THE TRUMP & TRUDEAU DOCTRINE.

Donald Trump began his speech to the UN by saying a nice thing about the organization. He referred to the General Assembly room as “this grand hall,” which was a little real estate-y but still nice. But then in only his fourth sentence he boasted “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country” and the grand hall echoed with laughter.

Why did they laugh? How could they not laugh? First because it’s something a president would say at a rally of his political base, not to assembled diplomats and heads of state and government. But also because it’s so outlandish a boast. Even the official White House transcript of Trump’s speech indicates: “(Laughter.)”

As columnist Lawrence Solomon recently showed on these pages, the Trump administration has in fact done a lot, as is to be expected when a president’s party controls Congress. But has he done more than FDR in 1933-34? Or LBJ in 1964-65, or Ronald Reagan in 1981-82? We will see whether laughing at the U.S. president is the best route to good relations with Washington. Mr. Trump’s treatment of Justin Trudeau suggests he holds tight to his grudges. But many of these diplomats will have received at least some of their education in the States and will know some U.S. history, maybe even better than Mr. Trump. It would have been hard for them not to laugh.

Having started with a howler, Trump’s speech quickly improved. On CBC’s The National, Adrienne Arsenault derisively dismissed it as his “usual tough talk on Iran and the rejection of globalization.” (They don’t report the news anymore: they tell us what to think about it.) The president did talk tough on Iran, but what he rejected was not globalization but globalism, which is quite different.

“Each of us here today,” said the president, again making nice, “is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on Earth. That is why America will always choose independence and co-operation over global governance, control, and domination. I honour the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions.”

Steve Bannon may no longer be at the White House but that’s the Bannon doctrine — that this is and should be a world of mutually respectful nationstates. The president enunciating it at the United Nations makes it the Trump Doctrine. But you know what? It’s also a doctrine Canada has favoured over the years. Canada has long sought and maintained its independence from the U.S. We think we have a distinct culture and a rich history and regard ourselves as a people, maybe several peoples, “bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values” that make our homeland like nowhere else on Earth. Ever hear of “Canadian values”? And how those values are the core of Canadian identity and even meaning?

Of course, not all of us share exactly the same Canadian values, which seems a constant disappointment to a prime minister who believes Liberal party values can only be the very definition of Canadian values. But this idea that countries should be free to pursue their own history, evolution and uniqueness is quintessentially Canadian — in the sense, not that we invented it (we didn’t), but that we’ve long held to it. You might even call it the Bannon/Trump/Trudeau doctrine, since the Trudeau family has staunchly supported Canadian sovereignty. Because American encroachment on our sovereignty has been a perennial concern it’s good to hear Mr. Trump say the U.S. will not tell us “how to live or work or worship” — so long as we don’t pursue supply management in agriculture, I guess.

There’s the rub. Small countries may well be more jealous of their sovereignty than even the U.S. is. But supposing we do all reject “governance, control and domination” by unelected and unaccountable global bureaucrats and agree that “independence and cooperation” are a better way to live together. Accommodations still have to be made.

If you agree with your neighbour that your citizens will have free trade with one another, that’s a restriction on your sovereignty. You remain free to end the agreement, as Mr. Trump now threatens, but so long as it holds, you can’t put your tariffs wherever you wish. You may also sovereignly agree that disputes about the agreement will be resolved by mutually acceptable arbitrators who will decide cases in a more timely manner than domestic courts would. That, too, is a surrender of sovereignty for the duration of the agreement, but it’s hardly “global governance, control and domination.”

A world of nation-states, co-operating by agreeing to mutual, modest, voluntary, reversible reductions in sovereignty. It’s Canada’s vision as much as Trump’s and nothing to laugh at.

IT’S GOOD TO HEAR NO ONE WOULD TELL US ‘HOW TO LIVE OR WORK OR WORSHIP.’