Neither vassal nor orphan

To protect ourselves without surrendering.

On 17 September 2026, the Prime Minister addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg, a few weeks before the summit meant to seal Canada's new partnership with the Union. That same month, without a line struck from the budget, work on modernizing NORAD went ahead: 38.6 billion dollars over twenty years, a binational exercise under way, an over-the-horizon radar on the drawing board. The same government, in the same season, tightens its bond with Washington and drops anchor in Europe. That is the fact. The debate that has seized on it sees only a contradiction, and demands that we choose.

It is online that the debate hardens, and one camp there makes a case worth taking seriously. Set aside the American administration's bluster, its partisans say, and security cooperation has never broken off; it remains the only true bulwark against China, the one threat that counts; and turning toward a Europe already honeycombed by Beijing would mean leaving shelter for the storm. I do not brush this argument aside. It holds, on at least three points. But it ties together things that must be undone, and it is this knot that manufactures the illusion of a forced choice.

For two words are being confused here. Security is an end; dependence is only a means, and the costliest of them. A protector who knows his charge has no other recourse will always, in the end, present the bill: in goods, in deference, or in sovereignty. The real question is therefore not behind whom Canada should fall in, as if it had to choose itself a suzerain. It is on what terms an ally remains an ally without slipping to the rank of vassal. To protect ourselves without surrendering: that is the whole of it.

This issue follows that thread. I will first grant the continental argument its strongest form, for one only surpasses what one has first served in good faith. I will then untangle what it blurs: threats of different natures coming from opposite quarters, a way out spirited away, a blind wager on the strong one's intentions, and that notion of a Europe "in Beijing's pocket" which the facts belie. I will then set down a single rule, and an unsparing one: a relationship raises us when it builds our autonomy, and diminishes us when it merely trades one tutelage for another. I will apply it in equal measure to Washington, to Brussels, and to Beijing. Our own government included, whose recent strategic partnership with China must pass the same test. And I will draw from it the only bearing worthy of a clear-eyed middle power: to hold firm the floor of its security, and to raise the ceiling elsewhere.

I. Doing justice to the bulwark

Let us first grant the continental camp its due. Its argument is no mere reflex of dependence: it is a reading, and on three points it sees true.

First, cooperation has not given way. We forget it for listening too closely to the podium: while the American administration storms, the general staffs go on working. The funds to modernize NORAD are voted and committed; a binational exercise is held this year as in years past; the over-the-horizon radar advances; Five Eyes intelligence flows without a break. When a Chinese surveillance balloon crossed North American skies in 2023, it was the binational command that saw and tracked it. The din is on the marquee; the work is done backstage. And it holds, because it rests on interests and institutions, not on the mood of one man. That is the first fact no one can deny.

Second, China is indeed the underlying threat. Here the adversary is right, and it must be said without hedging. Beijing does not contest this or that border or tariff: it is at work remaking the order of the world, and it is giving itself the means, economic, technological, military. This is no fit of temper; it is a program, held to with constancy over a generation. Before a power of that size, no middle country weighs anything alone. Canada's security, over that long horizon, cannot be thought without American weight in the balance. That China is the one threat reshaping the entire structure, the continental camp is right to hammer home.

Third, Europe does not replace geography. It is the obvious thing the fervour of the moment makes us forget. NORAD is the only binational command in the world; it hugs a border that cannot be moved and a continent that is shared, like it or not. Brussels will not watch over North American skies; the Canadian Arctic has Alaska for its nearest neighbour, not the Baltic. And there is the hazard of the maneuver: to loosen the American tie before the European anchor has bitten would be to stand exposed between the two. A diversification of façade, one that damages the sure relationship without building the other, would combine the faults of both. The continental camp is right to warn of it: one does not slip the anchor before the new hold takes.

Gather these three truths and the argument seems closed. Cooperation holds; China is the threat that counts; America is irreplaceable, and diversification perilous. One would be tempted to conclude with the adversary: deepen Washington, distrust Europe, keep your head down and your step in line.

It is not closed. For this argument, however solid it looks, holds together three truths and two confusions, and it is from mixing them that it draws its force. Let us undo the knot.

