Recently, Brian Lilley of the Toronto Sun interviewed Steve Bannon about Donald Trump’s repeated comments about Canada becoming the fifty-first state. Bannon has long been associated with Trump, having served as his White House Chief Strategist in 2017, and continues to be a leading spokesman and organizer for the MAGA movement.Lilley was probably hoping to get assurances that Trump’s comments about Canada were not serious and that he was just trolling Justin Trudeau. But that was not the message he received.Instead, Bannon’s responses focused largely on the geostrategic and geoeconomic benefits of “hemispheric defense.” In short, Trump’s comments about buying Greenland and taking back the Panama Canal are part of a grand strategy of defending the Western Hemisphere. Canada is a key element of that policy.According to Bannon, President Trump has decided on a plan that includes Panama to Greenland as a naval strategy for hemispheric defense. This would be a Monroe Doctrine 2.0. The original Monroe Doctrine was a nineteenth century policy by the U.S. to keep European powers out of the Western Hemisphere.In a similar way, the U.S. would retake the Panama Canal to “to make sure the Chinese Navy and the Russian Navy can never hook up in the Caribbean all the way up to Greenland.” If the U.S. controlled Greenland or had a partnership with Greenland to keep military bases there, then it could close the northern sea lanes to Russian fast attack and ballistic missile submarines coming out of the Arctic.Ultimately, if the Americans control the sea lane between Greenland and Iceland, and also control the Panama Canal, that would hermetically seal the U.S. from naval attack by the Russians.From a geostrategic perspective, Bannon says, Canada needs to be added to this equation because the Arctic is already experiencing “a great power struggle between the Chinese Communist Party and the Russians up there.” Canada used to be secure in the Arctic but that is no longer the case. The Arctic is now Canada’s soft underbelly. Trump sees that and wants Canada to be part of the united hemispheric defense.The U.S. and Canada fought for Europe in two World Wars and helped in the Cold War but now North America has to look out for its own strategic concerns, particularly the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. As mentioned, the greatest vulnerability now is in the Arctic. “That’s where it all comes together. It’s a great power struggle and President Trump is bound and determined to secure the United States from that and that’s why I think Canada is a central part.”“If you look at the logic of us united geo-strategically in a hemispheric defense, the logic speaks for itself.” Therefore, “don’t look at Canada separate from Greenland and from Panama because it’s of a whole piece about hemispheric defense.”Because of this defense strategy, Bannon says, Trump is “obsessed with this issue of Canada. . . . the man himself is quite frankly very obsessed with this and if you look at the strategy and the economics of it it’s so compelling he’s not going to get off this.”In terms of economics, of course, a Canada-U.S. common market would generate prosperity for both countries.When it comes to Trump’s comments about becoming the fifty-first state, Bannon notes that some parts of Canada are especially compatible with the US: “if you look at particularly your Western provinces . . . the Western provinces of Canada are really not that much different than Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas; it’s that Western frontier mentality with the same kind of natural resources, both agriculture and natural resources and oil and gas.”In short, Bannon says Trump is not trolling when he tweets about Canada as a fifty-first state. He’s looking at the geostrategic and geoeconomic benefits of hemispheric defense. He wants Canada to be a part of the continental defense strategy.Of course, it’s too early to tell how this will play out. Military and economic cooperation between Canada and the U.S. is essential for the well-being of both countries. Hopefully we will have leaders who can maximize that well-being while maintaining Canadian independence, at least long enough for Alberta to get a shot at achieving its own independence.
