The Donald Trump Administration appears serious about bolstering the defence of North America, from Panama to the Arctic Ocean. In addition to his repeated comments about annexing Canada, Trump has made clear he will not allow China to control the strategic Panama Canal nor tolerate China’s aggressive economic intervention in Mexico as a backdoor to the United States. He has been equally adamant about closing off the Canadian and Mexican borders to the twin scourges of illegal immigration and illicit drugs. Nearly a month before his Inauguration he revived an idea for the U.S. to buy Greenland for, as he put it on his personal social media platform Truth Social, “purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World.” And he quite reasonably demands that Canada contribute much more seriously to NATO and North America’s defence. Trump may habitually overstate his case, but his core messages are clear.
Some have suggested Trump’s rhetoric and policy thrust represent a reincarnation of the U.S.’s 19th century Monroe Doctrine, but that is a facile interpretation of the facts. We are a long way from the governing style of President John Monroe in 1823, and from his young and vulnerable nation’s deep concerns that the European powers stood poised to destabilize then pick over the poor and largely defenceless countries of the Western Hemisphere. The world has turned over many times in the intervening 202 years.
But for all the current President’s bellicosity, Trump’s instincts concerning the defence of North America are sound and rooted in what appears to be a genuine desire to avoid war. He has expressed this desire many times in many different ways, and much of his voting base – including millions of younger voters – want him to get out of and avoid more of America’s foreign “forever wars” as they term them. Indeed, Trump and his new Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, have revived a Cold War-era slogan: “Peace through strength.”
The Growing Northern Threat
The Trump Administration is right to be concerned. Historically, the U.S. always viewed itself as protected from invasion by two oceans, while American involvement in most of its foreign wars was a matter of choice. But that world has changed, especially in the past decade. China has asserted itself and is not disguising its regional expansionism – boldly proclaiming “red lines” not to be crossed – or global ambition to become the pre-eminent world power by 2049. The Communist regime is not only challenging the U.S. in multiple foreign theatres but meddling significantly throughout the Western Hemisphere, including close to home in Mexico and Panama.
In the north, Russia has come to dominate the High Arctic with a chain of bases supporting an immense fleet of icebreakers and ice-capable cargo and military vessels. In contrast to Canada’s two aging “heavy” diesel-powered icebreakers, the Russian Federation has more than 30 icebreakers, many of them nuclear-powered, and its navy’s Northern Fleet numbers over 30 surface vessels and submarines, including about two-thirds of Russia’s nuclear-powered warships.
Arctic dominance: Operating from a string of bases, Russia roams the polar region at will, its more than 30 icebreakers, such as the nuclear-powered 50 let Pobedy (top right), supporting more than 30 Northern Fleet warships, including the Kirov class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy (at forefront, middle right) and the nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine K-560 Severodvinsk (bottom right). (Sources: (map) americansecurityproject.org; (top right photo) Kiselev d, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0; (middle right photo) Royal Navy, licensed under OGL v1.0; (bottom right photo) Mil.ru, licensed under CC BY 4.0)In January of last year, the fleet staged major exercises in the Barents Sea involving 13 ships and seven submarines including the flagship Kirov-class battlecruiser Pyotr Velikiy, named after early 18th century Russian emperor Peter the Great, while President Vladimir Putin himself was aboard the Typhoon class ballistic missile submarine Arkhangelsk. And despite its military losses in its war on Ukraine, Russia continues to modernize the Northern Fleet, working on new submarine classes.
Meanwhile, Russian long-range aviation routinely patrols across the North Pole and probes areas close to Alaska, Greenland and Canada’s Arctic islands. Russia’s hardware is supported by a sophisticated network of Arctic naval and air bases. It is an astonishing strategic apparatus for an economy which, with an annual GDP of slightly under US$2 trillion last year, is actually marginally smaller than Canada’s. But unlike Canada with its decaying military, Russia takes its sovereign frontier and its foreign policy goals very seriously.
The geopolitical stakes could not be higher for the U.S. No longer fully protected by two vast oceans and all-but impenetrable expanses of Arctic ice and tundra, the world’s threats are lapping at its shores and encroaching upon its land borders.
Concurrently we are suddenly seeing China exerting influence in the Arctic, despite having no Arctic shoreline and not being a member of the Arctic Council comprising Canada, the U.S., Denmark (Greenland), Iceland, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia. Last July, for example, Russian and Chinese nuclear-capable bombers sortied together from a Russian airbase and flew towards Alaska, prompting U.S. and Canadian fighter jets to be scrambled to intercept them. Last October, China sent two large Coast Guard vessels on a 17,000-mile, six-week-long patrol past Alaska and into the Arctic Ocean, where they exercised jointly with the Russian Navy.
