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Jordan
Canada, and the United States, the closest of neighbors, obviously. We trade together, we partner together, we fight together. And we’ll always be there to help one another out. We just hope that help is not like this. We also have neighbors to the north, who need freedom and need to be liberated as politics in America move further towards extremism. Canada is only being sensible by preparing for what happens if the United States descends into chaos or authoritarianism. And all of a sudden becomes less of a trusted partner, and more of a potential threat. You may think this is a recent development. And it is certainly more serious now than it has been in some time. But Canada has been fretting about an aggressive American government taking aim at us, basically, as long as we’ve been a nation. So what kind of threat has our best friend to the south ever posed to us? How has that changed over the past few years? What are the scenarios that keep experts up at night? And just how realistic are they? I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. This is The Big Story.
Ira Wells teaches literature and cultural criticism at the University of Toronto. His work has appeared in the New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Puritan and for this reported piece in the walrus. Hello, Ira.
Ira Wells
Hello. Thanks for having me.
Jordan
You’re very welcome. We always love to talk about our neighbours to the south and how it impacts us. Did reporting this piece out, make you feel better or worse about the current political climate to the south and the threat it could pose?
Ira Wells
Well, it made me feel worse, it was not an optimistic process in thinking about how the United States and its current political turmoil will present challenges to Canada. The warning signs are everywhere. And even since my peace came out, there have been in the wake of the FBI search of Mar a Lago, for instance, a gunman stormed the FBI headquarters and was shot to death. Internet searches for civil war, like spiking. If you go back a little further to June, there was a man who was arrested near the home of the US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh carrying some pepper spray and a tactical knife and burglary tools and a glock pistol. He was arrested. And that’s good. But it seemed like a dark omen for a country where the political polarization is already running at fever pitch. So, I mean, there’s statistics that I’m sure I’m sure you’ve heard of. And I’m sure your listeners heard of the fact that two thirds of Republicans don’t accept that President Biden is their president, the fact that 55% of Republicans and Democrats say that Democrats are more immoral than other Americans. So all of this, I didn’t quite have a sense of the just just how polarized the country is, and, and just how deep those those differences run. So so I know, it was not it was not an optimistic process.
Jordan
I’m glad you laid the groundwork for us, because I wanted to talk to you because you’re right, you know, we’ve sort of done a bunch of reporting about the climate in the United States and how, you know, generally not good it is and we’ve done some work about what happens to Canada if the US collapses, but your piece had a lot of relevant historical context that I wasn’t familiar with. So let’s maybe start there. How long has Canada been basically making contingency plans in case things go bad in the United States?
Ira Wells
Yeah. So that’s a great question. And it’s not something that people like to go on the record, and talk about the specific contingencies in place for what happens in the event that various scenarios play out in the US. I think there’s there’s a number of reasons for that. One is that it is those are the classified section of our of our national security strategy wouldn’t be in our advantage to be to be publicly speaking about these kinds of things. But I also I also think that this the sense that I got in speaking from experts is that it’s it’s almost just unthinkable and it’s almost something that people don’t want to think about that it’s the prospect of a world in which the US will not take care of Canada. Is kind of just so far out there that at that point, what is Canada like? We would just be in so much trouble that that is that all the contingencies would be out the door. So my sense is that we would just be so in so much trouble that at that there are no specific game plans that kick in. Now. Now, I do think that there may be some very specific contingencies that we can talk about that the government may have, may now be thinking may have been forced to think through over the last few years, especially around contested elections and things like that. But I’ll let you, you know, we can talk about those throughout our conversation.
Jordan
Yeah. And the interesting thing to me is that, you know, you kind of laid it out there as though we’re just screwed if the US goes to hell. And I think everybody kind of understands that because they understand the relationship that we have now. But as your piece points out, it wasn’t always that way. You know, when and how did we become? I know, we’ve always been close, but when and how did we become so intimately tied to the United States to the point that if they go bad, we’re F’d?
Ira Wells
Yeah. Well, that’s, that was one of the most interesting parts of this recording this piece, to me is, is to think that, perhaps even 100 years ago, that if you were to ask a Canadian who are most important security partner is the answer would not have been United States, it would have been Great Britain, and that we had a great power, a great power patron, with Great Britain. And that was like our rock for for that period of history, really, up until the Second World War and the Cold War era nuclear strategy, where we were at that point, we our fate really gets bundled in existentially, with that of the United States, because if there is some sort of thermonuclear exchange in that post war period, 1950s, 1960s of the Americans would need to send Russian bound nukes through our airspace, they dependent upon our the distant early warning line and the Arctic, there weren’t American nuclear warheads deployed, or stored in Newfoundland and Labrador, and various other places in Canada. So American nukes were here, because we recognized at that point, the security calculus was that were like just a fact of geography is that we are with the United States, there is no decision to be made here. And then, of course, as our economies become more and more intertwined, and the Canadian manufacturing centers become more likely targets of Soviet nuclear attacks, when they when the Soviets are calculating where to hit to screw up the American capacity. It’s not just within the US, because they understand that knocking out our industrial centers will also aid in that effort. So it, our national security partnership was really born of this Cold War era nuclear strategy, we didn’t really have much of a choice. It simply was a fact that a fact of geography, but even then, in the immediate post war period, as we became so closely tied together, there were already concerns.
