U.S. President Donald Trump, with lawyer Todd Blanche (R), speaks to the press in New York City on April 23, 2024.TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump is obsessed with the importance and integrity of borders. Well, most borders.
The U.S. President wants to complete the wall along his country’s southern border with Mexico and has declared a national emergency to speed up the work. One of his first acts in office was to send troops there.
His administration now believes that those who cross an American border illegally should be denied due process and subject to deportation to cruel foreign prisons. He has said the U.S. border is there to protect his citizens from people who are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
Meanwhile, American businesses that import goods into their country are punished with massive tariffs at the border.
He sees international borders as inviolate lines that protect the culture and societies within them, and that anything done in their defence is justified.
All except one border, that is: the one between the United States and Canada.
During his Oval Office meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney last week, he reiterated his claim that the Canadian border is an “artificially drawn line.”
“Somebody drew that line many years ago with, like, a ruler – just a straight line right across the top of the country,” he said.
This is the basis of his argument that Canada should become the 51st state: the border is fake and the country on the north side of it is an arbitrary conceit that in his mind would be better off as just another star on the American flag.
Mr. Trump is opening a complex can of worms with his contention, because he’s not wrong that international borders are (necessarily) artificial constructs.
They are lines placed on a map by men around tables, often at the end of a war, or in an attempt to prevent a war. They are based on history, treaties and negotiations, and more often than not are unrelated to geography.
The U.S.-Canada border, for instance, could easily be a few kilometres farther north or farther south as it stretches through the Prairies; no one would notice today. But the 49th parallel was a convenient marker when the issue was settled between the U.S. and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in treaties in 1818 and 1846. Note to the President: the final western stretch of the border was a matter of tense negotiations, not just a ruler-drawn line. (See: Oregon, 54-40 or Fight.)
Arbitrary they may be, but borders are very real in the imaginations of those who live inside them. They put a frame on national pride, and any violation of them is seen as an attack on a people, and on their way of life and values.
Without them, national armies would be irrelevant. With them, countless people have died in their defence, and in defence of the sovereignty they stand for.
These days, blood is being spilled in Ukraine and Russia, in Israel and Palestine, in Sudan and South Sudan and in Pakistan and India in conflicts that range from outright invasions to border skirmishes.
In other places, such as Taiwan and countries similarly in China’s sights, or European countries located on the western edge of Russia, borders are a source of fear and tension.
When Mr. Trump dismisses an international border as “artificial,” he is diminishing the pain and sacrifice of so many people in so many nations over so many centuries – including those American soldiers who fought against Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
And when he does it with regard to the U.S.-Canada frontier, he is dismissing the accomplishment that it represents.
Our land border is a symbol of peace and prosperity between countries that is unmatched in its length and durability. No tank columns have ever crossed it; the closest thing might be a railcar carrying Ford F-150 pickups on their way north for sale in Alberta.
This is a border that commerce spills across to the tune of nearly $3.5-billion a day, or used to anyway, without a drop of blood ever being shed.
All over the world, countries agree on paper to respect the sovereignty of nations and the integrity of the borders that define them. Many times, they don’t keep their word. All of them would love, though, to share a border the way Canada and the U.S. have for the past 158 years.
The U.S.-Canada border is real. It represents something concrete in the world order. Mr. Trump’s insults are an unsettling attack on something bigger than Canada itself.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the U.S. signed treaties with the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1818 and 1846. During that period, the country was known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. This version has been updated.