A De Facto Protectorate: The True Trumpian Threat To Canada
Donald Trump sprouts a lot of bluster about invading Canada. And don’t get me wrong. This is deeply insulting talk, it would be a war crime, and any American who fails to wholeheartedly and unreservedly condemn such talk is a disgrace. But when many point out the unlikelihood of any such invasion happening, or of the US military obeying such orders, I think they are overlooking a far more realistic, dangerous, and insidious threat to Canada’s sovereignty.
But first, let’d define two terms that I’m going to use:
Protectorate: a state that is controlled and protected by another. (This historically has often boiled down to a colony with some degree of self-government).
De Facto: being such in effect though not formally recognised, exercising power as if legally constituted or authorised (as opposed to De Jure, which is a legal concept that refers to what happens according to the law).
I think Trump’s plan is to use the greater economic muscle of the United States to crush Canada’s economy, which might create a political crisis in Canada, and then force the Canadian government to agree to a couple of things.
Some sort of “trade deal” or supranational body that could be presented as being similar to the European Union, but which is highly asymmetrical in operation, putting all power in the hands of the American government, and effectively granting the American government control of Canadian trade and a wide tranche of the Canadian economy, and the ability to impose laws on regulations on Canada. (Basically imagine the most false, twisted fantasy of paranoid Brexiteers about the European Union and the European Commission, but made real).
An unwritten understanding between the two governments that would create in Canada a state of Finlandization (when a powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former's foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system, a term derived from the influence of the Soviet Union on Finland's policies during the Cold War).
Put together, those two would create a situation where Canada, while still nominally an independent, sovereign nation, was essentially a de-facto protectorate.
It goes without saying that this would be very bad. Canadians would lose their freedom and gain pretty much nothing in return. It also enables Republicans to get what they want (control of Canada’s wealth and resources) without creating ten new and likely Democratic states, with 10 senators and a fist-full of electoral collage votes.
And again, it goes without saying that I would hope that the United States would not follow through on such an evil plan. But if it does, I hope Canada resists, and I hope my country and the rest of Europe stands four-square behind them.
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