Jordan
Can you tell me about the recently declassified document from 1947 that you reported on?
Ira Wells
Yeah, so this was really fascinating. This was a memorandum that had been written by a guy named Humphrey Hume Wrong, who was our ambassador to the United States. And he, he’s an interesting guy in his own right and had a long career. But this memo, he wrote in 1947, and it’s just as the, as Canada is beginning to enter into this new relationship with the US. And it really sort of shows that we went, we went into this with our eyes open, and many of the attitudes and the ways in which we are skeptical of the United States today, we’re already there in the 1940s. So he, in this in this memo, which he is writing for the government, he talks about how the US, quote “has an unstable and irresponsible side.” And he’s noting this complex of forces within the United States which threatened to promote bluster. He says in his, in his words, it’s almost like he’s talking about Twitter or something, you know, in the, in the 40s.
Jordan
Or a certain ex-US president.
Ira Wells
And then he goes on to in his, in his memo he goes on to warn the Canadian government. And I’ll just quote from the memo for a second he wants a warns of, quote, “America’s inability to comprehend the European state of mind, American leadership’s plain ignorance of some elementary historical facts.” And above all, quote, “It’s blinding hatred and fear of communism, which results in distortions and exaggerations, which increase the difficulty of achieving a negotiated settlement.” And so this is, of course, before Vietnam before that, you know, the Cold War really kicks into high gear, and he kind of sees it, you know, this is 1947. He takes a look at he’s reading the newspapers in United States, he understands he’s talking to politicians, and our ambassador is sort of is quite clear eyed about where this is headed. And yet he ends that memo by saying that we must bear with them for without them the rest of the world would be worse off. So he’s basically saying look like we get it. There’s there’s all kinds of problems here. There’s problems in terms of education and temperament, and, and so on. And I think that that condescension is something that has stayed with us too. And that will, will bite us. But, but anyway, it was fascinating to see just how much of that awareness we had right from the beginning of our of our strategic relationship with United States.
Jordan
It sounds like he could be describing Fox News, if he was sitting there watching it today.
Ira Wells
That was exactly the sense that I had, I mean, some of his language is a little bit. You know, he’s writing in the 1940s. And he’s obviously a very educated guy. So he uses words, and some of it sounds a little bit dated, but the sentiment is exactly there.
Jordan
It is so similar. And it makes me wonder if there’s anything really different about the way Canadians see and worry about the United States today. Like, as you mentioned, you know, the condescension is kind of there, the worry about lack of education and stuff on the American side, like, how has that view evolved? Or not? Since then?
Ira Wells
I suppose it depends. It depends on who you’re talking to. And I think that candidate includes, of course, many American expats and many people with American relatives, and many, you know, new Canadians from the US and of course, new Canadians from all over the world, who will be bringing their own interpretations of history and their own experiences with American power and American hegemony from all across the world. And, and that all, you know, gets thrown into the mix. But I do think that we have this residue of condescension, and, and shad and Freud, this, like taking enjoyment at someone else’s pain, that we that we sometimes when we look at what’s happening in the US, it was particularly in the Trump years and and maybe maybe again with the Roe v Wade decision and think, oh, well, that that could never happen in Canada, we’re sort of more enlightened than that, or we’re somehow insulated from these terrible things that are happening in the US. Our system isn’t as as gerrymandered perhaps or, or we’re just we’re not as susceptible to the extremism here. I think that that to just assume that is a grievous error. I think that what’s happening to the United States is the product of forces that we are not immune from. And there was a fascinating piece by Michelle Rempel, in a newsletter called The Line, a while ago, in which she’s talking about conspiracy theories around Davos and the World Economic Forum. And she describes this moment where she’s, she’s like sitting in a pub after campaigning, and she becomes like, physically intimidated by someone who approaches her and starts questioning her belligerently about Davos and how the World Economic Forum is scheming to turn Canada into a communist state. And, you know, this is this is Michelle Rempel. A conservative person saying that this is nonsense that that the WEF is she describes it as an overpriced sales conference. It’s not running Canada. And yet, I’m sure that she’s written off as a globalist stooge by some people for saying that, right. So it’s the conspiracy theories and the misinformation, we are not immune from that in Canada, it is very much taking root here. And if we don’t have a strategy for thinking about it, we will be in trouble.