China’s interest in the Arctic is strategic, focusing on global transit routes and vital resources, as well as being consistent with China’s policy of challenging the West everywhere around the globe. China’s projection of influence into the Arctic is enabled by Russia’s powerful Northern Fleet. (How the U.S. drove Russia and China into this unnatural alliance is one of the great sins of the last American Administration, but that is a subject for another day.)
The End of Splendid Isolation
The geopolitical stakes could not be higher for the U.S. No longer fully protected by two vast oceans and all-but impenetrable expanses of Arctic ice and tundra, the world’s threats are lapping at its shores and encroaching upon its land borders. The happy days of “splendid isolation” – a term originally coined to describe Great Britain’s geopolitical policy in the 1800s, but also neatly covering the U.S. for many decades – are over. The world’s dangers are closing in.
Among the threats are the millions of unvetted illegal immigrants who poured across the southern U.S. border during Joe Biden’s just-concluded Presidency, many of whom are young military-age males not merely from Mexico and Central America but from all over the world including China, Afghanistan and the Middle East. It is not for nothing that many Americans came to view this as an invasion. No-one knows who many of the invaders are. Most are surely economic migrants or people fleeing oppression, but with a veritable tsunami totalling 10 million people in the Biden years alone, many thousands of criminals and terrorists are inevitably among them.
The criminals made themselves felt on the streets and in the subways of America through the Biden years; the terrorists are likely to do so in time. Many American cities have become unsafe. The rape and murder one year ago of 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley by an “undocumented migrant” from Venezuela who had not only been caught while entering the U.S. and then released, but had been subsequently arrested for multiple crimes and again released, horrified Americans and became emblematic of the problem. Since Trump’s Inauguration, deportations have reportedly zoomed to approximately 1,200-1,500 per day – nearly all comprising people with open arrest warrants. Among the highest-profile actions by Trump’s uncompromising new “border czar”, Tom Homan, was the raid on an illegal nightclub just outside Denver, Colorado that netted some 50 members of the vicious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Drugs are a closely related problem. Fentanyl, nearly all of its illicit precursor chemicals coming from Communist-linked producers in China, and other hard drugs are killing 110,000 Americans per year, most of them young people. This is nearly twice the U.S.’s loss of soldiers in Vietnam over ten years. Expressed another way, ten years of U.S. drug overdose fatalities exceed all of America’s wartime combat deaths in the last 125 years. Alongside the scourge of drugs, five years ago a “novel” coronavirus escaped a dangerous biolab in Wuhan, China, sickening tens of millions of Americans, killing over 1.2 million and shuttering a booming economy.
Oceans, mountains and deserts did not protect America from these threats. The lesson has been learned by Trump (who quickly declared each issue a matter of national emergency), his voting base, his key officials and many Congressional Republicans: the next major conflict is likely to take place close to home. Only by looking to America’s immediate surroundings, bolstering its security and preparing for war, can war be avoided.
The Panama Canal
Inattentive North Americans were shocked to learn recently that China has quietly gained profound influence over the vital Panama Canal. This came about through Panama’s participation in China’s imperialistic Belt and Road Initiative and by allowing a regime-linked Hong Kong-based company to operate the strategic seaports at each end of the Canal. The Trump Administration considers this an intolerable set of security threats, and Trump accused Panama outright of violating the 1979 treaty’s terms.
The Canal was built at the direction of U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt over a ten-year period (1903-1913) at the then-astronomical cost of nearly US$400 million. Fifty-six thousand workers laboured on the project for a decade, with an astounding 10 percent of them perishing. Through both world wars and most of the Cold War, the Canal was owned by and the adjoining “Canal Zone” directly controlled by the U.S., with a significant direct military presence.
The decision in 1977 by Democratic President Jimmy Carter to give up direct control over the Canal Zone and hand the Canal “back” to Panama (a process completed in 1999) was utter folly. Surrendering the Western Hemisphere’s most strategic transportation route – built and paid for by the United States – to a weak and corrupt local regime was Western self-loathing and virtue-signalling run amok. It was a perilous decision from the start. Although the Cold War ended in the West’s favour, Panama’s devolution into a major centre of drug-transshipment and corrupt banking and its worsening political instability prompted the U.S. to invade in 1989 to topple its military dictator, Manuel Noriega.
