Trump's talk about Canada parrots Putin's claims on Ukraine
Speaking on borders, economics and security — the 2 leaders sound remarkably similar
It took a while for Canadian politicians to figure out that Donald Trump wasn't joking with his talk about annexing Canada.
After Trump raised the idea at a dinner in Mar-A-Lago attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Nov. 29, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic Leblanc said the "joke" was actually a positive.
"The president was teasing us. It was, of course, in no way a serious comment," LeBlanc said.
"The fact that there's a warm, cordial relationship between the two leaders and the president is able to joke like that, we think, is a positive thing."
No one is calling it positive now.
Perhaps Canadian politicians can be forgiven their slowness of uptake, given that Trump's comments are entirely unprecedented in modern U.S.-Canadian relations.
But there is one strong parallel for his remarks. While Trump's words may never move past the talking stage, they resemble the claims, pretexts and justifications used by Russia's Vladimir Putin before and during his invasion of Ukraine.
Canadians' secret desire to be annexed
"Many people in Canada LOVE being the 51st State," Donald Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Jan. 6.
"The United States can no longer suffer the massive Trade Deficits and Subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat. Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned. If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no Tariffs, taxes would go way down and they would be TOTALLY SECURE from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them. Together, what a great Nation it would be!!!"
That post contained themes that would later become staples of Trump and his supporters' claims about Canada.
First is the claim that lots of Canadians want to become Americans. Some in Trump's Make America Great Again movement have explained the absence of a visible groundswell of support for annexation in Canada as a result of a harsh regime of censorship, as decried by Elon Musk and this week by Joe Rogan.
Canadians' supposed secret desire to be annexed might sound familiar to Russians who have heard their leader make similar claims about Ukrainians, says Maria Popova, an expert on Russian politics at McGill University.
"The whole argument is based on the claim that fundamentally and deep down, all Ukrainians want this," she said. "They want this unification with Russia."
In a long op-ed he wrote in July 2021, Putin laid out his claim that the Ukrainian people, in their hearts, aspired to be part of Mother Russia, but their voices were censored.
"There are millions of such people," he wrote. "But they are not allowed to raise their heads. They have had their legal opportunity to defend their point of view taken away from them."
Better off together
Like Trump extolling the economic wonders of a U.S.-Canada annexation ("what a great Nation it would be!!!"), Putin said a combined Russia and Ukraine would be much better off.
"Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful," wrote Putin. "We are natural complementary economic partners."
Popova says both leaders like to emphasize how annexation would be good economically for all concerned.
"The first parallel I see is the argument that it is somehow in Canadian's best interest to be a part of the U.S. because fundamentally we're not that different. This is indeed very similar to the argument that, you know, Ukrainians have some sort of quirky identity maybe, but fundamentally we're the same."
Many of Putin's arguments about Russians and Ukrainians are based on Kremlin-centric historical narratives that, he claims, show a common identity.
"The thrust of the Russian argument is that Ukraine is not a real country, that Ukrainians are fundamentally wayward Russians," said Popova. "They're these younger little brothers who are going in the wrong direction and they need to be brought back into the fold of the Russian nation."
Trump is no student of history (he famously claimed that George Washington won the American Revolution after he "took over the airports"), and he hasn't echoed Putin's long-winded historical arguments about shared ethnicity.
But Americans are, of course, well aware of the cultural affinity of the two former British colonies — a selling point for Canadian politicians trying to pitch Canada's case in the U.S. No prominent Republican has proposed annexing Mexico as a solution to its ostensibly similar trade and border issues.
'Artificial' lines and countries
Canadian officials have said that the moment they realized Trump was serious about annexation was when he began to raise the history of U.S.-Canadian border arrangements, specifically the 1908 treaty that fixed parts of the border. The officials haven't revealed exactly what Trump said about the treaty.
Putin has questioned the legitimacy of historic agreements over the border between Russia and Ukraine, particularly Nikita Khrushchev's decision in 1954 to give Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
"Ukraine is an artificial state," Putin told Tucker Carlson in an interview in February 2024.
The U.S.-Canada border is an "artificially drawn line," Trump said in a Jan. 7 news conference.
"You get rid of that artificially drawn line, and you take a look at what that looks like. And it would also be much better for national security," Trump said. "That would really be something." Trump followed up with a social media post including a map that erased the nation of Canada.
"The reference to a meaningless administrative border," said former Canadian diplomat and international lawyer Sabine Nölke, "is how Putin described Ukraine."
Nölke was Canada's permanent representative to the international courts at The Hague as well as ambassador to the Netherlands until 2019.
