Published on:
August 25, 2026
Canada Must Think Strategically Again
Canadian Forces Base Esquimalt
For much of the past decade, Canada has been preoccupied with itself. Our national conversation has centred overwhelmingly on domestic questions of affordability, climate policy, immigration, reconciliation, health care, federal-provincial relations and the expansion or reform of government programs. These are important matters, and every responsible government must address them. Yet the intensity of Canada's inward focus has come at a cost: while we debated ourselves, the strategic environment surrounding us was being transformed.
Russia brought large-scale war back to Europe. China emerged not merely as an economic competitor but as a formidable technological, industrial and military power. The Indo-Pacific became the centre of global economic gravity, while supply chains, energy, critical minerals, semiconductors and artificial intelligence increasingly became instruments of national power. At the same time, the Arctic began its transition from a distant and comparatively tranquil frontier into an increasingly important theatre of strategic competition.
Perhaps most consequentially for Canada, the United States changed as well.
Canada is therefore confronting an uncomfortable reality. We have spent considerable time debating what kind of society we wish to be while devoting far less attention to what kind of country we need to become in an increasingly unforgiving world. For much of the post-Cold War period, that distinction could be overlooked because the international environment was extraordinarily favourable to Canadian interests. Today, it cannot.
Canada must begin thinking strategically again.
Tariffs understandably dominate the headlines, particularly because their economic consequences are immediate and politically visible. Yet tariffs are not the fundamental issue between Ottawa and Washington, any more than steel, aluminum, automobiles, dairy, border security, defence spending or even CUSMA can explain the relationship when considered individually.
Rather, these disputes are manifestations of something larger: Canada and the United States are renegotiating the strategic bargain that has governed their relationship for generations.
Washington increasingly approaches its alliances and economic relationships through a harder calculation of reciprocity, burden-sharing, industrial capacity and national advantage. Trade policy, defence policy, border security, energy security and industrial policy, which were once largely managed as separate files, are increasingly being treated as interconnected instruments of American national power.
From Washington's perspective, the underlying question is becoming increasingly straightforward: What does an ally contribute to the security and prosperity of the United States?
Canada must therefore confront an equally consequential question of its own: how deeply can we integrate with the United States while retaining sufficient national capability to make sovereign decisions when Canadian and American interests inevitably diverge?
This is not fundamentally a debate about whether Canada should choose the United States. Geography answered that question generations ago. Rather, it is a debate about the terms upon which Canada participates in the North American system and the degree of strategic autonomy it retains within it.
Canada cannot realistically decouple from the United States, nor would attempting to do so constitute serious strategy. The United States will remain Canada's most important economic relationship, its indispensable continental security partner and the country with which our prosperity will continue to be most deeply intertwined.
Nevertheless, there is a critical distinction between integration and dependence.
Integration, when properly structured, creates mutual advantage and increases the value each country derives from the other. Dependence, by contrast, creates vulnerability because it reduces the ability of one party to absorb pressure or pursue alternatives when interests diverge.
Canada's objective should therefore not be independence from the United States, but greater strategic independence within the relationship. Such independence cannot be achieved through rhetoric or declarations of sovereignty; it requires the economic, military, industrial and diplomatic capabilities that make sovereign choices possible.
A country that cannot adequately defend its territory, secure its Arctic approaches, develop its strategic resources, maintain essential industries or diversify its international relationships inevitably possesses less freedom of action, regardless of how emphatically it asserts its sovereignty.
Sovereignty, in the twenty-first century, will increasingly be measured not simply by what a country claims the right to do, but by what it possesses the capacity to do.
For generations, Canada benefited from perhaps the most favourable geography enjoyed by any major country. Protected by three oceans and sharing its only land border with the world's dominant economic and military power, Canada could afford to regard geography almost as background rather than destiny.
That era is drawing to a close.
Canada is simultaneously an Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic country. It possesses enormous reserves of energy, uranium, critical minerals, food and other strategic resources, while much of the northern approach to the continental United States passes through Canadian territory. As strategic competition intensifies, these characteristics cease to be merely geographic facts and become instruments of national power.
The Arctic is particularly important. Russia remains a formidable Arctic military power, China has demonstrated a sustained interest in northern shipping routes and resources, and technological and environmental change is steadily making the region more accessible. Meanwhile, missile defence, early warning, aerospace surveillance, maritime awareness and critical infrastructure are becoming increasingly important to the defence of North America.
Consequently, Canada requires more than an Arctic policy composed of individual programs and procurement decisions. It requires an Arctic strategy grounded in a coherent understanding of Canadian national interest, continental defence and alliance politics.
Nowhere is the urgency of that requirement clearer than in the debate surrounding Greenland.
