On January 3rd, the United States launched its smash-and-grab operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro, securing control of the hemisphere’s largest oil field in a four-hour operation. Just a week later, Canadian Prime Minister Carney visited Beijing to pitch him on a major trade deal, opening up the hemisphere to a flood of Chinese investments in key sectors like automobile and energy.
Carney’s trade deals directly undermined the administration’s National Security Strategy, which aims to ensure a “Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets.” Just as Washington closed off Caracas’s oil from Chinese access, Ottawa signed away another source of oil in the Western hemisphere to Beijing. No surprise that Chinese propaganda hailed the visit as an opportunity for Canada to assert its “strategic autonomy” from the United States.
These recent events demonstrate that Canada’s desire for strategic autonomy poses a serious national security problem for the United States. The United States cannot share the longest undefended border in the world with a country so eager to court hostile great powers in our hemisphere.
At the same time, Canada today is more splintered than it has been in decades. A wide range of centrifugal forces–specifically provincial separatism, a record-high foreign-born population, and indigenous grievances–may soon precipitate the total fragmentation of our northern neighbor. The United States should exploit the soon-to-arrive fragmentary moment in Canada as an opportunity to drastically reshape the North American environment into one more amenable to U.S. interests.
To fully take advantage of the coming fragmentary moment, the United States must reel in its annexationist desires to the north. Given the obvious geopolitical imperatives, President Trump understandably sought to follow in the footsteps of our founding fathers and contemplate Canadian annexation. However, U.S. efforts to annex Canada are counterproductive. Time and time again in history, U.S. threats of annexation have strengthened Canadian nationalism. This “elbows-up” response has repeatedly given Canadian leaders the mandate to pursue far-reaching reforms to strengthen national cohesion and state capacity. Thus, paradoxically, U.S. efforts to annex Canada only strengthen Canadian sovereignty, postponing the arrival of the fragmentory moment.
Ottawa’s historical resilience to U.S. domination should not, however, lead observers to the mistaken conclusion that Canada is a country founded on an authentic and widely shared national culture that resists foreign domination. To the contrary, Canada is a deeply fragile country, one that is riddled with centrifugal forces, new and old, that continue to threaten to tear apart the union. Provinces and territories, some with a long history of independence, periodically clamour for secession. Indigenous groups push for a sham “reconciliation” process that is undermining Crownland ownership—and with it, all private property and the very concept of Canadian sovereignty over indigenous groups. Widespread importation of migrants has made cities filled with foreign strivers with no loyalty to Canada—many of whom see Canadian citizenship as a step for gainful employment in the United States.
The wise strategist will understand that Canada is an ever-disintegrating state that barely keeps its centrifugal forces in check with a shared anti-American creed. He will know that overt U.S. pressure will only strengthen this creed and postpone the day of Canadian collapse. Instead of pursuing annexation, U.S. strategists should support the centrifugal forces of Canadian society to accelerate the arrival of the fragmentary moment. U.S. strategy should be to achieve the fragmentation, not annexation, of Canada.
Anti-Americanism and its Role in Canadian Sovereignty
Over the last two centuries, the Canadians repeatedly faced significant threats of U.S. annexation. Sometimes these threats came in the form of rebellions and internal actors clamoring for continentalism; other times it came in the form of strong-arming from Uncle Sam. Each of these times, Canada met the annexationist threat by consolidating its state apparatus, rallying its people into nationalistic fervor. These Canadian responses helped shore up its sovereignty, making it resilient against both U.S. coercion and domestic centrifugal forces.
Indeed, this threat reaction played a critical role in the birth of a federated Canada as a political entity. Given Britain’s growing desire to offload imperial defense responsibilities to its subject, London would have likely subsumed its British North American colonies into a dominion at some point. But many in the proto-Canadian elites of Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes, and elsewhere were reluctant to lose the parochial prerogatives they enjoyed as oligarchs governing their independent colonies. The American threat, however, jolted these provincial elites into banding together and embracing a larger Canadian dominion—one that had greater capacity to assert its sovereignty against U.S. coercion.
The first step towards imperial consolidation occurred in large part due to U.S. annexationist threats during the 1837-8 rebellion, a democratic revolt in Upper and Lower Canada against the oligarchic rule of the Château Clique and the Family Compact. The rebellion embraced American republican rhetoric, with some of its participants calling for the outright annexation of their homeland to the United States. The rebels enjoyed significant U.S. popular support; many Americans fundraised to supply weapons to support the cause, while rebel leaders launched raids into Canada from U.S. territory.
While Canadian authorities successfully suppressed the rebellion, it convinced British elites that American Republicanism poses a critical threat to British North America as it currently stands. The sense of crisis led to the Durham report, which called for sweeping reforms–including the fusion of Upper and Lower Canada into a single province of Canada and the establishment of responsible government in British North America. Thus, it was an internal rebellion, inspired by American Republican ideals and materially supported by the American people, that led to the creation of the embryonic core of the future Canadian state in the province of Canada and the erosion of oligarchic rule that stifled Canadian social-economic development.
