Trump's increasing support for Russia carries existential danger for Canada

In the six weeks between Prime Minister Mark Carney's trip to the European Parliament and top EU officials arriving for a joint summit in Montreal, the United States has moved considerably closer to Russia.

Just days after Carney returned to Canada, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio invited Russia's Vladimir Putin to December's G20 summit in Miami. Then on Oct. 9, the U.S. lifted sanctions on Russian oil and announced a deal to buy diesel directly from Russia.

Some analysts say Trump's rapprochement with Russia poses a clear danger to Canadians — one not easily solved by closer partnerships with allies an ocean away. 

"This is not Trump playing footsie with Putin," said Vincent Rigby, national security and intelligence adviser to the prime minister until 2021. "This is something far, far more serious, and strategically, this can't help but be a concern."

Last week on the White House South Lawn, Trump drew his own parallels between Canada and Ukraine, bragging after a call with Carney: "Just like I told Zelenskyy, we have all the cards."

While Trump has increased his swipes at Canada on the campaign trail, his hostility to Ukraine goes beyond words.

In Trump's one-sided "energy ceasefire," Ukraine was expected to stop hitting Russian refineries but Russia continued to hit Ukrainian electrical plants. 

Then came the slowdown in Starlink/Starshield, followed by a round of blame-shifting between the White House and Elon Musk as to who ordered it. The U.S. also appeared to cut off warnings of incoming ballistic missiles, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump is making it harder to access Patriot missiles.

WATCH | Carney on Ukraine's restricted access to SpaceX technology:

Carney says he is 'concerned' about reported Starlink slowdown in Ukraine

October 23|

Duration

3:10

"It's been unbelievable," said Rob Huebert, director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. "These actions can only be characterized as Trump trying to cause Ukraine to lose the war."

Washington also reportedly leaned on European countries to release billions of Euros in frozen Russian assets, and Trump signed an executive order waiving sanctions against Russia due to take effect two days later.

Maria Popova, an expert on Russia at McGill University and author of Russia and Ukraine: Entangled Histories, Diverging States, says the second Trump administration worked in its first year to make the U.S. more of a neutral party in Russia's war with Ukraine.

She says it now appears Trump is working up to openly allying with Putin.

• Analysis

  As Canada deepens ties with Europe, could it leave U.S. banks and dollars behind?

"We have to start thinking about where this trajectory ends up eventually," she said. "And it ends in the U.S. directly helping Russia's war effort."

Rigby says U.S.-Russian closeness raises immediate fears about Arctic sovereignty, and "could be the end of NORAD in a worst-case scenario," referring to the joint Canada-U.S. partnership to protect sovereign airspace.

Huebert says the lifted oil sanctions and diesel deal could be seen cynically as a temporary move to mollify American voters angry about gas prices.

"For him to try to reduce the price of diesel just before the midterms, you may disagree with it entirely but you can at least understand it," he said.

"But all this other stuff?"

Strongman summit in Shenzhen

A proposed summit between Trump, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month has revived longstanding concerns that Trump is keen to replace America's postwar network of alliances with a new global carve-up between three strongmen.

Trump has expressed openness to the Russian proposal. "Obviously, this is music to Putin's ears," said Popova.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said on Sunday that preparations have begun for the three-way summit on the sidelines of the Nov. 18-19 APEC summit in Shenzhen, China.

• Canada's Russian envoy returns with advice on how to hit back against Putin

Huebert says the Russians have long pitched the idea of superpower spheres of influence, in which Washington, Moscow and Beijing would all agree to stay out of each other's backyards. Lesser powers would have to find a modus vivendi with the regional hegemon.

"We really need to be pushing against such a travesty," said Popova, "because the next meeting of the three of them will be to decide the fate of Canada or Taiwan. So we don't want this pattern to even start."

Trump has already made it clear that he sees the entire Western Hemisphere as the domain of the United States.

"We don't want a world that's run by superpowers," said Rigby. "If this is where we're headed — spheres of influence, Russia, China and the United States — this goes back to what Prime Minister Carney said at Davos: that middle powers are effectively going to be marginalized.

"It's very, very concerning."

Living with threats

Canada is pursuing new alliances and rearming, while seeking to keep the U.S.-Canada temperature low and bilateral institutions functioning where possible.

Popova sees parallels in this to Ukraine's past "multi-vector" approach to build connections with other countries, including Canada, that proved invaluable in 2014 when Russia took Crimea.

"In a world that is really becoming a world à trois to a considerable extent, Russia, China, United States, we're going to have to reach out to Europe," said Rigby. 

That alliance can strengthen Canadian sovereignty if it leads to deeper integration of defence-industrial bases, greater exchanges of technology, the creation of a payments system less vulnerable to U.S. interference or the launching of new satellites that allow Canadians and Europeans to develop communications and navigational systems that don't depend on Musk or the Pentagon.

WATCH | Trump envoy praises Putin after prisoner release:

Trump envoy Witkoff praises 'humanitarian' Putin at meeting in Russia

October 21|

Duration

2:02

But Canada can't alter its geography. It lacks one key advantage of Ukraine, which has land borders with four EU nations, allowing easy resupply. Canada, in the event of real threats or hostilities from the U.S., would be mostly on its own.

Fortunately for Canadians, Trump's hostility toward Canada and fondness for Russia aren't shared by most Americans. For some time, Americans have not trusted Trump to do the right thing on Russia, and that is true also within his own party. Americans, including many Republicans, also don't like Trump's trade war with Canada.

Trump is also unlikely to be as long-lasting as Putin has been. Unless he's able to subvert the U.S. Constitution, he has only 26 months left.

But Rigby says he expects those months to be tumultuous: "You are potentially going to see a president after next week being even more reckless, less restrained and more aggressive."