Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to go eat meatloaf with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. This appears to have reactivated old enmities for Trudeau in particular and Canada in general. In 2018, the spokesperson for the American president declared that there was “a special place in hell for Justin Trudeau”!
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The president-elect literally wakes up at night to hate Trudeau (Emmanuelle Latraverse’s formula) and fantasize about the annexation of our dominion. It seems that we represent, in his eyes, what Ukraine is for Putin: a territory that does not deserve his sovereignty.
Normand Lester recalled it yesterday: in 2019, Trump confirmed wanting to buy Greenland. The Arctic island costs Denmark dearly, he argued: losses of “around $700 million per year”. But for the United States, acquiring it would be “strategic,” he argued.
Expansionism
Trump is not an imperialist like Bush father and son, for whom the US should take up arms in order to spread democracy. By opposing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Trump has revamped the ancient American tradition of isolationism.
However, the 47th president will be a territorial expansionist, within the United States’ sphere of influence. No doubt weak-willed. And more businessman than invader. There will be wars, but they will remain commercial.
Appeasement
How to react to this? There are not 20 possibilities: appeasement or firmness (which could imply retaliation).
Appeasement: diplomatic strategy consisting of offering certain concessions to an aggressive foreign power, with the aim of avoiding conflict.
Our response to Trump, for the moment in scattered ranks, mainly comes from this approach.
Except that we may announce, like federal ministers Miller and LeBlanc on Tuesday, that we will spend $1.3 billion over six years (on helicopters, drones, etc.), at the border, we do not know if this will satisfy the unpredictable president. For whom the main problem seems in any case the trade balance deficit for the United States.
Firmness
The other camp, that of firmness, does not seem very promising, at least currently. The impetuous Doug Ford’s threat to deprive residents of the states of Minnesota, New York and Michigan of electricity provided some relief. But his counterparts like François Legault refused to follow him. On CNN Tuesday, Ford seemed reluctant to defend his position.
Other reactions from the firm camp were even less convincing: former PM Jean Charest recalling, with a smirk, the fire of the White House in 1812…
Eddie Goldenberg on Tuesday presented an idea that will please many in the tough camp. Former advisor to Jean Chrétien, Goldenberg asks Justin Trudeau to quickly hand over his position to… Chrystia Freeland, whom he describes as a sort of pit bull who stood up in the renegotiation of NAFTA, in 2018: “What Trump said in attacking Ms. Freeland is exactly why Canadians would want her to be prime minister. Just like the fact that the other leader who hates her the most is Vladimir Putin.”
And you, appeasement or firmness?
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