Trump was unaware of military patrol plan, but it’s still an insult

It’s a point of pride for us to share world’s longest undefended border

WASHINGTON—“Symbolically speaking,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said, it’s important the United States and Canada share “an unmilitarized border.”

We’re neighbours, she said. Our countries have been “friends for a very, very long time.”

Symbolically. Yes. In Canada, you grow up learning as a point of pride that you share “the world’s longest undefended border” with the United States. It represents the trust between us, a friendship that was demonstrated one week ago when our governments announced a joint border agreement barring non-essential travel.

That accounts for some of the sting when it came to light that the Trump administration was considering deploying military personnel near the Canada-U.S. border to assist to border patrol officers during the COVID-19 crisis.

The White House has reportedly backed off the idea since. But still, is that how you treat long-time friends?

Canadians immediately went on the defensive. “No Canadian” started trending on Twitter, as in, “No Canadian in their right mind is trying to go to the States right now.” The pandemic has hit the U.S. more dramatically than Canada. What is its military defending against?

Some border experts cautioned against reading too much into it. It wouldn’t be a “Checkpoint Charlie” situation, trade lawyer Daniel Ujczo of Dickinson Wright pointed out. These troops would be well away from the actual border, and providing intelligence support, not manning artillery.

They were also likely to be members of the National Guard — the reservists who get called up to help in emergencies like hurricanes — according to Christopher Sands, who heads up the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington.

Sands thought it was more likely they’d catch people trying to cross from the U.S. into Canada than coming the other way. “I don’t think it should worry people,” he said. A leaked Department of Homeland Security memo published by The Nation certainly suggested the anticipated public health threat was from incoming border-crossers. It cited the need to prevent “any unknown or illegal entry into the United States in between ports of entry.”

Astatement from a senior U.S. administration official didn’t clear much up: “The administration is considering every option to help slow the spread of the virus, minimize health threats entering the country, and protect Americans while ensuring essential travel for workers, movement of goods, and security of supply chains are not impeded.”

The official went on to say President Donald Trump was working with “long-trusted partners” in both Canada and Mexico and “will continue to consider additional actions to ensure federal law enforcement personnel at our borders have the resources and operational support needed” during a pandemic.

Symbols resonate on both sides of that long border, of course. Sands notes that Americans have a great trust in their military, and many of them are comforted by the sight of soldiers in a crisis.

Trump has put a lot of emphasis on border control in his COVID-19 response, so sending troops may simply be a symbolic act — or, given his track record, an impulsive one.

While the latter is certainly possible, Ujczo cautioned against reading this merely as a “Trump tantrum.” He noted the extensive co-operation between the two countries in managing the border. “The key question is, what is the intelligence now that has the U.S. on heightened alert?”

It’s a question the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to. Freeland’s strong public pushback suggested Canada hadn’t seen evidence of a threat.

And Trump? Asked about it Thursday afternoon, he said, “I’ll find out about that,” before noting there are lots of troops on the southern border, and that reinforcing the northern one might be a matter of “equal justice.”

Then he started riffing a bit. There’s a lot of “illegal trade” that comes in from Canada, he said, before bragging of the stiff tariffs he’d imposed on steel imports. “We don’t like steel coming through our border that’s been dumped.” He said mostly it comes from China, but “they can come through the Canadian border, too, so we’re always watching for that.”

Freeland said plainly that this had nothing to do with trade, so it seemed unlikely the U.S. is considering a military presence on the Canadian border just now to monitor steel smuggling.

More likely? The president hadn’t been briefed on the proposal and didn’t fully understand the implications — just hours after Canada’s highest elected officials emphasized its importance to them.

There may be symbolism in that, too.