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Canadians may not yet appreciate the scale of the moment they are living through. For most of the postwar period, Canada could afford to treat geopolitics as somebody else’s problem. The United States provided security, anchored the continental economy, and supplied much of the strategic framework through which Canadian governments viewed the world.
Donald Trump has blown up that bargain.
That is the starting point for my latest conversation with historian and geopolitical scholar Jack Cunningham. His argument is larger than the immediate trade confrontation with Washington.
Canada, he says, has spent decades underinvesting in its own capacity to think strategically about the world. We outsourced not only much of our defence to the United States, but much of our strategic thinking as well.
Now Canada is being forced to grow up quickly.
Cunningham believes Prime Minister Mark Carney understands the magnitude of the change and has begun to emerge as an unusually important international figure. He compares Carney, cautiously, with previous Canadian leaders such as Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau, leaders whose influence extended well beyond Canada because they understood the international system and knew how to operate inside it.
Carney’s emerging response is straightforward: diversify Canadian trade, deepen security and economic cooperation with like-minded democracies, build more infrastructure at home, and reduce the country’s dangerous dependence on the United States.
But Cunningham emphasizes the part of the strategy Canadians may like least: it will hurt.
That may ultimately be the defining difference between Carney and Trump. Trump promises easy victories. Carney is beginning to tell Canadians that preserving sovereignty will require sacrifice.
Cunningham draws an important lesson from both trade wars and shooting wars: victory is not determined only by who can inflict the most damage. It can be determined by who can absorb pain and keep going. The United States is vastly more powerful than Canada.
But power does not automatically translate into political endurance.
That turns the confrontation with Trump into something much bigger than another dispute over tariffs. The coming years will test Carney’s leadership, but they will also test Canadians themselves.
Are we prepared to pay an economic price to become less dependent, more strategically capable, and more genuinely sovereign?
That is the question at the heart of this interview.
