Festung Amerika!
It is a silly place.
SIR LANCELOT: Look, my liege!
[trumpets]
ARTHUR: Camelot!
SIR GALAHAD: Camelot!
LANCELOT: Camelot!
PATSY: It’s only a model.
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Doug Ford if his Fortress America strategy would replace the current North American free treade agreement.
“It’s just a little brochure right here” Doug replied.
When your politicians cosplay Monty Python scenes as serious international policy, we are all so far into a world of hurt that a killer bunny rabbit or the Knights who say Ni! would be the least of our worries.
Ford’s Fortress America scheme is at the same time laughably stupid and unfathomably dangerous.
It is stupid because it imagines that by copying the name of the American strategy we might somehow be able to avoid all of the nasty consequences of the American plan for Canadians, like the death of Canadian automaking.
It is dangerous for the same reason.
Fortress America rests on the idea that everything in the western hemisphere belong s to the United States to do with as it pleases. What the Americans did to Venezuela they can and would do to anyone who lets them, either by force or by passive, servile acceptance. Canada as a 51st state in all but name is the objective.
Wayne Eyre has no problem with that as do a number of others since they ahve already been assimilated. For Eyre and people like him, the Canadian Forces would become little more than the North of North Dakota National Guard but there be lots of nice toys to play with - only bought from American companies - and on exchanges and in joint deployments the people of the Canadian Forces would have lots of fun and make lots of money as erstaz Yanks. The 70% of our defence spending that goes to American companies would become 100%.
In the CUSMA talks, the only correct answer is to give the Americans all the ask for. It is the Shopify moron’s first response when Trump barked even before he was inaugurated. Whatever Doug has in his little brochure about a Canadian car industry is only what the Americans allow us to have. The border would all but disappear as Americans would control the entirety of the continent. Our passports would also vanish along with the Canadian dollar.
That is Fortress America.
That is what Doug has told the Americans he is ready to accept.
Later in the interview, Wolf pointed out to Ford that “just last week President Trump once again posted on social media the notion of perhaps Canada becoming America’s 51st state.”
Ford said “I did [see that] but we’re never going to be the first 51st state. Can’da’s not for sale.”
And yet Doug’s litle brochure makes it clear Can’da is for sale. In fact, in Doug’s mouth, as he says the name of his country, we have already given up an eh for free. The only questions is the price and how low it will be.
The day before Doug’s little junket to sell out to Washington, the Financial Times reported that Canada had caved. Turns out Canada hadn’t but Doug Ford had. FT got it wrong, conflating Doug’s nonsense with the Prime Minister's New York speech a couple of weeks ago that talked about the advantage to the United States of a strong partnership with a strong and sovereign Canada. Doug Ford is not talking strength. He is talking weakness.
We have seen this Fordian clown show before. Last time, Doug dragged all the Premiers with him, twitchy Andy Furey along for show as they met with a Russian agent working inside the White House and some other lesser hanger-on, all arranged by a lobbying firm with no connections of any consequence to the Trump White House. They made arses of themselves.
Doug’s one good shot was the ad that reminded Americans Donald Trump and the Festung Amerika white nationalists of MAGA are as offside with Ronald Reagan as they are with fundamental American values and their own constitution. Sadly that one got pulled but it was exactly the same effort to manipulate American opinion that Americans are doing with Canadians daily. If anything we ought to have done more of it to cause the Americans and Donald Trump even greater pain. As it is, the best they can whine about are our modest tariffs applied in retaliation to their tariffs and since mostly reduced.
As we put it last year, “there *is* a threat” to Canada. “Donald Trump and his goons may be gunning to make Canada part of the United States. Or they are incompetent morons, bumbling and bungling their way into the future of a United States that is neither an economic nor military centrepiece to the globe.
“Either way, that means Canada cannot keep doing more of the same. Our economic, foreign, and defence policies are built on the Americans as the leaders of a western alliance with a global economy and global military to match. Times changed very quickly last November. Now we need policies in which we are less tied to Americans, do much more for ourselves, grow closer to Europeans, Japanese and Australians, but at the same time recognize the Americans are our neighbours and we are going to be close to them socially, economically, and politically, for a long while to come.”
This is no time for ease and comfort.
This a time to dare.
This is a time to endure.
We must do what is hard.
We must achieve what is vital.
This is a time for Canadian leaders and Doug Ford ain’t one.
This is a time for leaders.
This is no time for ease and comfort. This is a time to dare and endure.