The threat of U.S. annexation once again played a critical role in the contentious debates that led to the Confederation of Canada in 1867. Leading up to the 1860s, most Canadians favored the status quo, with only a small minority calling for confederation. Some Canadians, including those in the Annexationist League, supported U.S. annexation. Once again, U.S. threats to Canadian sovereignty radically changed the frames of the debate. During the Civil War, U.S.-Canadian relations deteriorated as Unionists accused Britain of supporting the Confederacy. Jingoist newspapers called for the annexation of Canada after the conclusion of the Civil War. U.S. Congress also refused to renew a free trade treaty with British North America, significantly disrupting the latter’s economy. Concerns about the United States reached a fever pitch in 1866, when Irish Republican organizations launched cross-border raids into Canada. Faced with hostile diplomatic, economic, and now military pressure from the United States, Canadian statesmen accepted confederation, creating modern Canada as we know it today.
After confederation, Canadian Tories implemented the National Policy, a program of state-led development through high tariffs and expensive infrastructure projects. The program, which lasted decades, played a critical role in strengthening Canadian economic independence from the United States. Initially, however, the program was not necessarily popular, with many Canadian liberals supporting a free-trade Commercial Union with their southern neighbor.
What ultimately helped the National Policy win the day was U.S. annexationist pressure in the form of the McKinley Tariffs. The high U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods sought to pressure the Great White North into a union with the United States. Instead, the tariffs caused a nationalist stir in Canada, triggering a rally-to-the-flag effect for the National Policy. Liberals who supported the Commercial Union were tarred as borderline treasonists, and lose the subsequent election. The U.S. tariff and annexationist threat gave the Canadian Tories the political momentum necessary to double down on an economic program to secure independence from the United States.
The historical drama of the McKinley Tariffs was replicated in 2025. The same historical pattern played out once again last year, when the “51st State” threats fueled the Canadian Liberals’ phoenix-like revival in public support. Concerns about the trade war, and worries that it is a prelude to an American annexation, prompted the Canadian electorate to overlook a decade of progressive misrule and re-elect Carney to office. The resounding bounce-back has given Carney the mandate he needs to stall out USMCA negotiations with the United States and court America’s adversaries—all the while sidelining pro-American voices within the commonwealth as borderline treasonists complicit in Washington’s annexationist plans.
The Coming Fragmentation
These historical trends make an outright U.S. annexation of Canada a difficult task. Every U.S. effort to seize the Great White North will immediately trigger anti-American antibodies throughout the Canadian body politic, empowering the state to take drastic measures to shore up its sovereignty. The recent outreach to China is part of this response, an attempt at a Canadian geopolitical revolution to resist U.S. pressure.
But while anti-Americanism is the glue that holds Canada together, that also means that, absent this shared antipathy of their southern neighbor, Canadians have little in common. At least during the days of the British Empire, Canadians could channel their anti-American sentiments into a positive, affirmative national identity as British loyalists. That crutch is no longer available to post-patriation Canada, especially one that proudly embraced itself as a “post-national” project.
Canada has always faced its share of unruly immigrants and restive natives. Nevertheless, these forces are far greater than ever before in the world’s “first postnational state.”
Nearly a quarter of Canadians are foreign-born immigrants, the highest percentage in Canadian history. These new arrivals, mostly from the Chinese mainland, the Indian subcontinent, or the Philiphines, often see Canadian citizenship as little more than an economic opportunity. They refuse to assimilate into a shared Canadian national identity; many instead seek to advance their own ethnic interests, advancing the goals of their Chinese or Indian homelands at the expense of Canada. Lacking any sentimental attachment to Canada, these economic migrants will not fight to keep the federation alive, especially if the United States offers superior economic arrangements to compensate for the loss of Canadian citizenship.
Meanwhile, Canada has rhetorically, and if not politically and legally, capitulated to natives who deny the very legitimacy of Canadian statehood. Under the Trudeau administration, Canada acknowledged that it had committed a genocide against the natives. To atone for the sin, the Canadian government has offered generous settlements and tripled its indigenous budget between 2015 and 2025. Canadian leaders have vigorously pushed back against “denialism” of abuse in the indigenous residential school system, despite no evidence of “mass graves” of students. All of this has seriously undermined the very basis of Canadian sovereignty, heightening its risk of fragmentation.
