Donald Trump This Tuesday, on its Truth Social platform, it published an image altered with Artificial Intelligence in which the main European leaders appeared sitting in front of their table in the Oval Office. The tenant of the White House showed them a map of America with the geography of the United States, Venezuela… and Canada dyed with the stars and stripes.
The original image is real. The British Keir Starmerthe Italian one Giorgia Melonithe German Friedrich Merzthe French Emmanuel Macronthe Dutch Mark Rutte or the German Ursula von der Leyen They visited Washington last August to welcome Volodímir Zelenskiin need of reinforcements to counter Trump’s pro-Russian impulse.
But the map included in the image, which reveals his expansionist desires, was false. He was not in that late summer meeting in the Oval Office.
After turning Venezuela into a kind of protectorate administered by a chavismo without Nicolas Maduroand after verbalizing his decision to stick the pike in Greenland, Trump once again places Canada in his sights, a neighboring country that he had threatened to annex before even returning to the White House.
The Republican president took to calling the then prime minister “governor” of the 51st state of the United States, Justin Trudeauwho avoided his provocations. But Trump did not show the same belligerence with his successor, Mark Carneywhom he even called “president” in a slip.
And Carney has been more forceful with the White House. In his speech on Tuesday at the Davos Forum, the premier Canadian, former governor of the Bank of England and the Bank of Canada, closed ranks with the threatened Greenland and with the countries that may now suffer tariffs from the United States for having deployed troops on the Arctic island, under Danish sovereignty.
“If the great powers abandon even the pretext of norms and values to pursue their power and interests unhindered, the gains of transactionalism will be increasingly difficult to reproduce,” warned Carney, who avoided any mention of Trump.
The Canadian leader went one step further and cited the Czech Vaclav Havel to call on the “middle powers” to stop pretending that the rules-based international order still works and instead build coalitions to survive: “Call the system what it is: a period of growing rivalry between great powers in which the strongest pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”
Canada prepares
Carney’s Canada does not get bogged down in rhetoric. According to what the local newspaper reported this Tuesday The Globe and Mailits Armed Forces have simulated an invasion of the United States to be prepared in case this hypothetical scenario materializes.
The Canadian military reaction reproduces part of the Ukrainian model, successful in repelling the large-scale Russian invasion of February 2022. It also copies, always according to the Canadian newspaper, some of the insurgency tactics that the Afghan mujahideen once used.
The experts consulted by The Globe and Mail They clarify that this scenario is “unlikely”, but the measure breaks a precedent established in the last century. That is how long Canada, a founding member of NATO, had not rehearsed its own defense in the event of a large-scale invasion.
The war simulation is based on the premise that the US invasion begins on the southern border, and anticipates that the enemy troops take the country’s strategic positions in the first 48 hours.
The Canadian Armed Forces also assume that they do not have in their ranks the necessary number of troops or the equipment required to repel a conventional attack from the United States.
This explains why the hypothetical defense of the North American country depends on small groups of irregular military personnel or armed civilians. Groups that would resort to ambushes, sabotage, drones or attack and retreat tactics with the aim of causing a high number of casualties in the enemy ranks.
The military sources cited by The Globe and Mail They assure, however, that relations with the United States Army “remain positive” and that the parties are collaborating in the development of the Golden Dome, an anti-missile shield to defend the continent from a possible air attack from China or Russia.
The Carney Government has not commented, for the moment, on sending troops to Greenland, a step forced by Trump’s threats that the Danes, Norwegians, Swedes or French have already taken, exposing themselves to the risk of imposing tariffs. “These are decisions made by the Minister of National Defense together with the Chief of the Defense Staff,” the Minister of Foreign Affairs said this Tuesday, Anita Anandpresent in Davos.