Canada’s Fork in the Road
By Jeremy Kinsman
February 11, 2025
The United States Office of Personnel Management recently sent on behalf of downsizing overlord Elon Musk a message to two million federal employees, with the subject line “A Fork in the Road.” It invited them to resign from government service with eights months’ pay, and is almost certainly illegal.
But wreaking havoc for US public servants is part of Donald Trump’s general defiance of the checks and balances on presidential power that defines just one angle of his whirlwind disruption of norms. He is also upending international assumptions about American leadership in the world, threatening allies, and withdrawing the US from its post-war role as lead advocate of a rules-based cooperative governance of common global challenges.
On Friday, the Munich Security Conference, a premium annual get-together of mainly Western international security and diplomacy leaders and advisers, will meet in this starkly revised context. Its annual pre-summit report, meant to frame the conversations during the MSC and titled Multipolarization, states that Trump’s threats of “land grabs” mean the US is no longer perceived as “an anchor of stability, but rather a risk to be hedged against.”
Thus, US allies have come to their own “fork in the road,” none more so than highly exposed Canada, where the current “risk” also represents an opportunity to home-shore more economic capacity and diversify relationships.
Trump seems determined to dominate the world’s news every day, repeating his preposterous intentions to “own” Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza, and his fantasy of annexing Canada as a 51st state, along with destructive tariff vows against all and sundry. The 30-day truce on a 25% across-the-board tariff on Mexico and Canada has been shattered only days later by his announcement of a 25% tariff on U.S. imports of steel and aluminum, of which Canada is the principal U.S. supplier.
Columnist David Shribman concludes Trump is in part trying to “keep everybody on edge.” The likely end result, Paul Krugman warns, is a U.S. that is “distrusted and friendless,” apart from Israel (we can presumably add to that circle China and Russia). Trump probably doesn’t care, believing Machiavelli’s dictum “it is better to be feared than loved.”
Trump’s apparent narcissism, his compulsion to be the centre of attention every day in every way obscures the very serious question of his grasp on reality. The Globe and Mail ran a telling cartoon last week by the brilliant Michael de Adder depicting the White House bearing a consumer warning on its wall: “May contain nuts.”
That is a real concern of U.S. partners. Trump has this time hired only blind loyalists for his administration. Countervailing counsel from more balanced Republicans is absent. U.S. courts are already pushing back on his drive to expand presidential authority and bypass congressional prerogatives. But he and his worse-cop henchman, Elon Musk, seem determined to proceed with their wrecking-ball assault on U.S. institutions.
The intent to re-examine the extent of government’s role in American life is creditable. Zero-based budgeting to limit government to essential functions in law and strategic choice has theoretical merit but will likely gut humanistic and caring capacities in the hands of the world’s richest man, trying to dismantle the bureaucracy, in repetition of his depopulation of Twitter.
This is also a matter of attitude and style. Musk and Trump behave with aggressive hostility, outrageously branding devoted US foreign aid workers as ‘evil…worms,’ and ‘maniacs’. Sooner or later, Americans will see through this daily assault of psychological warfare and begin to get very angry.
That anti-humanist bent is also reflected in the apparent obliteration of USAID, which delivered U.S. development aid to millions around the world. While U.S. public opinion perennially objects to foreign aid, providing Musk with cover for this assault, expect education, human rights, and consumer and finance protections to be next.
As Sen. Peter Boehm pointed out in his Policy piece on the USAID debacle this week, Trump’s War on USAID: The Opposite of Making America Great, Again, that the administration has folded what will be left of USAID into the State Department is not outlandish. Canada and the UK have similarly enfolded free-standing foreign aid agencies, though without gain in effectiveness. But U.S. foreign aid represents only 1.2% of federal spending, though the soft-power global footprint could be incalculable. Similarly, deep cuts to reduced National Institutes of Health and petulant withdrawal from the WHO will hobble vital research projects across the globe, including in Canada.
This is also a matter of attitude and style. Musk and Trump behave with aggressive hostility, outrageously branding devoted US foreign aid workers as “evil…worms,” and “maniacs.” Sooner or later, Americans will get past this daily assault of psychological warfare and begin to get very angry.
Some foreign leaders are parading to Washington to try to placate the new American emperor of international distress (as Trudeau did in Mar al Lago in December), while others (eg, Jordan) may well speak truth to power. But it now seems safe to assume that Trump cannot be counted on to honour U.S. agreements.
Eventually, all democratic countries, and others, will conclude they need to toughen up together, recognizing they have historical and public custody responsibilities that differentiate them from the fawning billionaires seeking Trump’s favour, embracing his democracy-discrediting agenda and fearing his repudiation.
Canada suddenly has gained stature from its patriotic resistance to Trump’s denigration, hostility, and deluge of lies. Canadians are united as never before according to Angus Reid polling. For Canadian leaders, and citizens, there is now the opportunity to make real what a previous government’s “Third Option” intended in 1972 in reaction to President Nixon’s imposition of punishing tariffs: to “develop and strengthen the Canadian economy and other aspects of its national life and in the process reduce the Canadian vulnerability.”
We need bravery among our premiers to break down trade and other internal barriers. We do need to come down harder on fentanyl activity, and its export by sea, and fix our laws to enable tracking of dark money and firm prosecution of the criminals involved.
Diversification of international interdependencies will not happen overnight, but will come. An early emphasis should be on concertation with Nordic Arctic partners on shared infrastructure and other projects. In a more reasonable relationship, the U.S. could cooperate with Canada in reviving our Arctic partnership in security, and maritime infrastructure, but it is hard to contemplate partnership when the US head of state continuously threatens to annex Canada.
Trump’s denigration of Canada’s security role undermines our cooperative spirit and engagement to pay almost $20 billion (CAD) for 88 F-35s. We should radiate such messages. And on the subject of messaging, our prime minister, government, and premiers should agree now to terminate accounts and use of “X”, Musk’s propaganda and punishment tool.
Americans are beginning to see the outlandish presumptions in Trumpian declarations on Gaza, Greenland, and Canada. His sanctioning of South Africa for “genocide” against Dutch-speaking South African Whites is racist and bizarre. But his latest threat to Jordan and Egypt to cease all aid (40% of Jordan’s budget) unless they accept 1.8 million Gazans to be ethnically expelled is simply disgusting.
It all presents a sad and elegiac moment for Canadians — including yours truly — whose lives have been enriched by years among Americans. I am bereft that my U.S. friends have to endure this insane degradation of their country.
But this is a fork in the road for us as well.
Policy Contributing Writer Jeremy Kinsman was Canada’s ambassador to Russia, high commissioner to the UK, ambassador to Italy and ambassador to the European Union. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Canadian International Council.