold. From the Trump Administration’s perspective, Canada might one day be pressured by China into obstructing Americans’ access through the Northwest Passage, or it could allow China equal transit rights. There’s also a hypothetical possibility that China might build so-called “dual-use infrastructure” along it as well. 

 

The Canadian Arctic is considered to be rich in untapped energy and minerals too, which the US wants to either control of have predominant influence over as was explained above, with the most surefire way being to coerce Canada into full vassalage either as a protectorate, territory, or even the “51st state”. Trump’s tariffs might therefore be a primary means to one of these ends, though the scenario of it becoming the “51st state” remains unlikely, not least because it might shift the electoral balance. 

 

Accordingly, the Trump Administration either plans to subordinate Canada as a protectorate or territory, or Canadians wouldn’t have the right to vote in federal elections for an agreed-upon period of time if their country ends up annexed to the US. Each of these three scenarios would also see Canada having to follow federal law with regard to preventing strategic industries like its energy and mineral ones from falling under foreign control. It’s not possible at this point to predict which, if any, will materialize. 

 

In any case, Trump’s plan to build 40 icebreakers shows that he takes for granted that the US will dominate the Northwest Passage, which could take the form of it both traversing this route at will without any concern for Canada’s complaints as well as extracting its energy and mineral wealth. Objectively speaking, Canada would struggle to defend its sparsely populated northern regions from the US, so the US could possibly outright control and even annex them if the decision is made. 

 

This scenario aligns with Trump’s proposed purchase of Greenland, which is also connected to the US’ energy geopolitics, minerals, and geo-economic plans for the Arctic in its New Cold War with China. Neither Denmark nor Canada is expected to stop the US military if it’s deployed to their respective resource-rich regions. They’re literally Trump’s for the taking if he wants them, though he might prefer to go about this through different means, only resorting to the military option as a last resort. 

 

The interim period between the beginning of Trump’s campaign against Canada and its envisaged conclusion could entail “some pain” as he himself just admitted in a recent post, but it could also prospectively lead to the US finally tapping into Alaska and even California’s vast energy reserves. These have largely remained off-limits due to the Democrats’ self-interested domestic political considerations at the expense of the US’ objective national interests but that could change if their tensions resume. 

 

Trump has made no secret of his ambitions to “drill, baby, drill” and the aforesaid tensions provide the perfect pretext for finally advancing that agenda given the newfound urgency. His grander goal in this regard is to solidify the US’ status as an energy superpower, which can then be weaponized for political purposes vis-à-vis its clients like the EU, which is all part of his plan to “Make America Great Again”. The path to doing so requires him to build what can be called “Fortress America”. 

 

At minimum, this refers to the US’ protecting itself from the unconventional threats posed by Canada and Mexico, while the maximum involves fully subordinating Canada as explained while doing something similar to Mexico but without the potential political incorporation due to their socio-cultural differences. The Canadian element of the US’ “Fortress America” grand strategy has clear civilizational dimensions that mirror Russia and other Great Powers’ efforts to consolidate “spheres of civilizational influence”. 

 

This trend conforms with what Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin has written about for years as regards “large spaces”, which could manifest in the American context with US control over Canada, whether formally via annexation (be it in whole or only its Arctic islands) or as a protectorate or territory. Although applied to a completely separate continent, this is essentially the fulfillment of Dugin’s Eurasianist vision, thus showing how far ahead his writings were in broadly forecasting this development. 

 

It of course remains to be seen whether Trump will succeed, but the point is that he’s making a major power play over resource-rich and geostrategically positioned Canada as part of the US’ competition with China over the future of the global systemic transition. Any tangible progress would accelerate the emerging civilizational-state world order that Dugin has also written about, thus revolutionizing International Relations and making Trump an even more historical figure than he already is.