{"id":200133,"date":"2026-09-08T10:37:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T10:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/200133\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T10:37:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T10:37:28","slug":"the-advantage-of-the-stronger-jeffrey-polet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/200133\/","title":{"rendered":"The Advantage of the Stronger \u2013 Jeffrey Polet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The ongoing \u201ctrade war\u201d between the United States and Canada ratcheted up a few notches when the Canadian delegation pulled out of recent trade talks and the Canadian government responded to US tariffs by imposing its own<\/a>. Mark Carney, Canada\u2019s competent prime minister, heightened the stakes by claiming<\/a> that this dispute threatens the very idea of Canadian independence and raises the \u201cquestion of sovereignty,\u201d a question brought into relief by Carney\u2019s insistence that \u201cyou\u2019re at war when you get attacked, and we got attacked.\u201d\u00a0Such rhetoric may also make it more difficult to find a solution. Trade talks are essentially about trade-offs, but \u201csovereignty\u201d involves the stability and existence of the nation itself. In other words, Carney essentially changed the whole cost-benefit equation of the negotiations.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll admit to some personal interest in the outcome of these arguments beyond being an American consumer. My wife was born and raised in Canada, and her siblings still live there. Three of my siblings were born there, and one still lives there. My close friend from college days practices law in Ontario, and I visit him regularly. Over the years, I have navigated the reflexive Canadian anti-Americanism while also remaining sympathetic to their concerns. I understand that Canadian worries about American annexation have a basis in reality, for there have been many times when America has attempted to take over its northern neighbor. Americans may not know much about this history, but Canadians are well-schooled in it.<\/p>\n

Beyond the personal, though, the Canadian dilemma marks an important development, or retrenchment, in our thinking about international politics. Students of international relations had for years treated sovereignty as a problem that could be solved through its abolition. Once rid of sovereignty, the cosmopolitan dream of a perpetual peace resulting from a cooperative, rule-based governance grounded in respect for human rights could be fully realized.<\/p>\n

President Trump\u2019s comments about Canada\u2014calling it the 51st state or referring to former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as \u201cgovernor\u201d\u2014resonate differently there than they do here. Canadians take these as threats and thus view US policy with inherent skepticism. Trump\u2019s response to Carney\u2019s diatribe that Canada wanted all the benefits of being a US state without actually being one will do little to allay those concerns. Many Canadians suspect that Trump\u2019s plan is to weaken Canada, subordinate it, and then absorb it. This brings us back to the issue of sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Sovereignty as a concept developed in the modern world and has long operated as the organizing idea of national and international politics. Jean Bodin identified its central features by connecting it to the problem of rule, and Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, among others, borrowed the concept not only to determine the nature and extent of political power but also to suggest that individuals exercised a kind of sovereignty over themselves. In this, all people are more or less equal. I exercise my sovereignty over myself, formally speaking, in the same way others do over themselves. Limits on others intruding on my sovereignty put us all on an equal footing.<\/p>\n

Hobbes explored this concept quite thoroughly, demonstrating that in the state of nature all of us enjoyed a kind of rough equality both in terms of our autonomy and in terms of the dangers we faced. Obviously, in such a state the strong can always prevail over the weak but, Hobbes argued, not only must the strong sleep sometimes, rendering them vulnerable, but the weak could also combine their forces and overwhelm the strong. Now equally vulnerable, the strong were equally motivated to enter the social contract.<\/p>\n

Of course, strength and weakness don\u2019t disappear once the contract is enacted, but neither can strength operate as a principle of justice, as Plato demonstrated long ago. Most negotiations still operate asymmetrically, one party having more to lose than the other. The stronger party will often use that as leverage in negotiations. An individual\u2019s sovereignty may be inviolable, but it can be compromised when it finds itself in an inferior or highly dependent position. The stronger party can retain its sovereignty inviolate while the weaker party, given the nature of the social contract, rants about the unfairness of it all. The weaker party does have the option of withdrawing from the negotiations in the interests of a prideful protection of its sovereign rights, but will almost always pay the higher price for having done so, in the same way that workers almost always have to yield in the end to owners, who typically have more than enough resources at their disposal to outlast their disputants.<\/p>\n

Machiavelli observed that no one in the weaker position likes to be reminded of this fact, and such reminders likely produce intense levels of resentment and resistance. The stronger party should secure itself by prudently making concessions while at the same time extracting according to its interests. Our often formal understanding of international politics\u2014that all sovereign nations are equals\u2014yields quickly to the material differences among the nations. The weaker can either wait and strike while the superpower sleeps or they can band together, counting on their collective power to even out the imbalances.<\/p>\n

Carney outlined<\/a> this position in a well-regarded address he gave in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland\u2014a speech that offers something of a contrast to his most recent protestations. On August 22, after Canada withdrew from negotiations, he admonished America to treat Canada as its formal equal, but in Davos he harbored no such illusion. In both speeches, he treats America as operating in bad faith, mostly because of its inconstancy but also because of its unwillingness to treat Canada as its equal.<\/p>\n

The dream of a world without sovereign nations, now shattered, may yield to a new system of coalition-building that tries to retain sovereignty rather than attenuate it.<\/p>\n

