Freeland takes Trump administration to task
Foreign affairs minister urges U.S. to resist ‘mano-a-mano’ approach to trade and security
OTTAWA— Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland urged the United States to resist the temptation to abandon the rules-based international order and Western alliances for a “mano-amano” approach to trade and security in the world during a wide-ranging speech to a Washington audience.
In a speech to the Foreign Policy forum — an influential D.C.-based group that named her “diplomat of the year” — Freeland laid out a Canadian foreign policy that stands in contrast to the U.S. approach, and in doing so took U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to task, further underlining the gulf between the two.
Freeland rejected the idea “that might made right.”
“You may feel today that your size allows you to go mano-a-mano with your traditional adversaries and be guaranteed to win. But if history tells us one thing, it is that no one nation’s pre-eminence is eternal,” she warned.
Freeland extolled the virtues of multi- lateral institutions the U.S. had helped found in the post-war era, a theme she and Prime Minster Justin Trudeau have often spoken on. She said anti-globalization sentiment is driven by stagnant wage growth and income inequality, but the answer to those lies in domestic policies.
She said the rules-based international system and the Western alliance of Atlantic partners and Japan remain the answer to confronting big global problems.
She said that the U.S. may be tempted to go it alone against other big powers in a world where it no longer dominates, and that Canada “could never thrive in such a world.”
“But allow me, as your friend, to make the case that America’s security, amid the inexorable rise of the rest, lies in doubling down on a renewed rulesbased international order.”
Like French President Emmanuel Macron and EU Council President Donald Tusk last week, Freeland said Canada will continue to defend the value of multilateral institutions and “the rulesbased order.”
“This is the difficult truth: As the West’s relative might inevitably declines, now is the time when, more than ever, we must set aside the idea that might is right.”