KOPALA: Trump's goal, to rebuild the 'arsenal of democracy'

Margret Kopala is an Ottawa-based writer, author and public policy analystUnderstandably, Canadians are rattled, confused and angered by President Donald Trump’s tariffs and calls for Canada to become America’s 51 state. The potential loss of sovereignty and severe effects on the Canadian economy are of no small consequence. Fighting back, Canadians are searching for answers and rediscovering patriotism now that the United States, under President Trump’s leadership, is ….?Well, no one seems to know much about Donald Trump’s plan. To be sure American voters, concerned about mass migration and leftist woke-ism, gave his presidency the biggest mandate since Ronald Reagan but if his popularity ratings are any indication, Trump’s international efforts are a bonus. .Given the high stakes, it behooves Canadians to attempt some understanding of his agenda, even if they don’t approve of his strategy for achieving it. Is it all threat? Or is there an opportunity to build on past successes between the two countries?That the US President is putting both his domestic and his geopolitical house in order goes without saying. This is an elderly man grazed by death with a short four years in office and already the first orders of business are in hand. With debt servicing costs greater than the amount being spent on defence, budgetary concerns are paramount.As economic historian Sir Niall Ferguson reminds us, any hegemon worthy of the name cannot long survive such costs. Enter DOGE to cut costs and tariffs, a form of consumption tax, to help pay down that debt and, possibly, provide room for tax cuts to Americans.Then, in moves reminiscent of the Marshall Plan that helped western Europe recover from WWII, Trump is positioning the United States as both buffer and bulwark first in Gaza and, despite the recent dust up with President Zelensky in the Oval Office, hopefully in Ukraine. .By bleeding off hostilities from all sides, he is relieving the combatants of any reason to continue fighting, while guaranteeing territorial neutrality. Yes, the US will profit from these arrangements but having vested interests means the US will protect them even though, more appropriately NATO forces — whose encroachment was a major factor in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — should step aside as non-NATO countries act as peacekeepers.In the meantime, Russia’s adversarial role where the West is concerned may abate or at least be contained. Some, like war analyst Edward Luttwak, believe Putin is being prised away from Bejing in order to side with the West in any confrontation with China. Not only that but continuing talks between Putin and Trump suggest the United States and Russia are working towards a deal that divides Arctic territory and resources.This eventuality adds substance to possible reasons Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal are also in Trump’s sights. Here, the theories of political scientists Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama may be our best guides. .Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Fukuyama argued that humanity had reached “the end of history,” that is, “the endpoint of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of western liberal democracy as the final form of government.”In response, Fukuyama’s former teacher at Harvard, Samuel Huntington, argued that “future wars would be fought not between countries but between cultures.” His book The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order showed how eight distinct civilizations might align, giving rise to multipolarity and an eventual crisis of Western-centric globalization. The West’s attempts to universalise its values and political systems were naïve, he believed, and would only antagonise other civilizations. As the attacks of 9/11, recent wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, Brexit then the election of Trump himself attest, the Huntington hypothesis has stood the test of time. Indeed it is bearing down on us as analysts like Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, an internation affairs analyst and historian, believes Yalta Redux is all but certain as in May, Russia will host India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and possibly Donald Trump. In other words, the world’s new Great Powers.Meantime, thanks to exhortations (and yes, threats) from the US President, lesser powers like Europe and Canada are finally meeting their obligations on defence spending. .Trump may or may not know much about civilizational clashings but he would assuredly intuit its relevance. Despite shock and push-back on a global scale, he is, in any case, getting results. Closing borders along with the repudiation of woke progressivism, the World Health Organisation, and the reinstatement of fossil fuels speaks to Trump’s anti-globalist agenda while other policy initiatives point to the dawn of a new Reagan era when massive defence spending and dollar devaluation saw the Berlin Wall tumble without a shot being fired.Meanwhile, Trump’s attempt to bring Canada, Greenland and Panama into the US orbit suggests a consolidation of cultural, economic and security interests. Becoming the US fifty first state is on the table, but some other arrangement might be more attractive to all concerned. An economic union? A monetary union? A United States of North America? Such notions shouldn’t be unfamiliar to Canadians. “Building a North American Community,” a report from an independent Task Force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations with the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales considered these kinds of arrangements in 2005. In 2003, Canadian economist Thomas J. Courchene’s “FTA at 15, NAFTA at 10: a Canadian perspective on North American integration” showed how this might be achieved while avoiding the mistakes of the European Union.And best selling author and Canadian journalist, Diane Francis, published her “Merger of the Century: Why Canada and America Should Become One Country” in 2014. .Would Trump invade to achieve this? To the contrary, he has clearly indicated he will use economic measures to advance his agenda. Not to mention a scholarly luminary such as historian Stephen Kotkin has suggested Trump offer citizens of Greenland a million dollars each to align with the US. Does anyone think they would refuse? And Canada? Of considerable interest is how support for joining the US is increasing among Canadian men and Westerners. Yet, and yet, Canada is vulnerable. Major questions arise from allegations concerning the use of Canadian real estate, casinos and banks to run sophisticated money laundering operations by Chinese triads and Mexican cartels running the fentanyl and methamphetamines trade. The Trump administration would certainly be aware of these. Canada’s failure to deal conclusively with such matters gives rise to major security concerns for both countries and the possibility therefore of casus belli.Importantly, Trump’s pivot away from Europe realistically anticipates the possibility of a full confrontation with China. To be sure, and challenges from Chinese electrical vehicles and DeepSeek notwithstanding, the US leads the world in technological innovation and military spending, but with Chinese manufacturing capacity at three times that of the United States, it is well to recall historian Paul Kennedy’s observation in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that “… in a long drawn-out and Great Power (and usually coalition) war, victory has repeatedly gone to the side with the more flourishing productive base.”For Canada, the issue is clear. With or without Canada, Trump is determined to shore up America’s productive base. Does Canada want to be part of America’s productive base and all it offers, including even more benefits from association with the world’s most powerful economic and military apparatus? If not, is it really prepared for the alternative?Margret Kopala is a policy analyst and lead author of “The Dog Bone Portfolio: An Investor’s Odyssey into the First Kondratieff Winter of the 21st Century” , an investigation of the technological/energy transition cycle and its implications for today’s investors and economies.