Siege

 Yesterday, Donald Trump admitted openly on social media that his goal in imposing ruinous tariffs on Canada is to forcibly incorporate them into the United States. And such is the chaos of our times, that this revelation didn't even register as the biggest news item of the day. 

But there it was, spelled out in black and white, for all to read. Trump explicitly framed the tariffs as leverage to force Canada to accept U.S. annexation: "The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished Fifty First State," he wrote. "This would make all Tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear."

Let us pause for a moment to appreciate the true madness of this. The president of the United States is saying openly that he is trying to break the back of another nation's economy in order to crush their will to resist and conquer their territory. And he is saying this to an ally, with whom we share a military mutual defense pact and intelligence-sharing agreement. 

One struggles to come up with historical comparisons. The first thing that comes to mind is to say that Trump's behavior is frankly Stalinist... but I doubt even Stalin, when he was withholding grain shipments to Ukraine, would have taken to the then-equivalent of social media to declare explicitly that yes, his goal was indeed to deliberately starve them into submission. 

What Trump is really proposing here is a kind of siege. He is declaring a war of attrition against a close neighbor and ally—deliberately trying to cut off their resources and cripple their economy, so that they will have no choice but to accept U.S. rule. He aims to make laid-off Canadian auto and steel workers so desperate that they beg for annexation from the south. 

How—as a U.S. citizen—can one register one's disgust with this unprovoked outrage against our neighbor? How can one demonstrate one's solidarity with an unoffending friendly country that has never done us the slightest harm, throughout more than a century of close friendship and partnership? 

Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare suggests the best approach is to keep buying Canadian products—and simply eat the cost of the tariffs no matter how high Trump raises them. And I endorse this recommendation. But, I have to admit—it is less than a fully satisfying middle finger to Trump. Because then his administration just gets to pocket the extra revenue. 

We're in a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose situation here. 

The best we can really do here, then, is just to keep telling our Canadian friends that Trump does not speak for us, and that we will never betray them through our own actions. Trump may be laying siege to their country. But we can be conscientious objectors to his policies. 

As Edna St. Vincent Millay put it during another era of U.S. imperialism and aggression (in a poem called, fittingly, "Conscientious Objector"), we should not be "spies in the land of the living" who would "deliver men to death." She concludes: "Brother, the password and the plans to our city are safe with me; never through me/ Shall you be overcome." 

That is what I wish to say to the besieged Canadians. I don't know how exactly to help you. I don't know how to stop Trump. Would that I could see a way. But I can promise you this: whatever Trump does will be with no help on my part. "Never through me/ Shall you be overcome."