Introduction

Democracy, Donald Trump and the Canada-US Security Community

“…Donald Trump's election catalyzed a rapid deterioration in Canada-US relations. Numerous actions taken by his administration challenge Canada's national interests, including undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and weakening US commitment to collective defence, threatened cancellation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), involving Canada in the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China, weakening the nuclear arms limitation regime and undermining global climate change governance (see Hilmer and Lagassé, 2018; Carment and Sands, 2019). In May 2019, the administration reversed 30 years of precedent by characterizing Canada's legal claims with respect to the Northwest Passage as “illegitimate” (Lajeunesse and Huebert, 2019).…”

“…Despite efforts to reflect normalcy in what remains the deepest bilateral relationship in the world, Canada-US relations under Trump have been rocked by diplomatic disputes across a range of issues, including a multilateral trade war, contentious free trade renegotiations, US-China competition, numerous policy disagreements, personal attacks by the president against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, candid “hot mic” comments by Trudeau about President Trump, and the ineffective American response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent research on Canada-US relations varies in its assessment but emphasizes that Trump's pursuit of a vague “America First” foreign policy, defined by reversing US-led international institutionalism and rejecting multilateral diplomacy, poses serious challenges to Canada's national interests (Hillmer and Lagassé, 2018; Carment and Sands, 2019). At the time of writing, Canada-US relations remain poor, with limited prospects for improvement absent a change of leadership in the United States.…”

The merits and limitation of incentive theory in application to gray zone conflicts.

“…In the context of gray zone, one hypothesis is that when states choose to engage in, or forgo intervention, the decisions are often based on the characteristics of the existing organized movement(s). These create variation in permissive conditions for the nation to conduct cross-border operations (Carment & Belo, 2019). For example, movement characteristics are often associated with ideological (nationalistic) or material (economic) attachment by the ethnic diaspora to their homeland—or the supporting state.…”