Today, the Canal is too strategic a transit point to be controlled by China or any other potential U.S. adversary. The alternate route from the Atlantic to the Pacific around Cape Horn adds more than 10,000 nautical miles. This is why the Panama Canal was built in the first place. Without the Panama Canal, the only theoretical alternative for moving vessels quickly from the Pacific to the Atlantic would be through the Arctic’s Northwest Passage which, aside from requiring a fleet of icebreakers and specially designed cargo ships to traverse safely, represents an area of severe military weakness not only for its formal owner – Canada – but for the U.S. as well.
Trump moved with lightning speed to deal with this situation. First, in trademark style he signalled verbally (including in his Inaugural Address) and via social media posts that the canal’s giveaway had been a terrible deal. “China is running the Panama Canal,” Trump asserted. “It wasn’t meant for China…We’re going to take it back.” Second, he dispatched the staunchly anti-Communist former Senator Marco Rubio to Panama on his first foreign visit as Secretary of State.
Panama’s President, José Raúl Mulino, buckled almost immediately, promising to exit China’s Belt and Road Initiative and to audit the port operations. Later, following additional pressure from U.S. Defense Secretary Hegseth, Panama signalled it might waive escalating canal fees on U.S. naval vessels and other government-owned ships transiting the 51-mile-long waterway. While the fate of the two Chinese-run ports is unknown and the situation remains fluid – with rhetoric continuing to fly in all directions – more concessions are certainly possible.
Greenland
With Greenland Trump is seeking to secure North America’s northern flank while improving access to important mineral resources. While the situation is not yet as urgent as Panama seemed to be, one look at a map of the Arctic shows how Greenland dominates the eastern exit from the Northwest Passage as well as forming one end of the strategic Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap controlling passage to and from the North Atlantic.
Critics are wrong to dismiss as loopy Trump’s idea, made just before Christmas, to buy Greenland; the U.S. officially made just such an offer following the Second World War, and Trump revived the idea in 2019 during his first term.
Accordingly, there is no more important single piece of geography in the region. Greenland is also rich in critical minerals like lithium. And it has been a key component in North America’s defence, hosting early-warning radar sites and a once-enormous airbase at Thule in northwestern Greenland, latitude 77° north (now named Pituffik and still site of a scaled-down U.S. Space Force Base).
Critics are wrong to dismiss as loopy Trump’s idea, made just before Christmas, to buy Greenland; the U.S. officially made just such an offer following the Second World War, and Trump revived the idea in 2019 during his first term. While the self-governing region’s prime minister has said the gigantic island is not for sale, Greenland’s government and population are (perhaps surprisingly) less hostile than Greenland’s nominal owner, NATO member Denmark. Like all colonies, Greenlanders feel regional alienation vis-à-vis their mother country. Donald Trump Jr., dispatched to the island on a family-owned plane for a semi-official visit in early January – two weeks before his father’s Inauguration – was warmly welcomed.
At the very least we can anticipate an increased U.S. military and commercial presence in Greenland with the intention of keeping China and Russia at arm’s length. Greenland has long sought closer commercial and diplomatic ties to the U.S. And barely a week ago, while reiterating that Denmark intended to retain sovereignty, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said she was open to “stronger footprints” in Greenland for purposes of “defence and security and deterrence”. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has said much the same thing. Tellingly, Denmark has already agreed to enhance its own military spending on Greenland. So there are no Russian or Chinese bases nor ownership of key minerals on the horizon. The give-and-take has begun.
Canada’s State of National Defence: The Great Contradiction
In 1945 the Royal Canadian Navy was the third-largest fleet (by number of ships) in the world, the Royal Canadian Air Force had a quarter-million men and women in uniform, supporting 87 active aircraft squadrons – more than half deployed to war zones – and the Canadian army fielded two entire multi-division corps that had fought on two separate fronts and that Canada was able to support across thousands of miles of ocean. All this from a country with a population of only 12 million – fewer than New York State.
Canada’s heroic role in the First World War and Second World War and its respectable contribution in Korea and Afghanistan notwithstanding, our view of national defence is rife with historical contradictions. Throughout our history we have usually leaned on others to subsidize our defence. Despite our nation’s strong performance during times of actual warfare, the tendency to get others to help defend our homeland is an old, ingrained habit, one predating Confederation itself.
And just who defends Canada is also a recurring issue in Canadian history. (More on this can be read in this recent C2C essay, “Unfit for Duty: It is Time to Rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces.”) Since the Second World War, that “who” has been the U.S., not in a direct geographical sense with American bases, equipment and soldiers stationed on our soil, but via the overall U.S. security “umbrella” and a series of one-sided alliances and arrangements in which the U.S. contributed the lion’s share of resources.
