Best frenemies forever
We may squabble, but Canada and the U.S. are never splitting up
Everyone knows you don’t bring a knife to a gunfight.
But what do you bring to a “nice” fight? Amid the tariffs, counter-tariffs, boycotts and insults that constitute CanadaUnited States relations lately, a scrap has broken out over who’s nicer.
Canadians have long prided themselves as owning the keys to Nice-town, but recently Sarah Sanders, White House press secretary, made a move on our real estate.
“We’ve been very nice to Canada for many years, and they’ve taken advantage of that,” Sanders said in discussing our protectionist agricultural policies.
While Sanders certainly has a point about our hypocrisy on free trade, given the massive tariffs we place on U.S. dairy products, many Canadians were outraged over her appropriation of the niceness title.
The Toronto Star editorialized in defence of Canadian nicety with the sassy rejoinder that Sanders’s boss “couldn’t spell nice if you spotted him both the vowels.” (Then again, if you stoop to insults when claiming you’re nicer than the other guy, have you really proven anything?)
But lets step back from the pettiness of current Can/Am relations and consider the bigger picture. And the view from back here is a bit … how shall we say … nicer.
Regardless of who’s doing what to whom, Canada and the U.S. share a relationship that is deeper, more committed and will surely prove longer lasting than any other cross-country connection in the world.
For reasons of geography, shared interests and common values, we’ll always be tightly bound together, like it or not.
It’s true that Trump’s blustery approach to defence, migration and trade has created a sense of confusion for Canada and other traditional American allies. More worrisome: this may reflect a permanent shift in U.S. geopolitical priorities that outlasts the Trump presidency.
Trump’s determination to engineer a trade war with China, for example, can be seen as a furtherance of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s own “pivot” to the Pacific. The same goes for his efforts to denuclearize North Korea (at the cost of alienating South Korea), and his apparent lack of interest in standing with NATO allies against Russian expansionism.
The U.S. is in the process of becoming a Pacific-focused nation, because that’s where the greatest threats to its future security and economic prosperity now lie. As a result, it now cares less about Europe and Atlantic-centric postwar agreements on trade and defence.
And while such a realignment could prove problematic for Canada in the short term, especially with respect to trade, over the long term we’re fated to remain closely tied to our southern neighbour out of necessity as much as choice.
Earlier this year, for example, NORAD, the North America Aerospace Defense Command, celebrated its 60th anniversary. This unique military arrangement sees Canada and the U.S. jointly run the air and maritime defences of North America. It’s an example of how we co-operate in ways that rarely make headlines.
“NORAD is the most deeply ingrained part of the institutional relationship between Canada and the U.S.,” says Christian Leuprecht, a political-science professor at Royal Military College in Kingston, and co-editor of the recent book “North American Strategic Defense in the 21st Century.”
While the NORAD agreement used to require periodic renewals from both governments, since 2006 it has been renewed “in perpetuity,” putting it above politics.
“Political ideology may shift,” says Leuprecht, “but Canada and the U.S. will always have a shared set of values such as freedom, democracy, prosperity and capitalism. We are not just two sovereign countries sitting side-by-side, we also have a common continental identity.”
We may hurl insults at each other. And sometimes we’ll get into fights. But at the end of the day, Canada and the U.S. share a connection that can never be broken.
We’re more than friends. We’re basically family.