I expect that argument will have little purchase with Trump, who, it seems, consistently understands politics as a power-game where leverage determines outcomes. The president is likely not unaware of the fact that three US states have GDPs larger than Canada\u2019s, or that California\u2019s GDP is nearly twice as large. The United States accounts for about three-quarters<\/a> of all Canadian exports while Canada accounts for about 15 percent of US exports<\/a>. In other words, Canada has very little leverage in current negotiations, under which abstract appeals to equal sovereignty, regardless of their legitimacy and connection to international law, have little sway over someone playing power politics.<\/p>\n

A point Carney recognized in his Davos speech. He there complained that \u201cwhen we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. \u2026 This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.\u201d The idea of sovereignty itself could no longer be considered in the classic liberal sense of self-sufficient rule but only as \u201cstrategic autonomy.\u201d The strategic element results from what Carney called \u201cthe middle powers,\u201d neither superpowers nor weak, combining their forces. In the new world order where \u201cthe strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must,\u201d the weaker parties, as Hobbes suggested, can cooperate with one another to overwhelm the strong.<\/p>\n

Carney understands that this kind of international power politics means the end of the neoliberal dream and the return to the waking world of every sovereign nation pursuing its own interest. The coronavirus pandemic exposed many of the problems associated with neoliberalism: the hollowing-out of a nation\u2019s manufacturing capacities, dependence on foreign-controlled supply chains, economic uncertainty, energy vulnerability, inconsistent food supplies, and so forth. Little wonder that some nations, especially the superpowers, retrenched into \u201cUs first\u201d policies, such as a National Industrial Policy<\/a>, that flex all their advantages.<\/p>\n

It is up to the middle powers, Carney argued, to assemble back together the shattered pieces of the old neoliberal consensus. \u201cLet us,\u201d he admonished the world\u2019s leaders, \u201cbe clear-eyed about where [power politics] leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.\u201d While the superpowers operate willfully, the middle powers will have to ally themselves \u201cto hedge against uncertainty.\u201d This would result in a redefinition of sovereignty itself in international affairs, not based upon rules and law but on \u201cthe ability to withstand pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The middle powers might not be able to bend the superpowers to their will, but at least they could, in conjunction with each other, keep the superpowers from bending theirs. And here\u2019s what we\u2019ve learned in wars from Vietnam to Iraq to Ukraine: The victory seldom goes to those with the greatest strength in terms of power. It usually goes, rather, to those with the greatest strength to endure. My guess is that Canadian consumers and businesses<\/a> are willing to endure more economic suffering as a result of a trade war than are American consumers. American leaders have a long history of underestimating those they seek to dominate.<\/p>\n

While at the moment Canada fights the United States on its own\u2014and it needs to in part because it hasn\u2019t sufficiently diversified its own trade portfolio, nor have the \u201cmiddle powers\u201d organized and actuated themselves in any meaningful way\u2014Carney has already said that we can expect it to start aligning with other countries. While Carney has tried to defend Canadian sovereignty in the latest go-round, he did so only after conceding that the very meaning of sovereignty had changed and that Canada\u2019s position in this new world order was a weak one. Will Canada be able to \u201cwithstand pressure\u201d on its own now becomes a central political question for the Great White North.<\/p>\n

Many Canadians seem pleased at the prospect of showing up to school to have a bully take their lunch money. If 1980s movies<\/a> are to be trusted, however, bullies always get theirs. The weaker party can turn to the next biggest<\/a> kid in school to run interference on its behalf, or band together with all the other kids being picked on. As Carney put it in Davos: \u201cWe are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed [to] a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe\u2019s defence procurement arrangements. We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months. In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s relationship with China seems a major sticking point from the American point of view. I suspect that virtually all of Trump\u2019s foreign policy decisions are driven in one way or another by his obsession<\/a> with China<\/a>. While the causes of the Canadian turn to China are complex, it should be remembered that if you won\u2019t provide a neighbor with shelter, that neighbor might well seek shade elsewhere. This, too, reflects the typically short-sighted thinking that has long marked the American interest in domination.<\/p>\n

My read is that the tariff war has resulted in Canadians wrestling with competing ideas of sovereignty. Can Canada go it alone, as Carney recently suggested, and as Stephen Marche recently argued<\/a> in a New York Times essay? Can Canada successfully create a coalition with other \u201cmiddle powers,\u201d the diminished sovereignty that Carney argued for back in January? Or will Canada replace its dependency on the US economy with an increased dependency on the Chinese?<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s response may prove an important test case for the future of the international order and the conception of sovereignty that will continue to undergird it. The dream of a world without sovereign nations, now shattered, may yield to a new system of coalition-building that tries to retain sovereignty rather than attenuate it. Carney, in his January speech, made a remarkable concession for a Canadian leader, especially since his predecessors bought into the neo-liberal vision: \u201cWe knew,\u201d he confessed, \u201cthe story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scales having fallen from the eyes, Carney now envisions an order that \u201crebuilds sovereignty\u2014sovereignty which was once grounded in rules\u2014but which will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.\u201d Whether Canada can endure the pressure of the Trump tariffs will be an important test of this altered idea of sovereignty. The strong should take note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ongoing \u201ctrade war\u201d between the United States and Canada ratcheted up a few notches when the Canadian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200134,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[17,62679,111,62680,737,400,10838],"class_list":["post-200133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mark-carney","tag-canada","tag-jeff-polet","tag-mark-carney","tag-sovereign-nations","tag-sovereignty","tag-tariffs","tag-trade-wars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200133","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200133"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200133\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200133"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200133"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200133"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}