The multi-decade-long disintegration of Canada’s proud military (also described in the above-linked article) has been disturbing and even heartbreaking for many Canadians. But this neglect has reflected deliberate public policy under successive governments, and Canadians let it happen by electing governments indifferent if not hostile to Canada’s defence. Now this neglect has come back to haunt us. In a candid moment our Prime Minister admitted Canada was unlikely ever to reach the official NATO commitment to spend 2 percent of its GDP on national defence. Not, at least, without an irresistible push from the outside. That push has come.
Trump’s recent upping of his demands upon NATO allies, saying they should be spending not 2 percent but 5 percent of their GDP on defence, is closer to the real level required if NATO countries, including Canada, are to catch up and pull their weight. Why should the U.S. spend 3-6 percent of its GDP on defence in perpetuity, in part to help defend nations that in many instances are nearly as wealthy as the United States on a per-capita basis?
The ongoing commitment of national wealth reduces America’s capacity to invest in needed infrastructure, human and physical, or critical research projects like AI. An estimated 36 percent of U.S. bridges need major repair or outright replacement. In contrast, defence laggard Germany’s Autobahn freeways are carpets of smooth blacktop and models of efficiency – protected in part by the still nearly 35,000 American soldiers stationed there, out of 65,000 Americans on station throughout Europe, with all the associated overhead. All courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.
The Trump Administration is demanding unmistakeably that Canada contribute. How might that be achieved?
Today – much like Canada’s mother country Great Britain in the late 1800s – the Americans with Trump at the helm have finally had enough. By drawing attention to the escalating foreign threats and by leveraging the country’s economic and diplomatic power, Trump’s unique personality and the weight of his convincing election victory, the new Administration has quickly begun issuing demands – and getting results. It is insisting that Canada do three things:
- Secure its land border with the U.S. and its international ports of entry against terrorism and illegal drugs.
- Expeditiously raise its defence spending to 2 percent of GDP as Canada has promised but failed to do for years.
- Create a strategy and capacity to help defend the continent’s northern flank, something Canada should have undertaken years ago.
This is hardly an unreasonable list of demands for a NATO and NORAD partner which shares the world’s longest undefended border. The Trump Administration is demanding unmistakeably that Canada contribute. How might that be achieved?
Canada Must Leverage its Geography – Before it Loses it
As one of two partners in North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), Canada once deployed the world’s most extensive air defence radar system, the Distant Early Warning (DEW) line stretching across the entire High Arctic and meant to provide early detection of Soviet nuclear-armed bombers. The DEW line grew superannuated and was replaced by the fewer but more powerful radars of the North Warning System, designed to provide longer-distance warning of bombers launching nuclear-armed cruise missiles from a distance. This system is itself reaching obsolescence and overdue to be augmented by new radars.
Canada’s active and ongoing participation in NORAD has made a significant contribution to North America’s defence. But here too we have become a laggard. Aside from having hardly any serviceable fighter aircraft to patrol the Far North and intercept hostile aircraft, the North Warning System’s $11 billion replacement project, the Northern Approaches Surveillance System (NASS), which Canada committed to nearly a decade ago, was allowed to languish. Funds were finally committed in 2022 but there has been no public news since. It is imperative that this project be physically launched, accelerated, completed and probably augmented.
The old DEW line’s string of closed stations still provides a handy approximation of the area of Canada’s High Arctic that needs to be protected and defended. Politics may shift, but geography doesn’t. In the nearby Northwest Passage, which winds its way among Canada’s Arctic Islands and along the mainland coast, Canada still officially insists that traversing vessels seek permission to do so – without a shred of capacity to enforce this high-toned sovereignty. It is almost entirely charade.
The game is just about up. Under the predatory gaze of Russia’s mighty Northern Fleet and air force, bolstered by its new Chinese allies, Canada’s Arctic sits largely naked. A few isolated bases and mostly unmanned radar sites, supported by 2,000 intrepid Inuit Rangers on snowmobiles armed only with bolt-action rifles, hardly present a deterrent to a determined foe, let alone to two nuclear-armed powers operating in concert. If Canada does not step up and defend its immensely rich Arctic Archipelago, it stands to lose it. History has been unkind to nations that think they are exempt from its rules.
The recent annual Northern Viking Exercises in and around Iceland in 2022-24 were NATO’s attempt to project strength into northern waters. Tellingly, however, Canada did not participate. During recent large-scale NATO exercises in Europe the Royal Canadian Air Force stood down, having no fighter jets to deploy. It is all so sad.
