John Ivison: Carney’s docility to Trump’s roguery could come back to bite Canada

In the past days and weeks, we have witnessed the Finlandization of Canada.

In Finland’s case during the Cold War that meant, in the words of the Finnish political cartoonist Kari Suomalainen, “bowing to the East, without mooning the West.”

For Prime Minister Mark Carney, it means the realpolitik of not publicly carping about President Donald Trump’s rogue foreign policy while standing up for the principles of self-determination and territorial integrity.

But such a cautious reaction is apt to persuade the gambler Trump that he can get away with breaking the rules that have kept the peace since 1945.

Carney’s name was again noticeable by its absence from a strongly worded joint statement Tuesday by the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Britain and Denmark that reiterated it is for the Danes and Greenlanders, “and them only,” to decide on matters concerning the island’s sovereignty. The statement was in response to comments on Sunday by Trump that the United States needs Greenland for its national security (quite why, has never been explained, given the 1951 defence agreement that allows the U.S. to have as much military presence as it wants there, as well as allowing it to invest in mining).

The European leaders said Arctic security is a key priority for Europe and must be achieved “in conjunction with NATO allies, including the U.S.” They urged Washington to uphold the principles of sovereignty and the inviolability of borders. “These are universal principles and we will not stop defending them,” it said.

Carney met Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen at the Canadian embassy in Paris on Tuesday and issued a statement that reaffirmed Canada’s support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Denmark, including Greenland.

Later in the day, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand posted online that she will be in Greenland soon to open a Canadian consulate “to mark a concrete step in strengthening our engagement” with the Danes.

But in an apparent recognition that Canada is more vulnerable to American retaliation than its European allies, the wording was much more supine.

That is understandable perhaps — for now.

But Greenland is a line in the sand, or in this case, in the ice.

On CNN on Monday, White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller was asked if he could rule out the use of military force to take Greenland.

Miller has that vampiric look that, even if he was found skewered by a wooden stake, you’d carry a clove of garlic just in case. He laughed off suggestions that force would be needed to subjugate 30,000 Greenlanders (in fact, there are 56,000). “The United States should have Greenland as part of the U.S. No-one is going to fight the U.S. militarily over the future of Greenland,” he said.

He is undoubtedly correct. The Danish assumption is that if Trump does proceed, he will simply post on Truth Social that Greenland is now a “protectorate” of the U.S. and dare anyone to intervene.

In under 1,000 characters, Trump would change the world.

Such a pronouncement would inevitably lead to the collapse of NATO, given one member would be annexing the territory of another, with all the implications for Russian aggression in Europe that contains.

Carney was in Paris Tuesday to finalize security guarantees for a peace deal in Ukraine. As part of the plan, he said Canada and the U.S. would be part of “a backstop,” a multilateral force to keep the peace and deter future Russian aggression.

That united front would presumably crumble too.

Closer to home, the threats to Canadian sovereignty would shift from inconceivable to highly feasible.

In his CNN interview, Miller asked: “By what right does Denmark assert control over Greenland? What is the basis of Greenland being a colony of Denmark?”

The answer is that it’s not. The Kingdom of Denmark is a unitary state comprising three self-governing parts: Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark claimed sovereignty in the 1700s, claims that were recognized in the Treaty of Kiel in 1814, following the Napoleonic Wars. Greenland was officially integrated into the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953 and granted home rule in 1979.

If the Americans ride roughshod over that history, what regard are they likely to give to the Great Lakes boundaries, established through a series of treaties beginning with the Treaty of Paris in 1783?

In a prescient essay on the prospects of American coercion, published last March, Université du Québec à Montréal political science professor Justin Massie argued that “the bonds of trust” with the U.S. have been broken and the “unwavering alliance” has come to an end.

He pointed out that Canada’s armed forces are heavily dependent on American technology and equipment, be it the planned-for F-35 fighter jet, the combat systems on its new warships or the North Warning System radar network.

The U.S.’s descent into hypernationalistic ventilation will inevitably bump up against reality — either in Venezuela or Cuba or Colombia or Mexico

He argued that Canada has to develop its own capabilities in sectors like drone technology and form closer ties to alternative technology suppliers in countries such as France, South Korea and Sweden.

Those developments are at an early stage but are apparent in the Security and Defence Partnership signed with Europe last June, as well as the prospect of Canada buying South Korean submarines and the reassessment about buying the F-35A stealth jets from the Americans.

In an interview with Bloomberg this week, Industry Minister Mélanie Joly said Ottawa is seeking more economic commitments from the F-35 manufacturer, Lockheed Martin.

Canada wants more research and development in Canada and access to much more intellectual property control, she said.

Canada is obligated to buy 16 aircraft but could yet decide to go with a mixed fleet of F-35As and Saab Gripens, which would be built in Canada.

The primary responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens from external threats. The need to urgently implement a defence industrial strategy is no longer abstract.

The most experienced military figures in the country say the lessons of the war in Ukraine are that this should include a mobilization component, including paying to have latent production-line capacity for strategic products like ammunition, and robust research and development capacity, in order to adapt to changing battle conditions.

Canada’s agency has limits. We are less equipped than the Finns were to meet a determined adversary.

The Americans have the capability of taking and holding Ottawa in less than a day, using the New York State-based 10th Mountain Division, which has 10 times more combat-ready troops than the entire Canadian Army could deploy.

But Canada doesn’t have to win militarily, it just has to persuade the White House that it is more advantageous to it as an ally than as a hostile power.

The U.S.’s descent into hypernationalistic ventilation, such as the State Department’s online post featuring a photo of Trump with large type reading “This is our hemisphere,” will inevitably bump up against reality — either in Venezuela or Cuba or Colombia or Mexico.

Even the Americans cannot take on the world, a realization that will likely come too late.

This is not a movie, and the toxic compound of American exceptionalism and military might did not end well in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

Canada is still one of America’s closest friends and trading partners, and Carney is obliged to try to maintain the status quo.

“We stand with Denmark, we stand with Greenland and our closest partnership is with the United States. We will work with everyone to make sure we move forward together,” the prime minister said in Paris on Tuesday, with a kind of Rotarian optimism.

But if Trump does assert hegemony over Greenland, the status quo is history.

In that unhappy event, the basic principle of self-determination means we have to tell Trump when his breath stinks. That’s what friends do.

National Post
jivison@criffel.ca