If Canada wishes to maintain autonomy in a newly multipolar world, it’ll have to work with new centres of power to avoid foreign domination.
Sober Too Late
In the 2025 Canadian Federal election, a naïve Pierre Poilievre planned to join the surging trend of populist-style right-wingers popping up around Western democracies. It seemed like a straight shot.
I remember attending a talk only months prior to the election where a student boldly declared, “The Conservatives are almost guaranteed to win at this point!” The professors hosting the talk were quick to note that one can never know until the election is held, yet ultimately, they conceded that the student was probably right.
The plan was so simple: follow the zeitgeist, cozy up to Trump, enact some simple tax cuts, and everybody’s happy. What we all missed, including the actual winner of the 2025 election at that time, Mark Carney, was that we were closer to a multipolar world than we ever have been before.
Donald Trump will undoubtedly be remembered as the man who collapsed the international rules-based order and ushered in the dawn of the multipolar world. In 2025, we were already living in that world. As a result of this, no state that’s unable to align itself with a superpower or become one itself could survive the whims of the US empire. Importantly, among these states is Canada, which just happened to be at the doorstep of the budding imperium.
And what did the United States want with Canada? Total political dominance.
When Canadians were made aware of this, the Liberals easily took the election along with Carney. The only problem was that our realization had yet to translate into concrete action or solutions, and now Canada is in a race to find friends, rally the federation and improve defence before the clock strikes midnight and darkness falls on an already dim Canada indefinitely.
So now we’re sober, about as sober as the Italians when Napoleon crossed the Alps and began to capture their cities; or Yugoslavia when the Third Reich suddenly shared a border with them and began to work with separatist groups to break up their confederation. For me, the latter comparison is surprisingly reminiscent
This article makes the surface-level comparison between Canada and Yugoslavia; I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s pre-WWII or post. An interesting question, though, is whether it matters. Either way, we find ourselves trapped between two superpowers. Will Carney be our Tito and play both sides for all we can get? Or will we collapse into bloody war and violence?
Canada is a weak country; we now have separatists in both the east and west, with Quebec and Alberta, discontent with their place in the federation. This means that Canada can no longer enjoy the privileges of a rules-based international order and real politics rules; the vultures are swarming in to see what they can get.
We have no choice but to entertain them, for a failure to walk the tightrope between superpowers will mean being swallowed whole by any one of them. Ours is a battle for simple autonomy and survival. Canada seems eager to give an ear to anyone who will provide insurance But there’s the irony: if it must be provided to us, we shouldn’t use it.
China
China appears to be in an unstoppable ascendancy, determined to achieve the former glory of the middle kingdom. What’s more, they sincerely have the economic and military base to back it up.
Carney has been striking deals with China to mutually lower tariffs; increased economic interdependence would be a great thing for Canada. The issue: China doesn’t care about the benefits received from Canadian trade. In fact, Canada can only ever become more reliant on China in our current precarious position.
The only benefit is that the more involved China becomes with Canada, the more incentive they have to protect it from the domination of other powers.
The European Union
Canada seeks to align itself with the European Union. In a way, this makes plenty of sense because Europe is finding itself in increasingly dire straits as a result of facing a very similar dilemma to Canada. The world is being carved up among the emerging poles, and Europe has been taken by surprise, much as Canada has.
Equally, this doesn’t make any sense for geographic reasons and because of the immense influence upon Europe which the United States and Russia continue to exercise. Combine that with US naval power, and having allies across the pond seems increasingly futile in terms of deterring hostile takeover, in the business and military sense.
A Pessimistic Future
I’m afraid for the future of Canada if the content of this article hasn’t already made that abundantly clear. Mark Carney appears to be trying very hard to find us a way out of a horrible situation. But he’ll scarcely accomplish this if even his own people no longer view Canada as a project worth preserving. We’ve become such an apathetic nation that we scarcely even follow our own news anymore, opting instead for American news because it’s more interesting to us.
This calls to mind the struggles of Yugoslavia, and to hold together a patchwork federation while foreign superpowers seek to take their cut. This isn’t to say that we have nearly as many problems as Yugoslavia ever had, but the nature of our problems is undeniably similar.
The economic problems Canada faces are sizable yet solvable; the bigger question is whether we can suffer through the means by which we will have to employ to solve them.
We have lost our souls! Therefore, we can be carved up with little resistance. Without the will to fight, we have turned a very difficult battle into an impossible one.
Hope
Asking that question is the key to our surprising way out of this: Improving our defence. Another massive change in the new world is the asymmetric nature of war and the power of the insurgency. Not that we need to wage an insurgency—although one day we might—rather, we need to be more like a porcupine who is just prickly enough to no longer be worth challenging.
In the age of realism, which is our multipolar world, the capability to make war shall determine one’s autonomy. This is why Russia, China, and the US are the major poles in today’s international climate. Thankfully, Carney seems to be aware of this and is making a serious effort to increase Canada’s security capabilities.
The question remains, however, will we have the will to fight, and make no mistake, we’re already at war.
Dylan Blaschuk is a second-year Politics, Philosophy, and Economics student.
Tags
Canada, international relations, national security, United States
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