II. Undoing the knot

Three truths, then: cooperation holds, China is the underlying threat, geography cannot be replaced. I have granted them without reserve, and I hold to them. But the argument does not stop at the facts; it draws a conclusion, and it is in the passage from fact to conclusion that two confusions slip in. The first bears on the threat. The second, on the alternative. Tied together, they make the forced choice seem real. Untied, they dissolve it.

A threat with only one face

The continental camp counts one threat and forgets another. China it sees: distant, systemic, a generation away. The coercion that has actually struck Canada these past months it does not see, or feigns not to see. For where, this past year, did they come from, the tariffs, the pressure on Bombardier, the "fifty-first state" rhetoric, the use of our dependence as a lever? Not from Beijing. From Washington.

Let me be clearly understood: these are not two threats of the same nature. One remakes the order of the world; the other leans on a neighbour. One is structural and distant; the other immediate and close. But both are real, and they come from opposite quarters. A doctrine that keeps only the distant one and stays blind to the near one is not rigorous. It is blind in one eye.

Where does the blindness come from? From a tacit wager on intentions. One judges an ally by three measures, not one: what it can do, capability; what can be foreseen of it, constancy; what it wishes us, intent. The continental camp marks America on the first and takes the other two for granted. Yet it is precisely constancy and intent that these past months have thrown into doubt. A protector very capable, but unpredictable and quick to put a price on your need of him, is not of the same class as a sure ally. To confuse the two is to confuse strength with reliability.

This is why the choice pressed on us is false. "America or China" folds onto a single axis, for or against Washington, what should open across several. Between subjection to the strong and delivery to his rival lies a whole space: the one where a country builds its own capabilities, gives itself options, weaves with other middle powers ties that belong to no empire. That space, the argument spirits away. It is its master stroke: to shrink the world to two boxes so that we consent to be filed into one.

Europe would already be taken

There remains the objection that condemns the alternative: Europe would be in Beijing's pocket, and to turn there, naïve. Here the argument confuses two things that must be kept apart, commerce and allegiance.

That Europe depends heavily on Chinese trade, no one disputes. That it is won over to China, the facts belie. The Union's official doctrine is not alignment: it is the reduction of risk, not decoupling. Brussels names Beijing in one breath partner, competitor, and systemic rival; it has equipped itself with an anti-coercion instrument, struck Chinese electric vehicles with duties, and tightened its control of foreign subsidies. Its Parliament reproaches China for seeking to remake the international order and for aligning with Moscow. This is not the portrait of a bloc in a pocket. It is that of a bloc arming itself against its own dependence, which is precisely what we should be doing.

Europe's real weakness lies elsewhere, narrower, and it must be named without varnish: cohesion. The Twenty-Seven do not speak with one voice; some, like Greece through the port of Piraeus, still spare Beijing's interests. There is the real flaw. But a flaw is not a disqualification, and recent events have proved it better than any argument could. Orbán's Hungary was taken for the Trojan horse of China and Russia within the Union. This spring, Hungarians dismissed him at the ballot box; the new government has swung back toward Brussels so far that Moscow now threatens to cut off its energy. The supposed outpost has changed riders. There is all the difference between a fixed position and a majority, which unmakes itself as it was made. A bloc whose pieces a single vote can turn over is in no one's pocket. An imperfect partner, you weigh; a false exit, you rule out. Europe is the first case, not the second. You go in with your eyes open; you do not look away because it is not perfect.

The common knot

Undo the two confusions and their root appears, single: the idea that dependence is security. It is not. And the continental camp, in wanting to tighten it, saws off the branch it sits on. For its coercion is itself what drives allies toward Beijing: each draws nearer to China because it dreads Washington, and that holds for Ottawa as much as for Berlin. The remedy we are sold, deepened dependence, feeds the very ill we are told to fear, the drift toward China. And the remedy we are forbidden, autonomy, is the only one that checks it.

If dependence is not security, then another criterion is needed to tell the tie that protects from the tie that enslaves. A single one. It is that criterion I now set down.

III. A single measure

Let us set it down plainly, to move forward. A relationship raises us when it builds our autonomy; it diminishes us when it trades one tutelage for another. That is the only measure. It does not ask whom we draw near to, but what that drawing-near leaves in our hand: options, or chains. Let us apply it without indulgence, and to all, our own included.

