Canada Needs To Rethink Both NATO and NORAD

A few years ago, there was a term sometimes applied to the United States: The Indispensable Nation.

The problem in 2025, with Trump’s return to power, is that Canada and our other allies might have to find a way to make the US dispensable – or at least, as dispensable as we can manage.

It has been said that the US under Trump is moving away from its post-WW2 role as the leader of the “free world” in a number of ways. As Prime Minister Mark Carney put it: “The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony: charging for access to its markets and reducing its relative contribution to our collective security.”

This is particularly true when it comes to its relationship with Europe and Ukraine. As one expert on the war in Ukraine noted: “The final shipments of military aid pledged by Biden that were sent by the Trump Administration have ended. Only orders from US companies will come in. The US has no plans to pledge any military aid to Ukraine again.”

Trump wants NATO partners to increase their spending on defence, and to not be as reliant on the US. At the same time, Trump is soft on Russia and Putin, particularly in relation to the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Trump has alienated NATO allies – particularly Denmark over remarks about taking over Greenland. Trump claims that taking Greenland is a necessary part of the USA’s defence in the North Atlantic and Arctic, but then Trump never says who exactly it is that threatens the US from the direction of Greenland. Of course, the answer to that question can only be Russia.

Carney has pledged to increase Canada’s defense spending to 2% to meet the old NATO target by increasing spending on equipment, raising the salaries of defense personnel by 20%, hiring more civilians, and reclassifying the Coast Guard as part of the military. He seems likely to meet this target in 2026. I do wonder if, by making this spending commitment before the G7 meeting, has Carney given away a valuable bargaining chip for noting in return? Alternatively, given the record of Trump making threats then quickly settling with his opponents (giving him the nickname of “TACO” – Trump Always Chickens Out) perhaps Carney can still get mileage out of his spending target in negotiations.

Canada’s relationship ship with the US and our European allies goes back to WW1. After a period of US isolationism between the major wars, Canada, the UK, and the US have been allies since WW2 . Other European nations joined this alliance during WW2 or soon after as part of the Cold War, then more Eastern European countries joined after the collapse of the USSR. Finally, Finland and Sweden joined because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Most of Europe is now in NATO, in addition to Canada, the US, and Turkey. Most of Europe is in the EU as well, or has a close economic relationship with it. While Britain exited the EU after Brexit, it looks to be shifting closer to Europe under Prime Minister Keir Starmer – partly given Trump’s return to power.

Canada’s economic ties with the US increased fairly consistently from WW2 to 2024, starting with Bretton Woods, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Canada-US Auto Pact, the 1988 Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (FTA), the FTA’s later expansion to include Mexico with NAFTA, and the World Trade Organization (WTO). Tariffs dropped from a high point in the early 1930s, then continued to drop after WW2. Following the war, we developed a special trading relationship and a high degree of economic integration that accelerated after the FTA in 1988.

Despite the warnings from economic nationalists like Walter Gordon, Liberal Leader John Turner, and other figures, Canada in effect bet its future on the US remaining our major economic market and partner as well as being our main ally and partner in continental defence.

Trump seems to have successfully pushed other NATO members into increasing the defense spending target from 2% to 5%, even though the US itself is well below 5%. This might partly be geared towards encouraging Europe to lessen the degree to which it gets a free ride on US defense spending and military power. That being said, it also begs the question of when, where, and why would Trump actually deploy US forces overseas – and against what enemy?

Trump has asked Canada to join his Golden Dome military defence project, and asked that Canada help to pay for it. Perhaps the fact that we have already committed to spending tens of billions of dollars on defence in the Arctic will be enough to deflect this latest demand. But more fundamentally, are Canada’s interests and defence concerns the same as those of the US? Who are we primarily defending ourselves against: North Korea? China? Trump’s chum, Putin?

What worries me is that there seem to be a lot of assumptions, and nothing I have seen has laid out an overall picture of what the threats to Canada really are, and what options might exist. It could be that Canada needs an entirely clean sheet of paper approach to our future defence needs, to deterrence. Most importantly, we need to determine how to address our relationship to the US, which is currently waging economic warfare and moving towards economic autarky while at the same time seeking to dictate to Canada and our other allies what our defence spending and priorities should be.

A “clean sheet” approach would ask questions like this: should Canada become a nuclear power, and if not, why not? Do nuclear weapons serve any real purpose other than deterrence, and in what cases would they be used against us or the US?

Putin made veiled threats that the Ukraine war might justify Russia using nuclear weapons. In return, when Ukrainian President Zelensky visited the White House, Trump showed concern that World War 3 was possible, and that Zelensky was risking it.

Frankly, I do not see any of the five original nuclear powers ever using nuclear weapons. We no longer have the hair trigger problem of the Cold War. If Putin used a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, he would lose the support of China, and anyone else except North Korea. The biggest threat is likely on the Pakistan/India Border.

I will begin the “clean sheet” approach to rethinking Canada’s defence priorities with a question: which country is the biggest threat to Canada in the Arctic?

My answer would be that the US is our greatest threat. First, we still have a dispute with the US over the boundary in the waters north of Alaska and Yukon. Next, despite all our agreements with the US, they do not recognize the Northwest Passage as being an internal Canadian waterway. Under Trump, the US is also opening the Arctic up to more oil and gas drilling.

In the event of an invasion of Canada’s Arctic, Trump might be concerned that airplanes, balloons, cruise missiles, and drones coming into our North could head towards the US. But, under NORAD or NATO, would the US actually do anything if Russia or China did not respect our territorial waters?

China and Russia are hardly likely to send landing parties to claim Ellesmere Island as their land. But Canada is not alone if Russia in particular is aggressive in the Arctic.

There are eight Arctic countries: Canada, the Kingdom of Denmark (including Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. Leaving out the US and Russia, we need to band together with the other five who are now all NATO members, with Sweden and Finland having joined recently.

For over 70 years, Canada has been a part of NATO, with the main objective of NATO being to protect our allies in Europe, as well as patrolling the oceans and skies of the North Atlantic to ensure that Europe can be supplied from North America.

Canada’s NATO commitment was in part due to our ties with Britain, another founding member, but also due to the sacrifices we made in the two World Wars to create free and democratic nations in Western Europe.

In effect, Canada’s involvement in NATO was not really to directly benefit us – it was partly pragmatic, but mainly ideological and altruistic.

There is talk of a G6, and NATO is considered to be obsolete or on life support as the US keeps making demands of other members, but is not willing to support Ukraine or to view Russia as a threat. If the US is not willing to defend Europe, and Canada is being asked to spend 5% on defence, it would be fair for us to ask Europe to help defend Canada as part of a greater alliance – an alliance to defend the five Arctic nations. This would be an acknowledgement of the reality that the potential Russian threat does not come from the East alone.

To paraphrase JFK: Ask not what Canada can do for Europe, but what Europe can do for Canada!

NATO need not be disbanded or abandoned, but rather be left to slide into the background for the next four years, while still holding military exercises and training with the US.

If Russia, China, or any other country is threatening Greenland, Iceland, or Canada’s Arctic islands, Canada does not possess the ships or aircraft to handle this threat alone. Britain, France, and Italy have ships that could be of help, as well as aircraft. They should be helping us in the Arctic, just as our ships might be of help in the Baltic or Mediterranean waters.

Trump might be an anomaly, and the US may well permanently reverse course after he leaves office, but we cannot rely on the US. Canada should be able to have an effective means of working with other allies without the US, or even over resistance or obstruction from the US. We cannot allow the US to be “indispensable” any longer.