With Trump’s decision in Venezuela and threats from Greenland, are Canadians vulnerable?

U.S. President Donald Trump’s increasingly bellicose stance on the capture of Greenland and the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro are combining to spark questions and theories about what the White House might have in mind for Canada.

The measures taken by the Trump administration follow its promise to “reaffirm and enforce” American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, officially set out in a new text. national security strategy.

The White House said this week that use military force to obtain Greenland remains an option despite the fact that it is a semi-autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark, while Trump also floating intervention against the Colombian president and Mexican drug cartels.

Whether he would be willing to use military force against Canada – previously considered wild speculation – is now a matter of debate.

Among those sounding the alarm about this possibility is Bob Rae, the former ambassador to the United Nations. In interviews with several media outlets this week, Rae said Canadians would be wrong to think their country is not “on the menu” of American aggression.

The Trump administration “doesn’t take Canada’s sovereignty seriously,” he told the Globe and Mail Tuesday.

Adam Gordon, a visiting scholar at Royal Roads University’s Cascade Institute, says there is growing evidence which suggests a real risk that the Trump administration will resort to military coercion against Canada.

Gordon, who served as a senior adviser to Foreign Minister Anita Anand and her predecessor Mélanie Joly, highlighted what he called “a pattern of behavior and statements” from the Trump administration, including the U.S. president’s calls for Canada to become the 51st state, as well as the text of his national security strategy and his attitude toward international law.

“We have to prepare for it”

“We can no longer dismiss the idea that it’s at least plausible that there will be some use of force or threat of use of force, and we need to prepare for that,” Gordon told CBC News on Wednesday.

When the U.S. strategy was made public in December, Gordon said it was unclear how seriously the administration would pursue the policies outlined in the 30-page document. document.

“I think we have our answer now, in that we’ve seen them really go for it in Venezuela,” he said.

Gordon says the rationale Trump put forward for ousting Maduro from power — that Venezuela is a source of drug trafficking to the United States — is the same rationale behind some tariffs on Canadian exports.

Other veteran observers of U.S. foreign policy caution against concluding that Trump’s actions elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere put Canada in the crosshairs of U.S. military action.

At the same time, these observers recognize that Canada faces real threats from the Trump White House.

Gerald Butts, who served as an adviser to Carney and former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, predicts the administration will do everything in its power to exert influence over Canada in trade negotiations. That could include an attempt to influence Canadian policy, he says, but he doesn’t see military action on the table.

“I don’t think we’re going to see any kinetic intervention in Canadian life, but we’re going to see a lot of threats, and we’re going to see a lot of pro-American activity by Americans in Canadian life,” Butts told the CBC Front Burner Podcast this week.

Butts is now vice president of the Eurasia Group, a global political risk firm, which publishes an annual list of what it considers to be the Top 10 risks facing the planet.

At the top of the list: the American political revolution, the consequences of which Canada felt more than any other country.

Christopher Hernandez-Roy, deputy director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, says the U.S. drive to control Greenland has implications for Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic.

Hernandez-Roy emphasizes that Trump’s main reason for wanting to acquire Greenland is to deter US adversaries in the region, primarily Russia and Chile.ina, which have recently increased their military cooperation in the Arctic, according to security analysts.

“This raises the specter of an American desire to patrol the Canadian Arctic for the same reasons,” Hernandez-Roy said in an interview.

“It might be all the more tempting for the United States to take on, perhaps on behalf of Canada, more patrols in the Canadian Arctic,” he said.

Any increased U.S. military presence in and around Greenland could actually attract more Russian and Chinese ships, Hernandez-Roy said.

In turn, this could prompt the United States to push for increased use of the Northwest Passage, putting even more pressure on Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic waters.

It’s important that Canada shows it has the strength to patrol its own Arctic “so the Americans don’t feel the need to do so,” Hernandez-Roy said.

Deterring Russian and Chinese Aggression

“The president has been very open and clear with all of you and with the world that he believes it is in the best interests of the United States to deter Russian and Chinese aggression in the Arctic region,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.

Imran Bayoumi, associate director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, part of the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, doubts there is an imminent risk of U.S. military action against Canada.

However, he says Canada faces a challenge in managing growing tensions between Europe and the Trump administration over Greenland.

“The US approach to Greenland is not constructive. There are ways to strengthen cooperation and partnership without threats,” Bayoumi told CBC News.

To counter Russia and China, he believes the administration should instead work with Canada, Greenland and Denmark to develop an allied approach to Arctic security and defense, including increasing U.S. presence and economic activity in the region.

“It is entirely legitimate for the United States to address its security concerns, but threats of annexation are not the way to do this productively.”