U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent actions in Venezuela and his overall strategy for the Western Hemisphere should serve as a warning to all Canadians and require a more fulsome response from its political leaders, Canada’s former ambassador to the United Nations says.
Bob Rae, who finished his five-year ambassadorship last November, told Global News in an interview that the U.S. under Trump is rejecting multilateralism in favour of asserting its dominance over the hemisphere, without “any notion of legality.”
“We’re basically being told (by) the Americans, ‘We will do whatever we can get away with, and who’s going to stop us?’” he said. “Which is a license to take over any country that they feel is getting in their way.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore. This is a new ballgame and we need to understand the consequences of this.”
Trump had already raised fears in Canada and elsewhere with his new national security strategy that seeks to restore and update the Monroe Doctrine, a 200-year-old foreign policy statement that envisioned American dominance over the Western Hemisphere and was used to justify U.S. interventions in Latin America for over a century.
The seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife by U.S. forces over the weekend — as well as Trump’s subsequent threats against Greenland, Colombia and Cuba — have underscored the reality of that strategy.
Although Trump has not similarly revived his threats of making Canada the 51st U.S. state, Rae said that doesn’t mean Canadians should rest easy.
“We’re on the menu,” he said. “If you don’t think we’re on the menu just because he hasn’t mentioned the words ’51st state,’ I think that’s really missing the boat in terms of what this administration is about.”
He pointed to comments made to CNN on Monday by Trump’s deputy chief of staff and top advisor Stephen Miller — who at one point said the “future of the free world depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology” — as well as a U.S. State Department social media post that declared “this is OUR hemisphere,” as further proof of the Trump administration’s mindset.
At the very least, Rae and other experts say, Trump’s strategy calls into question the sovereignty of Canada and other U.S. neighbours over their own national interest, security, and critical resources.
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“It kind of looks like we’re on the road to being downgraded from a sovereign neighbour to a U.S. junior resource appendage,” Fen Osler Hampson, a professor of international affairs at Carleton University, said in an interview.
As the U.S. looks to take control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves after Maduro’s capture, Hampson says Canada’s own energy infrastructure is on the table along with critical mineral reserves, Arctic resources and “anything that the United States deems as important to its national security.”
“The U.S. is going to put us under enormous pressure, quite frankly, to follow its lead when it comes to China, and they’re going to look very carefully at the kinds of investments that other countries make in our own natural resources,” he said.
“We’re going to be under Washington’s thumb, whether we like it or not.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters Tuesday in Paris, where he was meeting with European allies about Ukraine, that “a functioning, not corrupt Venezuelan economy” that produces more oil will be “more stable for the Western Hemisphere.”
Canadian oil and energy exports will remain “competitive” under that framework, he added.
Carney has previously said Canada will be looking for ways to “compete” with the U.S. on international trade amid increasingly difficult free trade negotiations.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News on Sunday that the administration is “not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors and rivals of the United States.”
Carney on Tuesday did not directly criticize the U.S. operation that seized Maduro, whose removal Carney said is “welcome news” and “creates the possibility for a democratic transition in Venezuela.”
He did comment directly on Trump’s assertion that the U.S. “need(s)” Greenland, saying the Danish territory’s future must be decided by its people, and that Canada is doing its part to increase NATO’s Arctic security.
Foreign policy experts have told Global News that world leaders are likely reluctant to criticize Trump directly in fear of angering a “volatile White House.” That’s particularly true for Canada as it faces delicate negotiations aimed at renewing the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) on free trade this summer.
Rae said a more forceful rebuke of Trump’s foreign policy strategy is necessary.
“We think … maybe if we don’t say anything, maybe he won’t notice us. And that is foolhardy,” he said.
“We need to level with Canadians in making clear the nature of the threat that is posed directly to our integrity and to our sovereignty, but also the threat that’s posed to our prosperity, to our well-being.”
All Canadian citizens, in turn, Rae added, “have an obligation to engage now in this conversation” about the future of Canada as an independent country.
That means expanding the conversation beyond the trade negotiations underway to the larger question of “our existence.”
“The Americans are saying things that undermine our future and dictate our future in a way that puts us in an impossible position,” he said. “And we’re not saying anything about that. That’s the silence that has to be broken.”
Hampson said the silence on Venezuela also undermines Canada’s and Europe’s ability to condemn Russia for its war in Ukraine, or China for threatening Taiwan, under the same standards of international law he says the U.S. has just violated.
He said Carney is right to pursue stronger ties with Europe, and that only a united front will help push back on U.S. imperialism.
“A world that is going to be carved up into spheres of influence … dominated by the U.S., Russia and China, with each claiming veto rights over neighbours and resources, is profoundly damaging to middle powers like Canada,” he said.
“It’s going to be very important to hang together. Otherwise, we hang separately.”
—With files from Global’s Eric Sorensen and Bryan Mullan