4 March 2025
Published in the National Post
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There is no point adding to the chorus of dismay currently being directed at U.S. president Donald Trump because it won’t do any good and will almost certainly make a bad situation worse. Instead America’s erstwhile allies just need to accept that there is now no country whose freedom America will readily protect other than its own and do their best to ensure that the Pax Americana does not turn into a new world disorder where only might is right.
Last week’s televised brawl between the leader of the free world and the leader of the country most heroically fighting for its freedom hardly advances the cause of liberty; and, likewise, the U.S. President’s tariffs against Canada and other allies hardly advance the cause of prosperity. Of course, withdrawal of American support for Ukraine will embolden aggressors everywhere and any indiscriminate tariff war will impoverish everyone; but what matters to this president is not global well-being but that of the United States first and foremost.
The opening weeks of this new transactional presidency have been shocking and demoralizing because Trump’s America is so at odds with the erstwhile character of the United States as global leader. In Ronald Reagan’s words, America was “a shining city on a hill” and “the last best hope of mankind.” In John F Kennedy’s words, America was ready to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, (and) oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Yet denouncing President Trump as “historically ignorant and strategically naïve” is only going to further antagonize the current administration given its core conviction that America’s allies have been free riding on the United States for years; especially because — on this at least — they’re right.
The challenge is not to attack the U.S. president and add to the growing rift between the U.S. and traditional allies, but to address his justifiable complaints, given that America remains the only country with the strength, and traditionally the benevolence, to be the policeman the world needs. It’s not to lament the passing of the Pax Americana; under which, until very recently, the world has been more safe, more free, more fair and more rich for more people than ever before in history. It’s for free countries to do everything they can to stop a total American retreat into isolationism and the withdrawal into hemispheric insularity which would ultimately be so disastrous for human well-being everywhere.
There’s not much point in resentment or argument, given that there’s probably a majority of Americans who agree with their president that America’s prodigious expenditure of blood and treasure has never had the gratitude it deserved, especially since it’s tended to benefit other countries more than America itself. The “rules based global order” with its freer movement of goods, people and ideas has made the whole world better off but it’s dramatically reduced America’s relative position and more recently empowered a strategic rival that’s taken advantage of freer trade without ever practising it.
The temptation, now that America has proceeded with tariffs on Canada, and suspended military aid to Ukraine will be to respond in ways that just maximize the damage. Tit-for-tat across the board tariffs would just act as a new tax on Canadian consumers. Instead, why not abandon the recent green rules that have stopped so much resource development, made so much western industry uncompetitive, and turned a China that pays lip-service-only to the climate creed into the world’s factory? Instead of complaining about the U.S. help that will almost certainly no longer be forthcoming, what about moving to fill the gaps left by America in sustaining Ukraine’s fighting ability?
For Canadians especially, it will be hard to forgive the president’s reckless references to Canada as the 51st state but why compound insult with injury through a retaliation that just leaves Canada worse off than its economic aggressor? Especially as there’s an alternative that should reduce Canada’s vulnerability and eventually make it more of a partner that the U.S. has to take seriously.
Canada aside, probably because of bad blood with Justin Trudeau, it’s the rest of the Anglosphere that the new president seems to resent least. Together, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have a population approaching 150 million and a GDP exceeding US$7 trillion (C$10 trillion). For seven decades, along with the U.S., there’ve been intimate security links through the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership. There’s the shared history and common constitutional arrangements as democracies under the Crown. Since Britain’s recent accession to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, there’s a trade deal involving all the CANZUK countries; with the potential to be built on, with tariff and quota free movement of goods, mutual recognition of credentials, and free movement of people for well-paid work, not welfare.
Apart from being mutually beneficial to all four of the CANZUK countries, given their natural congruence of interests and values, a much stronger partnership — perhaps expressed through annual summits, like the Quad — would mean that, individually and collectively, they would have to be taken more seriously in a Washington that now seems inclined to allocate spheres of influence in deals with militaristic strong men.
Of course, in a world where American security guarantees have never been more contingent, every democracy must do far more for its own security, including develop the sophisticated industrial base needed to sustain a credible military. After a generation of military-industrial torpor and cultural decay that’s fuelled the discontents behind the current American retreat, that’s a daunting challenge. But at least the CANZUK countries should be uniquely able to cooperate in this monumental task on the basis of total trust and candour.