“You’re in America now,” I said. “Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you’d prefer.” ― Jim Butcher, Turn Coat
Arms across the Pacific
On Monday, Australia and Canada signed a $1.75 billion export agreement to build an Australian-designed long-range radar system. This is how the Independent reported it:
The deal, inked on Monday by Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles and Canadian Secretary of State (Defense Procurement) Stephen Fuhr, marks the first phase of a pact to provide early warning radar coverage from the Canada-United States border into the Arctic.
“What this really means is that Australia and Canada are now partners in terms of the future development of the Over-the-Horizon Radar,” Marles told reporters at the Australian Parliament House in the capital Canberra.
The deal gave substance to Canada’s new international philosophy. A realignment of allies that Canadian PM Mark Carney outlined in a speech in Dublin in the lead-up to the 2026 G7 meeting. In describing a new world order, Carney depicted the rupture of the post-WWII Western liberal alliance. In his words:
East and West
“Ireland and Canada are navigating a global rupture, not a quiet transition. The post-Cold War world of rules-based order is breaking down. Multilateral institutions have weakened. Economic integration, from which we have benefited, is being weaponized. The international trading system, which we’ve relied upon for decades, is under threat.”
He did not mention the cause of the upheaval. He didn’t have to. Everyone listening knew he was pointing at Trump.
Carney enumerated the challenges facing the democratic world, saying. “New technologies from artificial intelligence to cyber and quantum are changing the nature of war, the structure of economies, and the possibilities of human advancement. Climate change is no longer a warning. It’s here.”
Faced with these emerging challenges, Carney sought salvation by looking East across the Atlantic. “I suggest that amidst this change, amidst this disruption, Canada, Ireland, and Europe can be pivotal, powerful, and purposeful, a force for good. Pivotal because we are the most connected region in the world to each other and to others.”
And as the deal brokered over long-range radar shows, Carney is also looking West across the Pacific to the Antipodes.
Not South
But he is not looking South. The US and Canada may share the world’s longest non-militarized border. But they no longer share a common purpose. Trump says he is “America First.” But his policies are producing “America Alone.” In his speculative oratory about Canada becoming the 51st state, Trump has sacrificed a mutually beneficial relationship on the altar of his erratic ambition.
A C. 20th man leaves the US ill-prepared for the C.21st
Trump’s legacy will be a diminished America. Still an economic powerhouse with the world’s largest military. But a nation no longer loved or feared. Trump’s capricious tariffs have shaken international faith in the dollar. His execration of NATO and embrace of Putin has forced the Europeans to tend to their own defense.
The EU was founded as an economic union. However, now that the US can no longer be trusted to uphold NATO’s Article 5 guarantee, the Europeans are considering expanding the EU’s scope to include mutual defense.
In addition, Trump’s ill-considered aggression against Iran has shown America’s vaunted military to be unequaled in firepower but unable to win. And his foot-dragging on supplying Ukraine has compelled that scrappy nation to develop cheap weapons and invent tactics to maximize their effect. America is left exposed as a nation that knew how to win the Cold War but is ill-equipped to prosecute a modern conflict.
As a result, even our closest neighbor is looking elsewhere for the sort of cutting-edge military hardware America could once be relied on to supply.
If you combine Trump’s internationally deleterious economic policies with his failed military adventurism, it shows that America’s approach to diplomacy now is to show up with a gun in each hand – neither of which appears to work – and no sandwich.
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Power matters.