Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks during the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in January.Markus Schreiber/The Associated Press
Jeff Mahon is director of geopolitical and international business advisory at consulting firm StrategyCorp.
The Trump administration‘s decision this week to suspend its participation in the Canada-U.S. Permanent Joint Board on Defence is an event that ushers in the predictable escalation of tensions ahead of the scheduled USMCA review. Given that this body hasn’t convened under Mr. Trump’s presidency, the impact is primarily symbolic. However, it points to a deeper meaning that is shaping the trajectory of Canada-U.S. relations.
Key here is Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby’s reference to “gaps between rhetoric and reality” and linking Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Davos speech to this decision to pull out of the defence board. That speech laid out the “Carney Doctrine,” a global call to middle powers to band together to resist the weaponization of interdependence by major powers. Mr. Carney has since emerged as a source of global inspiration; a modern-day David standing up to Goliath.
But the Carney Doctrine also discloses the Carney Paradox: in galvanizing Canadian and global opinion, it also struck a nerve with President Donald Trump. While Mr. Carney needs Canadian domestic support and global co-operation to implement his program for maintaining Canadian autonomy, he also needs to avoid putting it in the crosshairs of a U.S. government bent on using its power to impose political alignment across the Western hemisphere.
U.S. suspends joint defence advisory board with Canada
There are at least three different timescales that will affect the approach. The first is in the order of hours, days, and weeks. Since Mr. Trump took office, we have been subject to a dizzying welter of geopolitical events.
The second timescale is that which is needed for the diversification agenda to achieve its objectives, and is in the order of five to 10 years. For Canada to be able to sell to the world what it wants, we first need to have the productive industrial projects and trade-enabling infrastructure to deliver. The Carney government used its first year to lay out an institutional framework to support this industrial buildout, but it is now in a race against time to deliver.
Zooming out we find the third timescale, which moves in the order of decades. This is where the macro forces shaping world order accumulate and shift the environment in which great powers operate. Global trade and capital imbalances, economic inequality, fiscal dynamics, and military build-ups slowly take effect through tensions between existing institutions and the reality they are meant to govern.
When thinking about how and why the U.S. has changed so much over the past decade and the last year, it’s critical that we recognize that it’s this third timescale that brought about the America First foreign policy and its concomitant offshoots.
Carney plays down Trump administration’s suspension of joint Canada-U.S. defence board
This is why, in response to Mr. Carney’s Davos analogy of Vaclav Havel’s “taking the sign out of the window” to show Canada is no longer “living within a lie” that is the crumbling rules-based international order, Robert Lightheizer, Mr. Trump’s first-term trade czar, recently claimed that was actually Mr. Trump who took the sign out of the window, not Mr. Carney.
In dealing with the mercurial Mr. Trump, the Canadian government is understandably hesitant to race into making a trade deal. The first timescale has demonstrated how quickly a signed deal could fall apart or be reneged on as short-term circumstances shift. The prevailing wisdom in Canada suggests we should then “rag the puck” and hold out until after the midterms.
The problem for Canada is the forces driving America and its role in the world are more structural and enduring than the mortal Mr. Trump and his presidency. The push for Fortress North America has bipartisan appeal in the U.S. and is a product of the third time-cycle, so while American tactics and rhetoric may change with administrations or congressional control, the overall direction will not, barring some major breakthrough at the global level. The time Canada needs to make do on its industrial renewal is thus being squeezed from both sides.
To buy the time Canada needs, the government must bite its tongue and quit feeding Mr. Trump’s demonstrated desire for vengeance. Moreover, Canada’s approach to dealing with this new American posture must factor in all three timescales.
If we narrow our focus to only the short-term, we may find that instead of David slaying Goliath, Canada may look more like Brutus, who succeeded in leading his fellow senators to bring down Julius Caesar in attempt to scuttle the latter’s bid to transform Rome from a republic into an empire – but who ultimately failed to stem the tides of transformation.