Jordan
Well, I’m glad you mentioned that because I wanted to ask you, as you know, part of your work is cultural criticism. And it’s very easy to, you know, look at a map and look at economics and understand, you know, how and why we are tied so closely together with supply chains and manufacturing across the border and all of that, but how closely have we become tied together in terms of culture and politics, especially over the past? I don’t know, let’s say 20 years, as you know, kind of the the internet brought us globalization of ideas.
Ira Wells
I mean, it’s such an interesting question. And it’s a you know, it’s a massive set of ideas like we’re so one, one Battlefront in which we’re currently engaging, this is should the government be be subjecting internet providers and and social media platforms and so on to CRTC regulations? In other words, should we continue to think about can-con in the in the internet age? Or has the the democratization of media just completely blown that old model apart? It’s something that we’ve been wrestling with, again, for this for pretty much this period of this sort of post war period, with the Massey commission producing its its report on Canadian culture and how and those in those days that the Massey report comes in, I think, in the 40s. The big worry was television and how television was going American television is going to wipe out Canadian culture. And we’re now thinking about that in terms of, of the internet and social media. And these are questions that have no, no right answer. But becoming out these questions from a, as you mentioned, I, I am a professor of literature and think about these kinds of questions from a cultural lens. And I think that literature is of particular particular help here in helping us think through possible futures, and sometimes in ways that can really change and shape our consciousness, right, you think about 1984, which begins obviously, it’s a piece of fiction, and yet 1984 has come to concretize a kind of future and a nexus of authoritarian impulses that is so real for us. We all know what that means, but Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and how after and you know, in the leading up after Roe v. Wade, you saw people out in the streets wearing those handmade those those red robes. And well,
Jordan
Hey, speaking of Atwood, because you mentioned this in your piece as well take us through one of her books that kind of envisions the worst case scenario.
Ira Wells
Her second novel is called Surfacing. And in a couple of pages, she has a couple of characters who are sort of doing the dishes, it’s after a dinner, they’ve had a couple of drinks. And they start talking about how the US is going to take over Canada as though it’s and they’ve they’re sort of gaming this out, like how it’s over water supplies, it’s they need to secure our freshwater having polluted their own beyond, beyond all us. And then they predict that the Canadian government would just instantly capitulate, like the Americans would would need our water that we would just sign some kind of a treaty, the government would therefore cease to have any sort of legitimacy in the eyes of, of most Canadians, and that this sort of armed Canadian nationalist guerrilla movement would respond. And I think that she’s she’s also looking at what’s what’s at this book came out in 1972. So she’s looking at what’s what was happening in Quebec at that time, and the kidnappings and things. And then she imagines this full on invasion of Canada, where they’re going to knock out the big cities and the communications and shooting people. And then the guerrillas will go off into the bush and team up with the indigenous folks and be blowing up water pipelines. And so, and it’s just sort of, it’s just sort of sketched out.
Jordan
But this is like the Canadian fear, right, like kind of crystallized in early work from one of our most famous authors.
Ira Wells
Yeah, it’s always it’s always been there. And, and another, you know, fascinating thing that I’ve learned in my conversations with with historians is just how this hasn’t just been fiction, either, right that some American leaders like Thomas Jefferson believed that capture in Canada would be, quote, “a mere matter of marching,” Jefferson said it would just be “a mere matter of marching.” And as late as, as late as 1912, Theodore Roosevelt was, was flirting with the idea of, of annexing Canada. So the idea that the US could present a national security threat is not brand new.
Jordan
So let’s go back to nonfiction for a moment, you know,how ready are we can you tell us about the national security strategy report that came out earlier this year?
Ira Wells
Yeah, absolutely. So. So this is a national security strategy for the 2020s, which was produced by a group group from the University of Ottawa. And it’s, it’s a fascinating document and a kind of chilling read in many ways. Now, there, the authors of that document are careful to, they’re careful to avoid any sort of apocalyptic rhetoric around the United States itself. And they are quite clear that the US remains an ally. And they sort of frame in a global sense, the national security challenges that Canada continues to face. So that includes threats of cyber warfare from Russia, it includes China, willing to engage in hostage diplomacy with Canadian citizens. I mean, these things are happening, right. I mean, that we just had Michael covering released within the last year. So obviously, there’s there’s a, there’s a range of threats out there. But for the first time, they are urging us to think about the threat posed by the United States and scenarios that could could play out within the United States, and particularly the kind of support what they signal out as, as one example, American politicians who have big platforms who are capable of giving a boost to internal unrest within Canada, and there’s talking specifically about the truck trucker protests there.
Jordan
Can you explain what they think about that?
