Canada is not a vassal state. Or are we?

By all appearances, we finished 2018 as a vassal state. Can we finish 2019 without becoming a strategic cripple? I use brutal language to rouse us from our strategic stupor.

Canada should never be a vassal state. We remain, among nations, “too big to fail” — a leading democracy long admired for its civility and good governance.

What happened as to “vassalize” us with such rapidity? Answer: We made two capital mistakes.

The first was the USMCA agreement (the new NAFTA) in both process and final product. While sold with self-congratulation, USMCA saw Canada, under American pressure, sign onto a treaty that stripped us of major foreign policy prerogatives without removing the original sources of pressure (tariffs and threats of tariffs whenever the American president so decides).

With zero national debate, Canada made (or allowed Washington to make us make) an unnecessary enemy of China, which, despite its pathologies, is the most important country of this century. Having been seen to fold so quickly and consequentially under pressure, we lost the strategic respect of major political capitals, starting with Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

TOP STORIES. IN YOUR INBOX: For the day’s top news from the Star’s award-winning journalists, sign up for our daily headlines newsletter.

The second key mistake of 2018 was wasted time and tunnel vision. Ottawa’s three international priorities were: Washington, Washington and Washington. Now we see that the world moves along larger axes: if Canada has crises with China today and Russia tomorrow, then the absence of deep, differentiated relationships and a broader mental map is no national badge of honour.

Can we reverse our predicament in 2019? Indubitably, provided we can switch gears and become a serious people for serious times.

We have five priorities: America, China, Russia, Europe, plus our domestic scaffolding.

America and China: Canada will continue to be under ferocious economic and psychological pressure from both Washington and Beijing. To regain our standing and self-respect, we must avoid the primitive seduction of morality plays, deliver bloody noses to each in turn, and propose a strategic bridge.

Vis-à-vis Washington, we cannot ratify USMCA unless the steel and aluminum tariffs are lifted — a red line we’ve allowed to be crossed without consequence. We must also be cunning enough to renegotiate section 32.10 of the agreement in the service of Canadian strategic flexibility, just as Congress renegotiates other sections. Finally, we must create distance, in fact and appearance, between the pressures from Washington and Canadian decision-making.

To Beijing, we must signal muscularly that Canada, speaking with its own voice, won’t tolerate capricious arrests of our citizens. If necessary, Canada could threaten to temporarily block visas and flight-transit rights for select Chinese business people.

Alongside these blows, Canada should stubbornly position itself as the essential bridge — our longer-term, more clever vocation — between the North American trading bloc and all Chinese and Asian-led blocs.

Russia: I predict an eruption in the West-Russia conflict, the world’s most dangerous, by February or March. The trigger will be Ukraine’s springtime presidential election. There’s only one peaceful exit: Asian-led peacekeepers in the Donbass as a “game changer” that injects a new problem-solving energy into a tired conflict, followed by a larger compact between the West, Russia and Ukraine on sanctions, Ukraine’s governance, and “interstitial” links between Brussels and Moscow. If Canada’s to be relevant, let’s push in this direction. Otherwise, we’re talking to ourselves.

Europe: Let’s keep it together, forever. If it collapses, it takes us down too. Canada has significant reputational capital in Europe. We must become the key outside country in cheerleading and supporting Brussels and other capitals as they seek solutions to that continent’s growing economic, demographic and political problems.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Lastly, what of Canada’s internal structures as they concern our international results? Can we up our game without the requisite linguistic and analytical talent, proper embassy representation and intelligence resources on all continents, and a deeper strategic culture that appreciates our national imperatives (and peril) and supports our leadership with critique and advice? Manifestly not.

So let’s get to it. If we don’t set the terms with urgency, other more serious, term-setting countries will set them for us.