The task of rebuilding Canada’s military capacity, reviving recruitment to the demoralized Canadian Armed Forces, reforming and accelerating the grotesquely inefficient military procurement system, and restoring the esprit de corps needed to animate any military organization, will be expensive, complicated, challenging and no doubt frequently frustrating. But it must be undertaken. The challenges, as well as a plan to set Canada on the rebuilding path, are discussed in the article mentioned above (linked here once again).
A Hub-and-Spoke Northern Defence Infrastructure
Canada’s military rebuilding process must urgently address the northern geopolitical issue. Fortunately, a great deal could be done, and initiated quite quickly, that is more than merely symbolic. Responding to American pressure to increase defence spending won’t be just a matter of building and buying ships, patrol aircraft and vehicles, although those will be critical and must begin at once. The resulting larger, more capable Canadian military must have adequate infrastructure, especially in projecting power into the north.
No military can function in the Far North without a network of sophisticated support and operating bases (serviced by air and seasonal shipping), all of which must be crucially supported by a central base and logistics hub that is connected to year-round continental road and rail systems, located as close as practicable to the Northwest Passage’s entrance. At least one such base is a prerequisite to any Canadian Arctic strategy. Announcing the procurement of equipment (or displaying its delivery in photo ops) is always exciting and newsworthy. Building support bases, by contrast, is hard, expensive work. But that is where we must begin.
A central base that supports icebreakers, patrol ships, ice-reinforced cargo vessels and warehousing is foundational to any Arctic strategy. (Military aircraft can be supported at existing RCAF bases.) It would serve as a supply and warehousing centre for the more northerly, smaller forward operating bases and new NASS system, and could serve the secondary and politically important function of also supporting northern communities. A primary base of this sort requires a large footprint on deep water connected to continental roads and railways. You cannot deploy a fleet into the hostile Arctic Ocean without it; Russia has shown us the way. Such infrastructure must come no later than the fleet of ships and squadrons of maritime aircraft.
Northern support until now has been organized out of the Great Lakes and ports along the St. Lawrence River because of good rail connectivity, warehousing and loading facilities, but this is a long way from the High Arctic. A closer alternative was proposed some years ago: the Port of Sydney, Nova Scotia. It is Canada’s most northerly deep-water harbour connected to continental roads and railways. The new Canadian Arctic base would become the home port of Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard vessels, as well as ships of other Arctic-facing NATO nations, including Denmark and Norway.
Partners with Arctic maritime interest in Canada, including companies and institutions in Canada, the United States and Japan, were consulted on this concept and the reception was positive. It was also discussed socially in Washington and again the reception was positive. The problem was not lack of interest among allies or key private-sector players but lack of interest in Canada. No one was willing to make the investment.
Placed under threat of tariffs, Mexico just one week ago agreed to deploy 10,000 troops to its northern border to help interdict drugs and illegal migrants. Canadians – and Canada’s federal government – need to accept that Trump clearly expects action and not just soothing multi-media ‘narrative’.
It is time to immediately revive this proposal, or one very much like it, for a robust hub-and-spoke northern security infrastructure. It is worth recalling that the entire DEW line was built in just 36 months, even with virtually all of its materials having to be flown in. It is also worth noting that Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, whose idea for a Canadian “border czar” became the basis for the recent creation of a Canadian “fentanyl czar”, recently suggested that Canada and the U.S. jointly build a large NORAD operating base in the Arctic. So far, just one small Canadian base of this sort is actually under construction.
Whatever one might think of Donald Trump the man – and it seems millions of Canadians have chosen to hate him – people need to set aside their emotions sufficiently to at least recognize that Trump the President is dead-serious in his foreign policy goals, including or perhaps especially as it concerns the security of the regions ringing his country. Placed under threat of tariffs, Mexico just one week ago agreed to deploy 10,000 troops to its northern border to help interdict drugs and illegal migrants. Canadians – and Canada’s federal government – need to accept that Trump clearly expects action and not just soothing multi-media “narrative”. For Canada, the U.S. President’s defence spending demands are almost certainly just the beginning.
Capt. Barry Sheehy (ret.) is a military historian based in Calgary, Alberta, an accomplished public speaker and author of six published books and more than 100 papers and articles. His most recent book is Montreal, City of Secrets: Confederate Operations in Montreal During the American Civil War.
With supplemental research by George Koch.
Source of main image: Joyce N. Boghosian/Official White House Photo.
