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Trump and Carney May Be Headed Toward a Grand Bargain

Will Canada trade deeper defence integration for relief from US tariffs?

In 1972, United States president Richard Nixon travelled to China to establish diplomatic relations with the Communist regime. Given Nixon’s past record as a fervent anti-Communist, notably his involvement in the investigation of Alger Hiss, an idiom emerged from the visit: Only Nixon could go to China. The idea was that only a president with strong anti-Communist bona fides could normalize diplomatic ties with Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party.

We may be seeing a similar thing happening with Prime Minister Mark Carney and the United States. Recent developments suggest that Ottawa and Washington may be considering a new security arrangement for North America, possibly as part of a renegotiation of the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement.

Many Canadians would be taken aback if Canada signed a new security and defence pact with the United States. Carney, after all, has spent the past year emphasizing the need to reduce Canada’s economic and security dependence on America, diversify our trade and military partnerships, and build sovereign defence capabilities. Announcing that Canada and the United States are deepening their security relationship would run counter to these messages.

Yet that may be why Carney could pull it off. Having built up his credibility as the champion of Canadian sovereignty, Carney would have enough credibility and political capital to negotiate a new North American security and defence deal. Only Carney can go to Donald Trump’s Washington, as it were.

How do we know that there might be a security deal in the works? During a recent speech to the Global Progress Action Summit in Toronto, Carney stated, “Like Mexico, Canada remains open to deeper integration, including options for ‘Fortress North America’ in selected sectors . . .” A couple weeks later, the American under secretary of defense/war for policy, Eldridge Colby, announced a suspension of the Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD). Colby justified the move as follows: “Only by investing........

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