Special to WorldTribune.com

Analysis by Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs, May 1, 2022

Before considering the consequences, the fundamental question must be asked: Did U.S. President Donald Trump get the outcome he actually wanted from his blatant interference in the Canadian Federal election?

Trump’s final intervention into the Canadian election — on the morning of April 28, 2025, the same day as the election — must be seen as a definitive statement of strategic policy from the White House. Essentially, it said that the U.S. had abandoned the norms of the post-World War II years and had returned to territorial expansion by coercion.

There can be little doubt that Trump understood that his remarks about turning Canada into “the 51st U.S. state” had galvanized Canadian political support around the political party he had vilified, the Canadian Liberal Party. This became even more pronounced when the leader of the party, Justin Trudeau, was finally forced to concede the leadership of it to another, more electable — but ideologically more rigid — man, Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and former governor of the Bank of Canada, two significant national reserve banks.

Essentially, the Liberals, written off by the electorate until the Trump remarks, were returned to office, and under the leadership of a man more credible and competent, but ideologically more disciplined, than Justin Trudeau. Still, Prime Minister Carney would need to remain careful in his policies: he has only 169 seats in the House of Representatives (he would need 172 for an absolute majority in the 343-seat House). And, although the opposition Conservative Party (144 seats) remained as steadfast in its opposition to seeing Canada as the “51st state” of the U.S., its leadership under Pierre Poilievre was seen as being ideologically akin to Donald Trump.

The outcome of the election was foreseeable as soon as Trump galvanized Canadian rejection of the “51st state” remarks, and as Trudeau left and a more suitable Liberal leader emerged.

As the campaign progressed, the Conservatives were able to highlight the weaknesses and inconsistencies of Mark Carney, but they could not gain sufficient momentum before election day arrived.

So, if this process was observable to most, and clearly to President Trump, why did he, on election day at 08.36 hrs Eastern Daylight Time, issue a statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, doubling down on galvanizing anti-U.S. sentiment in Canada? The statement read, in full:

“Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!” 

The continued, and unfounded (and certainly never even attempted to be verified), Trump statements that the U.S. “subsidized Canada” with “hundreds of billions of dollars” was meant to sow doubts among Canadians that their economy was even viable, despite evidence to the contrary. So the question remains: Did Trump get the outcome he sought in the Canadian elections of April 28, 2025? Did he deliberately seek to elect a Canadian government which would continue on the poor economic and divisive social lines of the past decade of Liberal Party governance? If so, why?

All of the statements and evidence of the Trump strategic objectives seem to point to the President’s rejection of old treaties and multinational instruments which were now clearly outmoded and addressed problems now past. Also, he has expressed the wish to abandon unworkable or inefficient systems: to clean out U.S. foreign and strategic policy in the way he indicated his wish to clean out domestic waste, fraud, and inefficiency in U.S. governance.

His “tariff wars” against, literally, the entire world was meant to drive — at warp speed — the creation of a new global trading system in which most of the world would enter a zero-tariff mutual trade zone with the U.S. And that process was clearly working by the end of April 2025, 100 days into the Trump second presidency.

But Trump’s process, by default and design, reflected an end to the post-World War II global strategic architecture, including, as it withers away, the United Nations family of protocols. That implicitly means that the acceptance of the global framework of Westphalian-style states is no longer regarded as rigid and permanent. It means that all states need not necessarily be the same, or be regarded as equal. It means, in essence, a return to power politics: “might is right”.

Sovereignty is what can be defended, either directly or by alliance. But not necessarily a return in the same style to geopolitical expansionism of the 19th Century and earlier, where direct military force is employed to conquer lands and peoples.

And clearly within this new world, such treaties as the NORAD (North American Air Defense) agreement between the U.S. and Canada, designed to meet, primarily, a manned bomber threat from the USSR (and perhaps later, Russia and the Peoples Republic of China), was no longer the best solution to U.S. missile defense needs. Nor is NATO best suited to a global, fluid environment.

So what does all this mean to Canada?

Firstly, NATO and NORAD must be regarded as being dead or in hospice care. That means, for Canada, that — like the U.S. — it will need to review its global alliances and change them accordingly. Canada is, unavoidably, a geographic neighbor of the U.S. to its south and northwest, so it must either prepare to confront, defend against, or develop a new friendship with the U.S. That will require abandoning old rationales, and disregarding much of history, and recognizing that the U.S. has a coercive power — military and economic — that Canada cannot easily defend against by old methodologies. This implicitly means that the U.S. may not need NORAD to defend the U.S. against incoming strategic missile attacks, but it does need Canada in other geographic ways to control the Arctic sea routes for as long as they are viable. Canada could be “leap-frogged” by Washington if the U.S. could establish dominant control of Greenland to give the U.S. Arctic forward capability.

Secondly, Canada itself must seek new economic viability if it is to be, as Prime Minister Mark Carney ostensibly wishes, strategically independent and “more sovereign”. It cannot, however, achieve this if Carney’s stated economic models are followed, including his preoccupation with ideological statism and commitment to now-disproven “climate politics”. Saying that Canada can compete with the U.S. is not the same as proving it can do it. Can Carney, therefore, disavow the Liberal Party’s destruction of Canadian unity and economic viability while retaining his political power base? Or will this contradiction cause his government to collapse, requiring new elections and a possible Conservative election outcome?

Thirdly, Canada must seek new alliances and defense supply relationships, including a revived defense industry. Can it do this within the framework of CANZUK (the Canada, Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom traditional relationship of monarchical realms)? It certainly cannot do so by reverting to the Liberal Party’s default line of a tacit alliance with the People’s Republic of China (PRC), given that the PRC is itself imploding. Can Canada work with the other “realms” — the UK, Australia, and New Zealand, already also partners in the FiveEyes intelligence alliance — under their common monarch, even though each of these CANZUK states is in political disarray (with New Zealand now being most stable)?

There are common elements to defend Canada against U.S. predations on which the Liberals and Conservatives can agree, and act in unison. But will they?

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