Escorting me out of his office, General Gregory Guillot pulls me aside to look at a few photos on the walls. We’re at the Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs, which is the headquarters of the American military’s Northern Command and also of the binational US-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command, both of which Guillot oversees. The photos he wants me to see show “our” jets intercepting “their” planes in various Arctic airspaces where bogeys regularly intrude.

One photo that we linger over shows three of ours — one Canadian and two American — shadowing one of theirs, a Chinese bomber, during a provocative incursion near Alaska not long ago. It’s notable for at least two reasons. First, it documents the increasing brazenness with which the Russians and Chinese are testing the defense perimeters around North America. And second, it provides a Top Gun-photogenic snapshot of what is probably the world’s tightest1 transnational military relationship: that between the United States and Canada.

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