Ira Wells
They think that an American politician who has a huge platform going on Fox News, which itself has a huge is a huge platform, and sort of meddling in Canadian affairs, that this might not have represented a kind of foreign a sense of foreign interference in the old way of thinking about things. But in this current media escape, it represents perhaps even a greater threat to Canadian democracy than any of the other threats that we’re currently facing. That the ability of American figures to inspire unrest within Canada is a really serious threat.
Jordan
So what do they want us to do about that? Because this is a tough problem, right? You obviously cannot, as a Canadian politician, look at this report, and then say publicly like, yes, you’re right, we must begin planning for the possibility of a hostile United States, you know, what are they urging? What kind of actions should we be taking?
Ira Wells
Well, I think that there are a series of I don’t want to put words in their mouth, in their mouth. I’ll talk I’ll talk exactly about what the report says in a second. But but there are various scenarios that we can and should be planning for. One of those is what happens if there’s a contested election in the United States what and 2020 for a contested presidential election, in which both sides ask Canada to recognize their side as legitimate side. So there’s the same kind of election, it’s not really clear who won. It’s dragging on both sides declare victory. Both sides, say, hey, Canada, we want we’re building an international consensus recognize us? What does Canada do we pick the Trump side, assuming it’s Trump, do it pick the Biden side or whoever is on the the Democratic ticket? And then let’s say that we pick the Biden side and and then Trump wins. I think another unsettling scenario is that there would be some sort of political violence happening in the United States. And there are various kinds of triggers that you can imagine in this scenario, but let’s let’s say that Trump is running for president in 2024. We all know now that Trump is under investigation for obstruction of justice and espionage. We don’t know if let’s assume for a second that they are going to lay charges. And that if Trump is running for president from his jail cell, or maybe even worse, if he is if he’s imprisoned, as the election is going on, but how does that Maga bass respond? And if there is political violence, I mean, one of the here’s another historical thing about a Canada is that we have exported fighters into just about every major conflict in the world, including the Ukraine now that Canadians end up they go, and they’re involved in what the US then determines is a terrorist action.
Jordan
How does the US respond to it if it appears as though Canadians are involved in terrorist actions against the United States?
Ira Wells
So these are the kinds of concrete scenarios that I would hope that the government is thinking through. And now the report, the report itself is much more pragmatic, and probably probably much more useful, to be honest, from a policy perspective, and that they give very concrete, a very concrete list of things that we should be doing from a national security perspective, including their big thing is that we need to be much more transparent. And I think this is a way of diminishing the kind of conspiratorial mindedness that is so obvious among amongst them, but to be much more to build trust, be much more transparent and build social resilience to build a stronger democracy at home that that will, that will go a long way. You know, coming back to the beginning of this conversation, when you said it made you feel a lot worse. As you talk to historians and people who authored this report.
Jordan
What did they have to say about the likelihood of like the worst case scenario, which is, you know, the civil war breaks out in the US or the US decides that it does need to annex Canada for its water, or whatever we’re talking about here.
Ira Wells
Like I, I know, we need to plan for this stuff. But I also wonder how close the experts think we actually are to it. So I’ll give you the actual words that were given to me from Thomas Jr, who’s one of the authors of the report, and he told me that I’ll just quote him directly. He said, “our relationship with the US remains by and large, beneficial. But we do need to think about these worst case scenarios. They are not 0% probabilities anymore.” So there was a set of scenarios that were science fiction, maybe 10 years ago, or even five years ago, those those scenarios are not science fiction anymore. And it’s prudent to be to be thinking about them now in terms of how likely is it that an army will march across the Canadian border and and secure our water resources? To my mind, that’s still very unlikely we’re using words like civil war and it all depends on how we define these words. Civil War brings to mind battlefields and you know, blue and grey uniforms and, you know, Gettysburg and Antietam and all the rest. I think that that may not be the best way of thinking about the scenario in the US where you might have you might see pockets of political violence, you know, terrible attacks more in the more in the vein of the Oklahoma City bombing or, or other kinds of atrocities like that, but that may get more persistent and may get more organized. At what point does that threshold become something that is more resembling a civil war? So I think that it all depends on how we define these terms in terms of their likelihood of occurring. But the general sense is that we need to be thinking ahead for for Canada’s best interests. We need to keep these scenarios in mind and not be just totally shocked when when they happen, and actually have a game plan so that we’re not just completely out to lunch.
Jordan
Ira, thank you for walking us through this a little too on the nose that there were sirens in the background for your last answer.
Ira Wells
It’s happening. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
Jordan
Ira wells writing in The Walrus. That was The Big Story. For more, you can head to the big story podcast.ca You can find us on Twitter at the big story F p n. You can email us at Hello at the big story podcast.ca You can call and leave a voicemail if you like 416-935-5935. If you’re listening to this podcast and an app that lets you review it, you better have done that already. And if you want to listen on a smart speaker, you can just ask it to play the big story podcast. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath Rawlings. We’ll talk tomorrow.
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