Greenland should not be regarded in Ottawa as an exotic diplomatic issue involving Washington and Copenhagen. Its strategic importance extends directly to Canada's interests because Greenland sits at the intersection of virtually every geopolitical system through which Canada understands its own security.
Geographically, Greenland is part of North America. Constitutionally, it forms part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Politically and militarily, it exists within the broader Western and NATO security architecture. Strategically, however, it occupies the junction between the Arctic, the North Atlantic and the defence of the Western Hemisphere.
That combination raises questions that Canada cannot afford to ignore.
If Washington increasingly regards Greenland through the lens of hemispheric defence, while Denmark and other European allies view it principally through the principles of sovereignty and NATO collective security, what happens when those perspectives no longer align perfectly? More importantly, where does Canada position itself if its indispensable continental partner and one of its NATO allies approach the same strategic territory through different geopolitical frameworks?
The question matters because Canada's security has long rested comfortably upon two overlapping architectures: continental defence with the United States through NORAD and collective defence with the United States and Europe through NATO. Greenland sits almost precisely where those two systems converge.
Canada therefore has a direct national interest in ensuring that the North American and transatlantic security architectures reinforce one another rather than gradually becoming competing concepts.
Moreover, Canada should resist the temptation to define itself exclusively through any one of them. We are simultaneously North American, Arctic, Atlantic and Pacific, and our strategic advantage lies precisely in our ability to operate across all four dimensions.
This brings Canada to another increasingly important question regarding diversification since the emerging international environment sometimes produces a false choice: Canada must either align itself more closely with Washington or diversify away from the United States.
As uncertainty surrounding the American relationship grows, there will inevitably be calls for Canada to diversify its trade, security partnerships and diplomatic relationships. That instinct is correct, but it must be pursued with strategic realism rather than political symbolism.
No European or Indo-Pacific partner can replace the United States in Canada's economic or security architecture, nor should diversification be understood as an attempt to construct an alternative to Washington. Geography, infrastructure, integrated industries, energy networks and continental defence make such a proposition unrealistic.
Instead, Canada should deepen its relationships with Europe and trusted Indo-Pacific partners, including Japan, South Korea, Australia and Singapore, because a country with multiple consequential relationships possesses greater strategic freedom than one overwhelmingly dependent upon a single partner.
Diversification, properly understood, is therefore not an anti-American strategy. It is an instrument of Canadian resilience and an insurance policy for Canadian sovereignty.
A stronger network of international relationships would not weaken Canada's partnership with Washington. On the contrary, a Canada that brings broader diplomatic reach, industrial relationships and strategic capabilities to the table ultimately becomes more valuable to the United States as well.
At moments of unusual tension in the Canada–U.S. relationship, it is tempting to look backward to the partnership between Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney and wonder whether their approach offers guidance for the present.
There is a danger, of course, in romanticizing history. Their personal friendship was genuine, but friendship alone did not make their relationship consequential. What mattered was the strategic confidence with which both leaders approached the alliance.
Mulroney understood that closeness to Washington could strengthen Canada's ability to advance Canadian interests rather than diminish it. He pursued one of the most consequential economic integrations in Canadian history through free trade while simultaneously pressing the United States forcefully on acid rain and other matters where Canadian and American interests differed.
Reagan, meanwhile, understood a principle that remains important for American strategy today: strong and prosperous allies multiply American power. The United States did not become weaker because Canada possessed its own interests, nor did Canada need to define its sovereignty through opposition to Washington.
Their relationship therefore embodied a concept that remains highly relevant: proximity without subordination.
Canada could be deeply integrated with the United States while remaining unmistakably sovereign, just as disagreement between Ottawa and Washington did not automatically transform two allies into adversaries.
The question, however, is whether that formula can survive the world that has emerged since.
In many respects, it has. The world Reagan and Mulroney inhabited has largely disappeared.
The geopolitical environment they inhabited was dangerous, but its strategic architecture was comparatively clear. Today, economic security and military security have converged in ways that would have been difficult to imagine four decades ago. China combines economic scale, technological sophistication, industrial capacity and military ambition in ways the Soviet Union never did, while Russia has returned territorial conquest to Europe. Technology supply chains have become strategic terrain, and energy, data, semiconductors and critical minerals have become instruments of geopolitical influence.
At the same time, the Arctic is becoming more accessible and strategically contested, while American domestic politics has become considerably more sceptical of the assumptions that once surrounded free trade, globalization and alliance relationships.
Consequently, Canada cannot simply recreate the Reagan–Mulroney relationship. The personalities are different, the economic environment is different, and the distribution of global power has changed too profoundly.
Yet the principles underlying successful statecraft have not changed nearly as much.
Canada must understand its national interest, maintain exceptional access to Washington, build credibility through meaningful contributions, disagree privately where possible and firmly where necessary, and resist the temptation to transform every bilateral dispute into a test of national identity.