To Washington first. The American tie is the floor and the foundation, and one does not stave in the floor one stands on. Geography is not up for negotiation; NORAD has no equivalent; shared intelligence protects us every day. That tie must be deepened, not weakened. But to deepen it is not to abandon oneself to it. The measure cuts clean: what raises us is to bring the alliance a weight of its own, capabilities, a defence that counts, a border held, so that America needs us as much as we need her. What diminishes us is to have nothing to offer but our docility. An ally that carries weight is not an ally one drops; it is an ally one respects. Dependence does not buy respect; value does.

To Brussels next. Entry into the European framework passes the test, and passes it well. It does not place us under a new tutelage: it opens markets to us, supply chains, joint procurement, an Arctic interoperability we did not have. The German submarines, access to the rearmament fund: these are capabilities, not symbols. This is diversification as it ought to be: not a pivot of mood, but a patient work of anchoring. On one condition, which the measure also imposes: that it stay substance and not become display. A diversification of façade would cost us the sure relationship without giving us the other. So long as it builds, it raises us. The day it merely posed, it would deceive us.

To Beijing last, and it is here the measure turns back on our own. In January, our own government sealed with China a "strategic partnership" of five pillars, energy foremost. I do not condemn it at a stroke: to talk with the world's second economy, to seek outlets when a neighbour shuts his own, is sound policy. But the measure spares no one, not even the Prime Minister. A commercial outlet raises us; a new dependence diminishes us. To tie our energy, our critical minerals, our supply chains to a power that has already shown, elsewhere, that it cuts off supplies to punish, would not be to loosen a leash: it would be to change leashes. The test holds in a line: dialogue, yes; dependence, no. Let us not confuse the negotiating table with allegiance, nor the business opportunity with alignment. What we refuse Washington, to put our security in a single hand, we must refuse Beijing. The rule holds for all, or it holds for nothing.

A single measure, three relationships, one verdict: hold firm the American floor, raise the European ceiling, keep the Chinese door ajar without staking the house on it. None of these ties must become, in its turn, a ceiling on our autonomy. For the aim is not to change masters. The aim is to have none.

It remains to say what all this demands of a country like ours. That is the matter of the last movement.

IV. The bearing of a middle power

A doctrine is proclaimed, then filed away in a drawer; a bearing is held, every day, in every act. Canada does not have to choose a camp once and for all. It has to conduct itself, constantly, as a country that surrenders to no one.

Two postures mark the edges of the path, and both must be refused. The vassal has security without dignity: protected, but ordered to bend. The orphan has dignity without security: free, but alone and exposed. The one has traded his rank for shelter; the other, his shelter for a pride that does not defend him. We must yield to neither. Between the two poles runs a narrow way: that of the ally who carries enough weight to be beholden to no one.

That way comes at a price, and it is not rhetorical. It asks that we build what we lack: a defence that counts, supply chains that hold, mastery of our resources and our minerals, in short capabilities of our own, for a country weighs only by what it brings. It asks that we keep several ties at once, each with its own way out, so that no single hand holds our security. It asks, finally, two virtues that politics rarely joins: patience, because capabilities are built in years, not in press releases; and a real backbone, because one must know how to say no to the strong without throwing oneself into the arms of his rival. Substance, not display; all the rest is scenery.

Make no mistake, for all that: a country of our size does not escape dependence, and to claim otherwise would be blindness of the opposite kind. We will always depend on some greater than ourselves. Geography binds us to America; energy and markets bind us to the world. The autonomy I speak of is not autarky: that island does not exist, and is only an illusion. It is something else, humbler and more exacting at once: the refusal to be captive to a single hand. One does not depend less; one depends on several, on one's own terms, with exits. There is all the difference between suffering a tie and choosing it. It is no small thing: it is the difference that separates the vassal from the ally.

It is by that gauge that we should watch the season's ballet unfolding before us. The Prime Minister in Strasbourg, the NORAD funds flowing without a cut, the door left ajar to Beijing: taken separately, each feeds a camp. Taken together, and held by a single rule, they cease to be a contradiction. They trace a hand seeking to hold the helm rather than be towed along. Whether that hand is firm or unsteady, the future will tell; but the course itself is the right one.

To protect ourselves without surrendering: this is no slogan, it is a discipline. It is not won once and for all. It is held, or lost, with each decision. Neither vassal nor orphan, but standing, and clear-eyed. That is exactly what it means, where security is concerned, to see straight.