"Now all of a sudden Trump started using that language," she told CBC News, "and it came in the context of him waving around this 1908 border treaty between Canada and the U.S."
That treaty, says Nölke, is a minor administrative one that mostly deals with physically marking borders already delineated in previous accords. "He latches on to little things as evidence or as being connected to a bigger idea he has. And his big idea is Canada is not a legitimate state."
"So somebody has waved this treaty at him. So he's now running around saying 'Aha, see there, it's all administrative. It doesn't really exist,' completely and utterly ignoring all the other indicia of Canadian statehood, sovereignty and territorial integrity.
"But the bigger message is you don't exist. You should be part of us."
The myth of subsidies
Trump's grievances toward Canada are also ostensibly about money, and the charge that Canada is stiffing the U.S. on trade, defence and energy.
"Canada has been very tough to deal with over the years, and it's not fair that we should have a $200 billion or $250 billion deficit," he claimed on his third full day in office.
Putin, in his national address on Russian state TV two nights before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, made similar claims.
"Our Ukrainian colleagues turned to us for financial support from the moment they declared independence," he claimed. "According to expert assessments … the overall benefit for the Ukrainian budget amounted to $250 billion."
Putin accused Kyiv officials of "a parasitic attitude."
Trump has complained "We pay hundreds of Billions of Dollars to SUBSIDIZE Canada.... Without this massive subsidy, Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country."
In his eve-of-war address, Putin told Russians that Ukrainian authorities "always preferred dealing with Russia in a way that ensured they enjoy all the rights and privileges while remaining free from any obligations."
Protection rackets
"Russia has also constantly insisted that it is the best guarantor of Ukrainian sovereignty and security," said Popova. "And this is something that Trump has started bringing up as well, this idea that Canada needs protection from something, and only the U.S. can provide this protection."
Popova says Trump's comments about Russian and Chinese ships being near Canada are a "really big red flag."
"Take a look at what's going on out there [in Canada]," he said on Feb. 13. "You have Russian ships, you have Chinese ships, you have a lot of ships out there, and you know, people are in danger. This is a different world. Today it's a different world. They don't have any military protection."
Putin's eve-of-invasion speech also focused on the supposed threat of foreign military presence in Ukraine. "Ukraine's airspace is open to flights by strategic and reconnaissance aircraft and drones," he warned, as well as "activity by NATO warships."
Although she's not expecting an imminent invasion, Popova says Trump's arguments sound like a man trying to construct a pretext.
"It's an absurd claim in a similar way in which the Russian claim towards Ukraine is absurd because, in reality, nobody else was threatening Ukraine but Russia. And right now nobody else is really threatening Canada but the U.S. So this to me is a very alarming parallel in the rhetoric."
She pointed out that as NATO allies, the U.S. is already obligated to come to Canada's defence.
"So this is clearly a nonsensical argument, but one that signals that he is looking for these excuses that look like he is well-meaning — 'well, I want to protect you' — but in reality it's driven by a desire and plan to somehow make this annexation happen."
Nölke said Trump's 51st state talk may turn out to be just another meme created to entertain his MAGA followers. But even if the threats are never carried out, they have done severe damage.
"In terms of state-to-state relations, he has already violated international law, threatening international peace and security, threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Canada. This is not something that's going to happen — he's already done it," Nölke said.
"The threats he's uttering against Canada and Denmark are already undermining the NATO alliance. So that is something that I think the North Atlantic Council will need to address."
Merging world views a threat to Canada
Of course, Trump has not merely echoed Putin's Ukraine rhetoric when talking about Canada. He also repeats it when talking about Ukraine itself, as on Wednesday when he branded Ukraine's president a "dictator." Trump and his followers have repeatedly painted Ukraine as a leech for receiving U.S. military aid.
Trump this week suggested Russia has earned the right to keep Ukrainian territory because "they fought for that land and they lost a lot of soldiers." He has said that Putin, who launched the war in the first place and who has ordered repeated attacks on civilian targets, "wants to see people stop dying."
On Monday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio hinted at a wider and deeper new relationship with Moscow that sounded a lot like an alliance, speaking of "the incredible opportunity to partner with the Russians geopolitically, on issues of common interest, and, frankly, economically."
A U.S.-Russian alliance — or even just alignment of views and values — would be dangerous to Canada, said Popova.
"That's really the fundamental danger here, that they seem to be aligned in how they think the world should be run — no longer through the rules-based order that prohibits conquest, but by big powers deciding the fate of the smaller countries. This is really making a comeback and that should be very concerning to us."
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