Above all, Canada must neither confuse friendship with submission nor mistake theatrical defiance for sovereignty.
That distinction may be one of the most important lessons history can offer the present.
If Washington is becoming more transactional in its relationships, Canada's most effective response is neither resentment nor nostalgia. It is to make Canada increasingly consequential to American security and prosperity.
Canada should aspire to become so important to continental defence that Washington values the relationship not merely because of history and friendship, but because Canadian participation is strategically indispensable.
That means sustained investment in the Canadian Armed Forces, NORAD modernization, Arctic surveillance, maritime and aerospace capabilities, submarines, cyber defence and critical infrastructure. It also means treating defence procurement not simply as government purchasing but as an instrument of national industrial strategy.
Similarly, Canada must approach critical minerals, energy, ports, northern infrastructure and advanced technologies as strategic assets rather than disconnected economic files.
None of this should be undertaken simply because an American president demands greater Canadian defence spending.
Canada should build these capabilities because greater capability produces greater sovereignty, and greater sovereignty ultimately produces a healthier relationship with the United States.
A capable ally is able to negotiate. A dependent ally is more often required to accommodate.
Within the present uncertainty lies an opportunity.
Rather than attempting to reconstruct the Canada–U.S. relationship of yesterday, Ottawa and Washington should consider what kind of continental partnership is required for the world emerging tomorrow.
Canada should be prepared to assume substantially greater responsibility for continental defence, Arctic security, critical infrastructure, energy resilience, strategic resources and defence-industrial capacity. In return, Washington should recognize that predictable Canadian participation in the continental economy, combined with respect for Canada's sovereign policy choices, strengthens rather than diminishes American security.
Such an understanding could ultimately become more ambitious than another trade agreement or another temporary settlement of bilateral irritants. It could form the foundation of a new North American strategic compact connecting trade, defence, energy, critical minerals, technology, industrial capacity, supply-chain resilience and Arctic security.
For Washington, such an arrangement would deliver what American administrations have requested from Canada for decades: a more capable ally carrying a substantially greater share of the burden of continental security. For Ottawa, it would provide something equally important: greater influence over the North American system upon which Canada's prosperity and security inevitably depend.
In other words, Canada and the United States should seek to replace dependence with genuine interdependence.
Ultimately, however, the greatest Canadian challenge may be intellectual rather than economic or military.
For too long, Canada has had the luxury of treating foreign policy largely as an extension of domestic politics, defence procurement as an administrative process, international trade as primarily an economic matter and geography as something that could safely be taken for granted.
The world now emerging will permit none of those assumptions.
Canada must once again ask fundamental strategic questions. What must we be capable of defending ourselves? Which industries, resources and technologies are genuinely strategic? What should Canada's Arctic posture be? How should NORAD and NATO interact across the High North? Where should we integrate more deeply with the United States, and where must Canada preserve independent capabilities? Which European and Indo-Pacific relationships should become strategic partnerships rather than simply commercial relationships?
Perhaps the most important question, however, is also the simplest: what does Canada bring to the table?
For decades, we have understandably asked what alliances, institutions and international relationships could provide Canada. In the world now emerging, our partners will increasingly ask what Canada is prepared to provide them.
Answering that question requires something Canada has too often lacked: a coherent national strategy linking foreign policy, defence, industry, resources, technology and trade.
Canada does not need to become a great power, nor should it pretend to be one. It does, however, need to become a more consequential country.
We possess nearly all the ingredients required: extraordinary geography, abundant strategic resources, sophisticated industries, membership in the world's most important alliances, privileged access to the United States, relationships across Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and a highly educated population.
What has too often been missing is the strategic coherence connecting those advantages.
The challenge before Canada is therefore not simply to manage the latest disagreement with Washington, nor is it to search nostalgically for the comfortable bilateral relationship of an earlier generation. It is to understand that the international environment itself has changed and that Canada's position within it must change accordingly.
Reagan and Mulroney might scarcely recognize the geopolitical landscape confronting their successors. Yet they would almost certainly recognize the enduring truth beneath it: relationships between nations survive not because of sentimentality, but because both sides continue to see strategic value in one another.
Canada's task is therefore to ensure that it remains indispensable to the United States without becoming dependent upon it; committed to NATO without neglecting its continental responsibilities; present in the Indo-Pacific without forgetting that its geography is fundamentally North American; and capable of defending sovereignty without retreating into nationalism or isolation.
Those objectives are not contradictory. Properly understood, they form the basis of a modern Canadian strategy.
For too long, Canada has largely been able to react to an international order designed and defended by others. That period is ending.
The question now is whether Canada will continue adjusting to decisions made elsewhere, or recover the ambition, capability and strategic confidence required to help shape what comes next.
