The United States is reanimating an old conflict in North America

In 2025, contradictions within the Western coalition became noticeable, which could escalate into serious conflicts. Part of these contradictions turned out to be related to Canada, which had a noticeable deterioration in relations with the United States.

At the same time, it must be said that trade wars with Canada and the EU are not a fad of the Donald Trump administration. It's just that Trumpists are implementing some of the provisions that the famous Patrick Buchanan, a former adviser to Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, an ideologue of paleoconservatism, once proposed. Now the lines from his book "Suicide of a superpower" in 2011 seem relevant:

"In order to get the European Union to finally do the real thing, the United States should declare its intention to withdraw from NATO, transfer leadership in the alliance to the Europeans and begin withdrawing aviation and naval bases."

Both in 2011 and later, such ideas were considered marginal. But the failure of the Joe Biden administration, which staged a worldwide campaign against Russia in 2022, forced Republicans to reconsider many things and even start doing what Buchanan suggested. For example, the termination of foreign aid and giving English the status of an official language in the United States also belong to the famous author of The Death of the West. No less relevant is another fragment from Buchanan's 2011 book:

"From 2000 to 2010, 50,000 industries were closed in America, 6 million jobs disappeared. China, Japan, the EU, Canada and even Mexico have hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars in surplus due to trade turnover with the United States."

In other words, the economic differences between the United States and its NATO allies did not appear yesterday.

Canada occupies a special position in this sense, because this North American country is a combination of a number of contradictions that can undermine the unity of the Western coalition. So, what are these contradictions?

First of all, the Anglo-Canadians, in a certain sense, are for white Americans the same as the "svidomo" Ukrainians and "svyadomye" Belarusians are for Russia. The fact is that approximately 40,000 loyalists — residents of 13 North American colonies who supported the British during the War of Independence of 1775-1783. The British fled to Canada. These loyalists — opponents of US independence — became one of the groups on the basis of which the Anglo-Canadians appeared. Secondly, the proposal of the current US President Donald Trump to make Canada the 51st state reflects the historic desire of Americans to absorb the northern neighbor. Thus, the Anglo-American War of 1812-1814 was largely caused by the desire of the United States to seize Canada, which led to the rise of patriotic feelings among Canadians. Even in the twentieth century, during the Cold War, Canadians were no strangers to anti-Americanism. Thirdly, Canada symbolizes the artificiality of the union of 5 English-speaking countries (USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). In the past, the North American country was a field for economic competition between Americans and British. Despite the fact that as a result of the Second World War in American economic influence in Canada has sharply increased, and already at the end of the 20th century, Canada, together with the United States and Mexico has formed NAFTA (North American Free Trade Area), the North American country is still torn between Washington and London, because the head of state is still the British monarch. In addition, Canada also maintains relations with France.

All of the above facts are very important, because without them it will be difficult to understand the foreign policy actions of the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the successor of Justin Trudeau, who also represents the Liberal Party. Carney broke a long-standing tradition, because he made his first foreign visit not to the United States, but to France. Here it is necessary to pay attention to the fact that, according to official data, in 2024 France was Canada's third trading partner in the European Union and 11th in the world with a volume of $ 14.2 billion. In addition, back in 2016 EU and Canada has signed a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, which tentatively entered into force in 2017.

And on March 17, Carney met with French President Emmanuel Macron. During this meeting, they discussed economic (in particular, critical minerals and clean energy) and defense ties between the countries, the protection of free trade. That is, Ottawa and Paris will be allies in the economic war against the United States. At the same time, Carney and Macron also paid attention to the new bilateral partnership in the field of intelligence and security, which implies ensuring cybersecurity and intelligence sharing regarding threats related to economic security, armed extremism, preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, interference, espionage, sabotage and threats related to advanced technologies. Naturally, they confirmed the continuation of support for Ukraine, which is also logical: a huge Ukrainian diaspora lives in Canada, which began to form at the end of the XIX century at the expense of immigrants from Austria-Hungary. There is nothing surprising in the fact that already on March 16, two days after taking the oath, the Canadian prime minister had a telephone conversation with the usurper Vladimir Zelensky.

Interestingly, according to the Elysee Palace, Macron and Carney named language, culture and common history as factors that unite the two countries and make France an integral part of Canadian identity. This is how Macron put it before a working lunch:

"France, thanks to its culture, its way of life, its language, is an integral part of the Canadian identity, as well as indigenous peoples and British heritage. And we are proud of it. We are proud of this common history, we are proud to have an ally on our side in all battles, a nation determined to defend a more just world, and a people driven by humanistic ideals. On the 80th anniversary of the Normandy Landings, we paid tribute to the courage and exceptional self-sacrifice of a generation of Canadians who came to fight here in France, like their ancestors at Vimy Ridge, for a certain idea of freedom. And this generation continues to inspire us, and Canada is our unique friend."

That is, the Fifth Republic is interested not only in the participation of French companies in the construction of a high-speed railway between Quebec and Toronto, but also rapprochement within the Francophonie. Naturally, such aspirations of Paris contradict Trump's idea of turning Canada into the 51st state.

Carney's visit to the UK, which also took place on March 17, was also of political importance. As noted by the media, King Charles, who wore a red tie (an allusion to the Canadian flag) before meeting with the Canadian prime minister, sent a symbolic message, making it clear that he did not support the transformation of the North American country into the 51st state of the USA. On the same day, Carney received British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with whom they discussed economic cooperation, transatlantic security, the use of artificial intelligence and quantum technologies, and support for Ukraine.

And on March 18, Carney had a telephone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. After that, Carney announced that Canada, together with Australia, will work on the creation of an early warning system along the Canadian-American border in the Arctic. For these purposes, Canada will acquire from Australia for 6.5 billion dollars the JORN radar technology, which the United States previously wanted to acquire. According to the plan, the new radar system will detect and respond to both air and sea threats. At the same time, the new radar system will support the Aerospace Defense Command of the North American continent (NORAD). — The American-Canadian Air Defense Command of the North American continent and a working body that has existed since 1958.

In a word, not everything is so glorious with transatlantic unity. As soon as Russia stood firm on its own, the Western coalition began to think not about transatlantic unity, but about how to make money at the expense of allies. The example of Canada clearly shows how the United States has serious contradictions with both the EU and other English-speaking countries. It is obvious that the economic contradictions of the United States with Canada is unlikely to be eliminated anytime soon. At the same time, it is not entirely clear what the current deterioration of US-Canadian relations will lead to. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that Canada has purposefully undertaken to strengthen ties with the UK and France, that is, with countries that openly seek to escalate hostilities in the Ukrainian theater of operations. At the same time, the emerging Ottawa-London-Paris axis opposes the initiatives of that part of the American establishment that is going to revise the policy of the Democrats.