Authors:
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Paul T. Mitchell | Professor of Defence Studies, Canadian Forces College
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Barbara J. Falk | Professor, Department of Defence Studies, Royal Military College of Canada
Scenario planning isn’t about predicting the future — it’s about highlighting potential futures and the demands they’re likely to present to our current way of life.
Along two axes, we can chart the degree of American commitment to anti-Canadian animus, versus Canadian commitment to its own survival. This mix generates four possible outcomes.
In the first quadrant, where the commitment of both states is low, the result is “business as usual.” Canada continues to commercially serve the U.S market, while the U.S. extracts the best possible trade deals from Canada.
In the second quadrant, the commitment of both states is high. Here, the U.S. would go beyond tariffs and target the ability of Canadian banks to do business with American ones, and pressure SWIFT to cut off Canadian access to international banking.
A Canadian unwillingness to “bend the knee” to the U.S. creates a status not unlike that faced by Cuba, where the Americans have maintained a comprehensive trade embargo since 1958. In this scenario, Canada becomes internationally isolated and impoverished due to its resistance to American demands, seeking allies abroad while stemming capital flight through draconian measures.
In the third quadrant, Canada’s resilience is low and American animus is high. At best, the Canadian situation would be analogous to that of Belarus’s relationship with Russia.
Russia is Belarus’s largest economic and political partner; they share a long water and land boundary. In some respects, Belarus still has a seat at the United Nations, but minuscule manoeuvrability on foreign or defence policy.
Canada becoming a 51st state is highly unlikely. The electoral consequences of admitting 40 million voters much more progressive than most Americans would skew electoral outcomes unsuited to Republican tastes.
Of course, this is accepting the fantasy that Canadians would be admitted with equal rights to “real Americans.” The effort to dispossess Gazans of their rights and land is illustrative here.
Finally, there are complicated issues at stake, such as differences over political rights, gun control, universal health care and state-supported education. A more probable outcome would involve Canada becoming a type of vassal state, not unlike Belarus.
In the last quadrant, Canadian resistance is high, but the U.S. is willing to tolerate at least a modicum of independence. Here Finland’s relationship with the former Soviet Union is relevant.
Canada would be permitted the ability to maintain independent diplomatic relations. But it would have to tread carefully by never entering alliances or agreements that would upset the Americans. Any thought of Canada joining the European Union would be dead.
These four models don’t capture all possible outcomes.
They don’t take into consideration how military force might be deployed against Canada.
Outright invasion is unlikely. But “freedom of navigation” operations in the Northwest Passage are highly likely.
In the context of a new push to secure North America’s Arctic security, the seizure of one or more islands in the Arctic Archipelago is also imaginable.
Initially I ended up quoting most of the article, so I removed some of it