The twin forces of unassimilated immigrants and native grievances have sapped the Canadian federal government’s will and capacity to resist provincial and native separatism. Thus, the United States does not need to kill Canada. Canada will dig its own grave soon, as centrifugal forces intensify. If we seek annexation, that will only stave off Canadian collapse by giving Ottawa the external enemy they need to keep a rapidly disintegrating Canadian society together. Instead, the U.S. should feed into and support the centrifugal forces in Canadian society. Once these centrifugal forces reach their height, the ensuing constitutional crisis will present a key moment for the United States to intervene to shape a new North American sphere.
Fragmented, smaller Canadian statelets are much easier for the United States to dominate through closer economic and geopolitical integration, including the COFA arrangement. Such indirect domination is preferable to a straight-up annexation, which will likely lead to a protracted and costly occupation as the presence of the U.S. occupation enflames Canadian nationalism and leads to widespread.
I offer two potential policy options to facilitate this fragmentation.
Quebecois Gambit to Facilitate Widespread Provincial Secession
Since almost as soon as its confederation, Canada had struggled to rein in its many provinces that had sought to secede from the union. These secession movements are especially pronounced in Quebec and the Western provinces, including Alberta and Saskatchewan. Some separatist movements also exist in the maritime provinces.
Americans should always seek opportunities to support the secessionist movements of Canadian provinces. That said, it’s unlikely that most of these separatist movements will reach critical mass anytime soon. A recent poll showed that roughly one in five Albertans and Saskies would vote to secede and declare an independent country. Meanwhile, only 11 and 8 percent of British Columbia and Manitoba residents support independence, respectively. While these numbers are not insignificant, they are lower than Texan support for independence, which is roughly 33 percent.
The only exception is Quebec, where support for sovereignty has hovered between 35 and 45 percent in the last two years. Quebec’s separatist party, the Parti Quebecois (PQ), is expected to win the next election in October. PQ, which leads the incumbent Coalition Avenir Quebec by at least 10 points, is likely to push for another sovereignty referendum once elected. It will be the first referendum since the last one failed in 1995 by a razor-thin margin of 50.58 percent nay to 49.42 percent yay.
The re-emergence of Quebecois separatism presents a unique opportunity for the United States. If the Quebecois sovereignty movement once again threatens the integrity of the federation, Ottawa will likely be forced to placate the secessionists by pushing for major Constitutional changes that further enshrine the Quebecois’ disproportionately privileged status in the federation. Such Constitutional changes will be deeply unpopular in the rest of British Canada, especially in the Western provinces, which already feel that the federation ignores their interests in favor of the Ontario-Quebec core. A Quebecois secessionist threat will trigger a Constitutional crisis that may push multiple provinces out of the federation.
This is not empty conjecture; we are simply trying to recreate a historical pattern. Throughout the 1960s, the Quiet Revolution in Quebec fueled momentum for French Canada to achieve “sovereignty-association” with Canada, in which Quebec would attain formal sovereignty while maintaining economic and political ties with the rest of Canada. PQ soon won the election and implemented the 1980 referendum for sovereignty-association, which was defeated by a 59 to 40 percent margin.
Despite the loss, French Canadians continued to strive for autonomy, and Quebec refused to ratify the 1982 Canadian Constitution. In response, Ottawa sought to revise the Constitution to accommodate the French Canadians, including by granting Quebec recognition as a “distinct society.” These Constitutional revision efforts, which had to be accepted by all other Canadian provinces as well, were deeply unpopular throughout the federation. Tensions became very heated between the federal government, Anglo-Canadian provincial governments, and Quebec, risking the dissolution of the entire union. At the height of the crisis, the Conservative premier of Nova Scotia, John Buchanan, stunned Canadians by saying Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island would have “no choice” but to join the U.S. if Quebec were to secede from Canada.
To this date, Quebec has yet to ratify the Constitution—the political salience of the non-ratification only temporarily receded after the razor-thin failure of the 1990 referendum. If PQ wins the majority and pushes for another referendum, that will likely trigger another Constitutional revision effort to placate French Canada. Such an effort could trigger widespread secession throughout the rest of the federation.
This is especially the case because Ottawa will be tempted to offer even more generous federal equalization payments to Quebec to convince French Canadians to stay in the union. Such a move, however, will be a poison chalice, as Albertans are already resentful of the federal government’s redistribution of their oil wealth to Quebec, which is the largest recipient of equalization payments in the federation. If Ottawa cedes an even greater share of Alberta’s oil wealth to Quebec, that is sure to inflame the Alberta independence movement, facilitating a major Constitutional crisis in which Canada risks losing Quebec, Alberta, or both.
The United States should consider covert support for PQ ahead of the election. These include (1) overt financial support for PQ in the election and (2) psychological operations to foment Quebecois and Albertan separatism, (3) behind-closed-doors trade negotiations with the PQ, where the United States commits to offering lower tariffs on Quebec than on the rest of Canada.
