Canada is waking up to a harsher security order in which its closest ally is both indispensable and increasingly unpredictable. That was the warning from Roland Paris, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa and former foreign policy adviser to Justin Trudeau, speaking to TVP World about Donald Trump’s new national security strategy. On Ukraine, Paris said President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is under pressure to show flexibility without surrendering his country’s future. Kyiv, he argued, “has to navigate their relations with the Trump administration, and they certainly don't want to be perceived in Washington and by Trump in particular, as an obstacle to peace.” At the same time, Trump’s strategy “talked about trying to reestablish what it called strategic stability with Russia,” but “doesn't seem to recognize that strategic stability with Russia is going to require strength in order to deter Russia.” For America’s allies, the most striking passages are about Europe and domestic politics. Paris called the document “quite... conciliatory towards Russia and very harsh towards European allies,” and warned that it “talks about directly interfering in the domestic politics of democratic countries in order to promote more MAGA or right-wing populist-type movements and parties.” It also “does set out a vision of spheres of influence in the world where powerful countries should have more or less open capacity to decide what they do within their own regions,” reviving a Monroe Doctrine logic with unsettling implications for Canada. “I think Vladimir Putin continues to be deterred by NATO,” Paris said. But “the Trump uncertainty about the American commitment to Europe is the big problem… it undermines the stated goal of the Trump administration, which is to restore, quote unquote, strategic stability with Russia.” Amid that uncertainty, Paris believes Ottawa has an opportunity—and a responsibility—to step up. “In my mind, I think that Canada is a more reliable partner than the United States,” he said, even if the U.S. remains “a more important partner… because of the scale of the American economy and security guarantees.” With Canadian defense spending “expected to rise very significantly over the next few years,” he argued, Europe and Canada will need each other more than ever.
