Annexation by Any Means Available?

Trump’s Plan to Break Canada

The Existential Threat of Donald Trump to Canada

In 2016, I wrote on another platform that I believed Donald Trump posed an extreme national security threat to Canada. At the time, I was thinking of his obvious lack of qualifications, his mental deficiencies, his bellicose language, his affinity for dictators, and his sympathy for fascism. I assumed then that we might have issues with our alliances or with Canada’s participation in U.S.-led intelligence and security apparatuses.

My suspicion was confirmed almost immediately after Trump took office. He promptly began throwing his considerable weight around on the world stage, elbowing his way to the front of any discussion with the U.S.’s fellow democracies while fawning over some of the world’s most odious dictators. His “private” meetings with Vladimir Putin and his seeming desire to brag about U.S. intelligence capabilities to Moscow cemented my view that Trump wasn’t a rational actor. Indeed, he was a deliberately destructive one, driven almost entirely by an immense ego and a level of malice that knows no depths.

I believe that Trump would have gone further had his worst impulses not been restrained by the few “adults” in his first administration. As it was, as the adults left the room, the threats, grievances, and sheer insanity multiplied, culminating in Trump’s cries of a “stolen” election and the January 6th coup attempt. Canada, I think, owes a debt of gratitude to those adults for forestalling the destruction of the international order that we’re witnessing today.

I breathed an immense sigh of relief when he was voted out.

And then Americans elected him again.

This time, Trump has few restraints. Like Nazi Germany, his regime is propped up by pseudo-intellectuals who parrot his every whim and translate his diktats into action. The results have been sweeping: the United States has been transformed into an oligarchy virtually overnight, complete with a multi-billionaire given free rein to exercise his very weird ideas across the U.S. government with absolutely no oversight.

Trump’s base instincts are now running the show. His immense ego is making virtually all the decisions, aside from those he’s been manipulated into making by the Project 2025 intellectual goons whispering sweet nothings into his ear. We have to remember this—there’s no “strategy” or long-term goals aside from those invented after the fact by his enablers. Instead, Trump is a schoolyard bully given access to the most powerful military and economy the world has ever seen. It’s all about blind, unadulterated power and stroking Trump’s ego while “owning the libs.” We chuckle at his quips about a third term and being enshrined on Mount Rushmore, but he means it in a real and concrete way.

Trump’s Impact on the International Order

In the international arena, the impact of Trump’s bellicosity and desperate need to boost his ego has had immediate and catastrophic effects. Unrestrained, he is indulging every whim and hare-brained scheme that enters his megalomaniacal brain. His weird fixation with Greenland has been translated into threats of military action against Denmark, a NATO ally that has fought alongside the United States in multiple conflicts, sustaining very high levels of casualties in Afghanistan as a result. This has left his mouthpieces scrambling to articulate some grand strategy involving the Arctic and threats from Russia and China, despite the fact that this is just a power grab developed in Trump’s fevered swamp of a brain. There is no strategy.

Greenland is a symptom of a much larger problem, and this problem blew up yesterday in the form of massive tariffs against Canada, Mexico, and China. As with Greenland, there’s no grand strategy—only bullying and dominance. It’s a patented Trump handshake writ large.

The Annexation Threat to Canada

In Canada’s case, something different is happening. What likely began as an attempt to slap Canada down for “ideological” reasons—MAGA world sees Canada as a global epicentre of “woke” thought—has been transformed into something much more radical and dangerous. Somewhere along the line, likely in December, Trump hit upon the idea of annexing the country.

It’s purely speculation, but I suspect this idea occurred to him during the “emergency” dinner with the Prime Minister in December, when Trump made a “joke” about annexing Canada. The reaction that “joke” received gave Trump another cudgel with which to bully, but it also planted an idea that was quickly translated into concrete action: actually annexing Canada. Annexation serves several goals: it gives Trump a historical legacy that none of his predecessors—at least in the last century—can equal, it gives free access to the natural resources his oligarch friends want, it stomps out “woke” ideology, and it gives the U.S. military full control over the entire continental landmass. For Trump, it’s a perfect solution.

That Canadians may not want to be annexed doesn’t enter into Trump’s thinking. He’s a true believer in Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism, with the added bonus of himself as leader. After all, who wouldn’t want to join such an epoch-shattering project? That a tiny percentage of Canadians have drunk this Kool-Aid only encourages his thinking.

Direct, immediate military action to force an Anschluss is too much, even for Donald Trump. The international backlash would be immense. So Trump has hit on an economic solution to “break” (his words) Canada’s economy and force Canadians to ask for annexation to avoid poverty and privation. It’s sheer blackmail. Because the U.S. president cannot implement punitive trade sanctions without Congress, he had to invent a national security excuse to employ executive orders to initiate a trade war. Fentanyl, the border, and Canada’s trade surplus—all invented or dramatically exaggerated.

The Canadian government and provinces have been scrambling to address Trump’s “concerns,” with some provincial officials even expressing support for his tactics. Trump himself quickly threw cold water on any idea of appeasement, saying there was “nothing” Canada could do to avoid incredibly damaging tariffs. Indeed, as recently as this morning (Feb. 2), Trump was calling for annexation and warning Americans that hardship might be on the horizon. The historian in me is reminded of language heard in Europe in 1938–39.

Canada’s Path Forward

Let’s be very clear: Trump’s goal is to break Canada so that we will come crawling to him, begging for annexation. There is no political or economic measure Canada can take that will dissuade him. Our hope lies in riding out the storm, ensuring that Trump’s strategy is as costly to him as possible, calling upon and relying on our friendships, and disentangling ourselves from the U.S. octopus (I make a few suggestions here: Disentangling from America). We also need to hope that rational Americans will assert control over their own democracy before it is truly too late.

In the meantime, Canadians are proving themselves to be more patriotic than nearly everyone expected. Donald Trump is an existential threat to our country, and people are waking up to that fact. I hope that the willingness to change buying habits, to alter deeply ingrained sympathies, and to look to Canada first continues. This willingness will need to be sustained over the long term; we will need resolve and fortitude for the next four years and potentially beyond.

As for me, I hold a King’s Commission—something that never expires, even on retirement. My allegiance and course of action are clear: it’s to Canada, to the bitter end, no matter the consequences.