Weaponizing the “Reconciliation” Process
In a previous era, U.S. support for separatists might not have been sufficient to trigger Canada’s fragmentation. That is because Canadian political elites of yesteryear had a sufficient sense of shared cultural-political unity to understand that confederation was worth fighting for. Thus, during the last burst of Quebecois separatism in the late 20th century, Canadian federal and provincial leaders endured rounds after rounds of painstaking negotiation to hammer out, if not a favorable compromise, at least a workable stalemate to stave off the total fragmentation of the confederation.
These political outcomes were achieved through great personal sacrifice by these leaders. But what of the post-national elites of today? Would the people who feel more at home in Hong Kong or Mumbai feel the same drive that earlier generations of Canadians felt to keep the country together, no matter the cost? The answer is obvious.
And yet, some heritage Canadians still feel a lingering attachment to the confederation. Even if the United States fans the flames of secessionism in the coming years, these individuals may be able to mount a rear-guard action to keep the confederation together.
Thankfully, these heritage Canadians are already digging their own graves by engaging in a project of “reconciliation” with the natives of their territory. The well-intentioned effort has started to convince Canadians that their state might not be legitimate at all. The United States can facilitate fragmentation by supporting the native “reconciliation” efforts to further demoralize the Canadian elites.
Canada has recognized roughly 600 “First Nation” governments or bands, which represent the roughly 5 percent of the population of natives in the country. In recent decades, Canada has gone to extreme lengths to pursue a “reconciliation” process with their indigenous population to remedy past wrongs, real and alleged. These have manifested themselves as ludicrously high federal dole outs for the indigenous government units, which until recently was almost as much as the nation’s defense expenditures. These handouts coincide with a push by the Canadian elite to reshape Canadian society around the original sin of the conquest and subjugation of the natives. Hence, the persistent efforts by liberals to start any conference with a land acknowledgement of the “real” indigenous owners of their land. No deviation from this narrative is allowed—thus, efforts to criminalize the “denial” of the existence of non-existent mass-graves of indigenous children in Canada’s residential schools.
These progressive efforts have had a serious impact on Canada’s legal system, where indigenous groups have threatened to unravel the very basis of property rights and the sovereignty of Canada. Throughout the 20th century, indigenous lawsuits for land claims revolved around alleged Canadian violations of treaties with the First Nations. In recent years, however, indigenous groups have started to prevail in lawsuits without alleging a specific Canadian violation of treaties.
The 1982 Constitution recognizes Aboriginal Titles to land. In 2014, the Canadian Supreme Court further declared that these Titles provide significant rights to the First Nations, including the right to control, possess, use, economically benefit from and proactively manage the land. These Aboriginal Titles were previously understood not to apply to privately owned (fee-simple) land, but a recent court decision in British Columbia has held that Aboriginal Titles and fee-simple land can coexist. While the decision has not explicitly invalidated Canadian private ownership, it has nevertheless caused significant legal disruption. It is legally unstable for both Aboriginals and private land owners to have the same land claim. It has already begun to depress private land values in parts of British Columbia. While the case is underway in British Columbia, other provincial courts are also facing similar challenges. In the province of New Brunswick, for example, a First Nation is claiming nearly half of the province as an Aboriginal Title.
These indigenous land claims may soon threaten the very integrity and sovereignty of Canada by giving First Nations primary ownership over land. The United States should covertly bankroll these indigenous lawsuits to facilitate the disintegration of Canada.
In some scenarios, U.S. support for indigenous land rights may lead to the rise in outright secessionism among natives. Such a contingency could be beneficial if the secessionist natives, such as those in the majority-indigenous territory of Nunavet, are friendly to Washington and seek Free Association with the United States. At the same time, U.S. leaders should be cautious of such indigenous separatism, as an independent, likely left-leaning indigenous nation might be hostile to the United States.
Instead, the primary focus should be to weaponize the “reconciliation” process to demoralize Canadian elitedom by delegitimizing the very existence of the confederation. If heritage Canadians are led to believe that their confederation is a sham, they will lack the energy necessary to keep together a fracturing confederation. These efforts include (1) covert litigation financing for indigenous land lawsuits, (2) State Department funding for Indigenous scholars in Canada, and (3) psychological operations to marginalize “denialism” of indigenous claims.
Conclusion
The National Security Strategy rightfully declares that “the United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity.” In turn, hemispheric dominance requires the United States to flush out “non-Hemispheric competitors [who] have made major inroads into our hemisphere.”
If U.S.-Canadian trade negotiations are sufficient to convince Ottawa to drop its concessions to China and Europe and re-integrate itself into a North American economic area, that’s great. However, if Canada continues to court hostile powers in our hemisphere, U.S. national security may require Washington to pursue a policy of fragmentation to our north.
The truth is, Canada is already fragmenting, and it may collapse as a nation-state even without U.S. intervention. All we need to do is slowly nudge them along their path to the end of history.
