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In a Washington speech in April 1915 Wilson said “Our whole duty for the present, at any rate, is summed up in the motto ‘America First: Let us think of America before we think of Europe.’” Thus when war predictably came to his nation, via submarines and German efforts to foster a Mexican invasion, plus clear recognition that if Britain, France and Russia went under North America would be next, Wilson had not prepared Americans militarily or politically for the fact that other people’s wars were their business because aggression is a universal wolf whose appetite grows with the eating.

Biblically we are our brother’s keeper. Geopolitically we are not. I can think of no conceivable global and moral structure in which we would have the duty or the power Wilson arrogantly claimed to “teach the Latin American republics to elect good men.” But we cannot be indifferent to genocide or aggression elsewhere, on moral and on practical grounds.

Trump is very wrong to unearth this conceptual zombie. And his inaugural claim that America’s wealth had been redistributed abroad was inaccurate and petulant. But America’s allies, pointedly including Canada, have rather played Uncle Sam for a chump. We have proclaimed our compassion and sophistication but spent far too little on defence in a turbulent world while shrugging off gathering threats.

In that sense we have very much adopted a “Canada First” approach, selfish, condescending and imprudent. And while we are rightly horrified to see President Trump take the same view, if we were really serious about a secure and open world we would spend at least 3 per cent of our GDP on defence and remove our more offensive trade barriers such as agricultural quotas.

If we want to influence Washington, in some limited but useful way, let us first and foremost look to our own defences, immediately doubling our military budget so we can send more than sanctimonious words and a few blue berets when trouble looms abroad and pulling our heads out of the sand so we can see it when it does.

National Post