In Canada, I saw how Trump is ripping North America apart – and how hard its bond will be to repair | Andy Beckett

AThe wealthy countries are often learned but defined gently, to be close to a more powerful country – geographically or diplomatic – can be an unstable existence. All that is required is a new aggressive government in the strongest state, and the relationship between economic and military cooperation is relatively relatively to exploitation, and even threatens.

Since the opening of Donald Trump II, this perception has passed through the West, but anywhere more concerned From Canada. Its borders with the United States are the longest in the world: 5,525 miles often empty and difficult to defend land, lakes and rivers. Toronto and Montreal were not the two largest cities in Canada, only a few hours to the north, were you dealing with them in an American army tank?

Earlier this month, I spent a week in some of these weak extensions in particular from Ontario and Cubic, and visiting my daughter at the university and facing a new and more worried group Canada. Sometimes, given that the trains that I crawled along the crowded Canadian railway pass, the surfaces of the individual American buildings were clear, sparkling in the cold sun across the border. The feeling that I was a foreigner in a tense place, was disputed when I lived in West Germany, near the Eastern German border, during the early 1980s, one of the most stages of the Cold War.

Until Trump began to talk frankly about making Canada his country.Country 51“It was a silly comparison. But there is no longer anything.” The Americans want our resources, water, lands and our country. ” The new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carne saidIn his first speech as a liberal leader. “If they succeed, they will destroy our way of life.” It is assumed that one of the most harmonious relations – and strategic importance – between rich Western countries has changed radically.

The Canadians who spoke to them, in stores, at bus stations and stations, at home and e -mail, were generally less dramatic about the position of Carney, who has a good reputation as a leader in creation, and now a. Elections to win next month. There was some anger from the United States – Britain’s failure to condemn Trump’s threats against the country of Commonwealth. One of the academics of Montreal told me, referring to King Charles: “The king is proud of his compatibility with a tyrant … A recent invitation to Trump to make a second state visit to Britain. “The bold response from us in Canada is to cut our ties with ownership.”

However, often, people shook their heads or wrapped their eyes in Trump’s behavior. People told me that he was crazy, messy, completely inconsistent, not like a constant and realistic Canadian, implicitly. There were satisfactory smiles in the definitions A slice in the American stock market. However, people also said, Trump’s threats mean that Canadian life should change deeply. Although these changes were a topic that was generally avoided – with the exception of a baker in Montreal, which sold me some fermented dough while we discussed whether Canada would need nuclear weapons.

Relations between America and Canada were not always peaceful. The United States invaded Canada in 1775 and 1812, without success. During the twenties and thirties of the last century, it developed a more virtual virtual plan, the Red War Plan. In basic ways, fear of the United States was in the form of Canada, and to encourage its unification from what was originally different areas, as well as the decision to locate its capital in Ottawa, beyond the border from its other eastern cities.

As in Britain, the Canadian state in the middle of the twentieth century sought to create what was called a “special relationship” with the United States. The economy is directed towards export in Canada-necessary because of the relatively populated and scattered population in the country-on the American markets. American companies have obtained access to booming Canadian consumers, often near hearts in America. During the Cold War, both countries of Canada saw a major place to build defenses against the Russian attack.

With Trump, apparently closer to Moscow than Ottawa, the North America alliance may have actually died. According to the region, Canada is the second largest country in the world after Russia, but its armed forces are small, about half of Britain. The feeling that Canada has been gathered militarily by the United States, may explain the huge “tone of Trump” flag that I have seen fly from behind the Beck August truck in Kingson, usually polite city, Ontario, the home of the Royal Military College in Canada.

Economic relations will take longer to detect. There are still the California Islands on the supermarket shelves in Montreal, and my trains were passed through the endless cargo vehicles from the famous American shipping company at Union Pacific. However, the number of Canadians visiting the United States had already decreased: last month it was low as it was during the last stages of the epidemic. In this, as in a lot, Canada may be an early adoption of new habits regarding the United States, which then spread through the remainder of the liberal West. For left -wing foreigners, American and American places may lose a lot of their attractiveness, because the United States has become very authoritarian and hostile through such an ideal American character.

Canada self -followed another path. “Canada is a mosaic,” says Carney, and letters of supporting the diversity of her government and companies, as if she was calculated to end the American conservatives. In addition to increasingly water and mineral supply and restaurant, Canada – although its great inequality and very heavy carbon opportunities – offer a growing model that is increasingly different from how to live in the continent of North America.

Will Trump or any hard right successors in the White House allow this provocation? Another American invasion may not be imminent. Trump has already has a lot of ambitious policy goals. Conquest, not to mention the occupation, as an enormous and physical extremist country like Canada, will be a frightening possibility even for Republicans who move it imagination.

However, it is also difficult to imagine that US -Canadian relations are quickly returning to their previous state. Many imbalances and contrast have been indicated, and many threats have been made. I lost confidence. Political professions are made on both sides by acting strongly towards the neighboring government.

Canadians are less famous than Americans because they are the flags of science, but there were many of them flying along the border this month. It may be many years before descending.