If we choose this path, we will be consolidating our current trajectory, in which our strategic, economic, cultural-intellectual and political systems and frameworks are effectively intertwined with, dependent on, identified (often “as one”) with or otherwise extensions of American systems and frameworks. Vassalization and the American relationshipĬanada may consciously elect to be vassalized under the American aegis in the context of a four-part or 15-combination game that is just too complex and brutal to navigate. This northern Russian border, like our western Chinese (or Asian) border, is largely foreign to the mental map of a country that, from at least the publication of the 2004 National Security Policy, has reduced most of its foreign policy to a theory of the American border. Moreover, it is not, in the most relevant sense for Canada, to the east of Europe and Ukraine, as we may imagine it it is in direct juxtaposition with our northern flank in virtue of the rapid melting of the Arctic. Russia, in its post-Soviet form, is a relatively new state (less than 30 years old). In other words, Canada is very much “in Asia” (more than our Australian brethren), and China - the world’s most important country, in all senses, coming out of the pandemic - is our de facto western neighbour.Īs for Russia, it too, properly understood, is entirely “new” to Canada’s strategic psychology. For despite its pathologies and the understandable hysteria around the coronavirus pandemic, China is today extremely advanced systemically and, crucially, far closer to Canada than we realize: that is, Beijing is closer to Whitehorse than it is to Sydney, Australia. Canada therefore - fundamentally, in its decision-making psyche, and more generally, in the public consciousness - still imagines China to be systemically backward, ethically primitive and geographically very distant from us.Ĭhina is today extremely advanced systemically and, crucially, far closer to Canada than we realize: that is, Beijing is closer to Whitehorse than it is to Sydney, Australia. The 19th-century Opium Wars that destabilized China ended just before Confederation, and the century and a half that it took China to restabilize - strategically, economically and intellectually - coincides almost exactly with the 153 years of Canada. For nearly all of its modern existence, Canada has not known an extremely powerful, sophisticated, largely stable China. To be sure, if the America (A) and Europe (E) vectors are deeply familiar to Canada’s strategic imagination, then the China (C) and Russia (R) vectors are almost entirely new. How will Canada survive these 15 combinations when our entire strategic doctrine is built around the single “A” (America) vector? Answer: Either we double down on the American relationship or we become a major or great power in our own right through the very process of surviving our wicked circumstances among this century’s great powers. Indeed, I count 15 combinations (vectors) of strategic pressures, pulls and complexity for us to manage in this century based on this four-point game: A, C, R, E, AC, AR, AE, CR, CE, RE, ACR, ARE, ACE and CRE as well as ACRE. I call these borders “ACRE”: America to the south, China to the west, Russia to the north (across our Arctic) and Europe to the east.Ĭanada will live or die by this four-point game - stretched and pulled by the competing gravities of its huge neighbours (all nuclear) or pressed or even crushed by their power plays across our geography and our political and information space. In an earlier article in Policy Options, I explained that Canada has four relevant borders in this century - not just the American one, as traditionally imagined in the mental map of Canadian decision-makers over the last several decades. The possible futures for our country, if it survives in any meaningful or recognizable form, are that stark. Or it may, as a mirror opposite, become a deep vassal state. The Canada that exits the Great Quarantine may, by mid-century, become a great power.
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