Donald Trump is scrambling to change the channel on the disaster in the Strait of Hormuz and his humiliating trip to China. Whenever Trump is cornered, he has standard tricks to generate distractions. You could tell the China trip was really bad when he found it necessary to release a photo of himself walking with a life-sized alien. But his favourite response to international setbacks is to attack Canada. Trump has threatened Canada more than any other nation, save perhaps Ukraine. And for the same reasons, two nations that have defied the gangsters. And so in the wake of the China trip, the Pentagon announced it is walking away from the Canada-US Defence Board. The news was delivered by Undersecretary for War Eldridge Colby. Colby accused Canada of having failed to invest in military spending, which is why the United States is walking away from the shared defence of the continent. The charge is ridiculous. Canada has increased its military spending more in the last year and a half than in decades. But what really bothers the United States is that military spending involves greater alliances with Europe. They have also noticed that we are investing in systems that could be used to protect our border from the yet unstated but clear threat from the United States. Colby’s attack on Canada follows the news that he threatened the papal ambassador in a tense meeting with Vatican officials last January. Colby is reported to have said:
The “or else” scenario was a reference to what happened back in the 1300s when the French military beat a pope to death and took the Church leadership as prisoners to Avignon. The reports of that meeting were leaked to the public, most likely by a Vatican source. Afterwards, everyone pretended it never happened. The question is obvious — if the United States is willing to threaten the pope, why would they blink from threatening Canada? The Canada-US Defence Board is not something many people have heard of. Certainly not on the scale of NORAD or NATO. Nonetheless, the White House is firing a shot across our bow. The board was established in 1940, as the governments of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Mackenzie King recognized the need to work together on a common vision for continental defence. It marked the beginning of 80-plus years of shared alliances and increasing integration across military, diplomatic, and economic interests. But there is something symbolic in attacking this board. With this attack, Trump is making it clear that this era of cooperation is over. I urge people to read Tim Cook’s book The Good Allies, which documents the long and difficult struggle to build trust between Canada and the United States in the lead-up to the Second World War. Prime Minister Mackenzie King wrote of his concerns in his diary,
In the 1930s, both countries drew up serious invasion and counter-invasion strategies. Plan Red was the American scheme to invade Halifax to seize the port by drowning the area in poison gas. They would then occupy Montreal, Niagara Falls, Winnipeg and Vancouver before the main body of the army would drive the 200 kms to occupy Ottawa. A 1935 Congressional committee discussed bombing Canadian cities to deny a safe haven to any country that attempted to use Canada as a staging ground for an attack on American soil. In Canada, Colonel J. Sutherland Brown undertook spy missions to the United States. He envisioned a sudden strike by Canadian forces to seize American communities, which would be followed by a rearguard action back to Canada. He based his plan on the premise that the United Kingdom would be coming to back us up. At the time, there was almost no cross-border cooperation between the two countries. The Americans didn’t understand Canada at all, and Canada, which was woefully unprepared to defend itself, had few trusted contacts in the United States. As the threat of fascism rose, Roosevelt realized the need to build a continental defence. Thus began the first tentative meetings with Canadian officials to discuss intelligence and resource sharing. By 1939, Canada was at war and was rapidly building its navy, air force and military. Tanks were being produced in Montreal. Ships were being constructed in the Great Lakes shipyards from Port Arthur down to Collingwood. Both countries realized that the only way to truly take on the fascist threat was to build a coordinated North American defence to withstand U-boat attacks and other threats. This led to the creation of the Canada-US Defence Board. From there, we saw the massive coordination of convoys, military cooperation in the air war and the invasion of Sicily and Italy. At the meeting in Quebec City, the plans were laid for the joint Allied invasion of Normandy. As young Canadians from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Montreal, Winnipeg, and Regina stepped into the first landing crafts, they took comfort in the words of General Eisenhower, who told them that the “hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.” Those Canadians who stormed Juno Beach didn’t see Eisenhower as an American general but as the leader of the combined Allied forces. We were all in this together to defeat fascism. The Canada-US Defence Board set the stage for 80 years of cooperation in defence, diplomacy, and economic integration. A far cry from the isolation and suspicion of the 1930s. But Donald Trump is turning back the clock. This has been the plan all along. When Trump was first running for election, Steve Bannon bragged that the Trump era would be as exciting as the 1930s.” Canada learned hard lessons in the fight against fascism from the 1930s. We need to be ready to apply those lessons today, as threats along our border increase. If any photos or images on this site are under copyright, please let us know and we will provide appropriate credit. This content is used in accordance with applicable copyright laws, including “fair dealing” under Canadian law and “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act, for purposes such as criticism, comment, and news reporting.Thank you for reading Charlie Angus / The Resistance. If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription your support will help keep this project independent and sustainable. I’m grateful to have you here - thank you for your support.
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