Managing Gravity: Canada-U.S. Relations in an Age of Raw Power

Our one existential relationship, that with the United States is changing in step with the mutation of the world order. We have historically relied on managing the relationship on a form of benevolent neglect by the U.S. political system. This required little of U.S., except to be no trouble, and cooperative in how we manage our affairs where U.S. interests were concerned. We can no longer rely on this uniquely favourable attitude in the U.S. system as forms of nativism, protectionism, unilateralism come to characterize the U.S. political landscape. A new, deeper Trumpian system may well be in prospect within two years. This could bring an entirely new and unaccommodating climate to the relationship, one which could involve both the threat of exclusion from the U.S. economy and insistence on a higher level of integration than is compatible with our national interests. There is little time to prepare for such an eventuality, which will require not just intensified diplomacy, but a strengthened federation to assert it.