Canada’s Vassal Status on Full Display With Return of Trump

It is sometimes hard to tell whether Donald Trump’s more outrageous statements are just his way of trolling people or whether he believes what he says. Perhaps the US president himself doesn’t know. Take, for instance, his recent demands that Denmark cede Greenland to the United States. At first, the general reaction was that this was just Trump being Trump, blowing hard to get extra publicity without really meaning it. But following a phone call this week with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen the Danes are wondering if he isn’t actually deadly serious. “The Danes are utterly freaked out by this,” according to one source briefed on the contents of the phone call. Trump “was very firm. It was a cold shower. Before, it was hard to take it seriously. But I do think it is serious, and potentially very dangerous,” another official said.

The great irony of this is that Denmark has long been perhaps the most loyal and reliable of America’s European allies. For reasons that are not exactly clear, the Danes have time and again shown themselves to be not just willing but also thoroughly enthusiastic supporters of America’s international initiatives, including those of a decidedly dubious nature.

Denmark was, for instance, a full-throated supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2021, it emerged that Denmark had collaborated with US intelligence agencies to gather information on European politicians, including spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And in the past three years, Denmark has been one of the keenest of all Western states to provide military aid to Ukraine, to the extent of handing over its entire inventory of artillery.

What has Denmark got in return? Judging by this week’s news, absolutely nothing. And there is an important lesson here for Canada. It makes no sense to deliberately antagonize the Americans. They are far too powerful. One has to bow to their will to a certain degree. But kowtowing and turning oneself into a vassal brings no benefits at all.

It is often assumed that by ingratiating oneself with Washington, one will win some sort of brownie points that can be cashed in at a future date. Foreign leaders therefore tag along like faithful puppies in the hope of receiving some occasional crumbs from the master in return. But this assumes a degree of linkage between policy areas that doesn’t really exist. Helping out in one area doesn’t necessarily bring any influence in other areas. Beyond that, helping one administration doesn’t carry forward into a sense of gratitude from the next one. Indeed, with Trump in charge one feels that having been friendly with the previous government might even be taken as a negative.

Canada has recent experience of all this. In the mid-2000s it sent troops to fight in Afghanistan in large part, it was claimed, to prove that it was a loyal ally and so gain important ‘influence’ with the Americans and other NATO allies. The cost was high—165 Canadians lost their lives. As for the much-touted ‘influence,’ it has yet to be spotted anywhere. Before long, the first Trump administration ripped up the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Biden government then cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline. Washington, it seems, has a short memory, and gratitude does not last long.

In any case, the appeals to ‘influence’ are inherently misplaced. Influence means getting people to do something that they would otherwise not have done. That assumes that you have some different view from that other person about what should be done. But if you agree with them, you don’t need to influence them. You might theoretically win some goodwill that you could cash in sometime if you only knew what to do with it, but you don’t. And Canada most certainly doesn’t. Influence is useless to Canada because it doesn’t have an independent foreign policy of its own that it’s worth expending influence on.

In the past, Canadian governments instinctively understood this. For decades, therefore, the country’s invariable policy was to commit just enough resources to get a place a table, and to go along just far enough with what our allies wanted us to do to avoid actively annoying them, but not to go any further than that. That is why, for instance, Canadian defence spending has remained consistently low by international standards as a percentage of GDP. There is no benefit in spending any more or doing any more than the bare minimum required not to be cast out in the wilderness.

This policy has proven very successful, as shown by the fact that governments of all political hues have chosen to stick by it. But pressure has been mounting over the past 20 years to abandon it. Leading this pressure is the United States. As its relative power declines, the US has sought to defend its position as global leader by consolidating the Western alliance. This has led to a desire to bring allies ever close in line.

With Trump, this policy has now become overtly linked to coercive threats (of tariffs and other measures), making clear the somewhat imperial nature of the US-ally relationship. But the basic push to bring us further into line is not entirely new.

Sadly, in recent years Canada has shown signs of buckling, as seen by the current government’s repeated promise to increase defence spending (something that is hardly necessary given the lack of military threats to our nation). It is hard to see what we will gain from this. Outright opposition is politically impossible, not to mention foolhardy. But following the Danish example and hoping that playing along will win us favours is unlikely to produce significant dividends. If Trump’s bluster and threats force Canadian leaders to realize this and to reconsider the nature of their relationship with our southern partner, in a perverse way he might even end up doing us some good.

Source: Canadian Dimension