Comment by mmooss
13 hours ago
> The fear about Russia or China is unfounded.
That dismisses the greatest security threats of the era with a word. Most people in that field think those threats are very well-founded. Should Canada take the risk that everything will be fine?
I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA. They can tie their boat to either against the other, but they can't be allies with both.
Can they be allies with neither? They are trying to improve relations with the EU and, most importantly, are members of NATO (where the US is also a member).
Economically not really. China and the USA are the top economies, and China is only going to get more economically powerful, alignment with one or the other in trade at least is inevitable. The EU will be making similar decisions to Canada, and I doubt Canada is going to detach from Europe.
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Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
Given the shit show that is trump tarries and uncertainty, and the threats of 51st state, plenty of Canadians are very happy to turn away from the USA.
I’d be immensely happy if the Chinese EV tarries were scrapped. Given how the us has been behaving, why should we support us automakers.
>Real question: Is any serious person advocating Canada abandon the West for China? What's their analysis here? If anyone has an article I can read I would love to do that.
In Canada? Oh yes, many serious liberals are advocating ending with usa and becoming an ally with china. About a month ago: https://globalnews.ca/news/11490896/canada-strategic-partner...
Which resulted in the USA suspending all trade talks with Canada the next day.
But over the last decade, the liberals also have ordered various anti-china divestments: https://www.scmp.com/news/world/united-states-canada/article...
not to mention: https://electrek.co/2025/10/27/canada-rumored-immently-remov...
Which this 'imminent' factor never happened, but what was imminent was right before this was the announcement of various auto manufacturing moving production out of canada. Not really much to do with china, more of a screw you to the big 3.
China and Canada dont have a free trade agreement. The FIPA agreement is likely to be ended soon as it's possible.
Going from the antagonistic to a major trade deal and changing to chinese alliance would be a bizarre change though.
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> Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest [threat?] to their security is China or the USA.
How do you get China in that list? Canada would most likely be challenged over their stake in the Arctic and Russia is plainly the greatest threat in that regard, not China. Russia has invested a great deal into arctic exploration and exploitation and pretty clearly sees the region as free real estate up for the taking. America too has a large stake in the Arctic, but has developed comparably fewer arctic capabilities than Russia. For Canada to have any chance of repelling a Russian invasion of their arctic territory would require America to help them, which under present American leadership would be a piss poor position for Canada to be in (not only because Trump has suggested annexing Canada himself, but also because he's said similar about Greenland, underscoring America's own desire to take that same arctic territory.)
Now, I don't doubt that China would also like the Arctic for themselves, but from Canada's perspective, the relative threat of China must be less than that of Russia and America.
Russia can't even invade Ukraine right, I think the world sees them as pretty washed up as far as national security goes (besides them having nukes). China is like Russia, except richer, more disciplined, and not dumb. Canada also has a higher GDP than Russia despite having a much smaller population.
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"Canada right now is trying to figure out if the greatest their to their security is China or the USA."
I very much doubt that is true. Unless the Canadian government get's their information only from "truth" social.
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The USA is a fantastic ally! When a small aircraft was recently hijacked from Vancouver international airport, guess which Air Force came to our rescue? Thank you!!
While there’s a lot of news and media about trade wars with the USA, the vast majority 85% of it remains under the free trade agreement. China does not even come close to a free and open market for us and their state sponsored corporate espionage is a real and growing danger.
Neither here nor there, but the plane was hijacked in Victoria and then flown over to Vancouver.
(Only picking this particular nit because, as a Victorian, we constantly live in the shadow of our bigger brother, so I need to shout us out when I can. And I fly out of the flying club that the plane was hijacked from, so it's a story that's particularly close to my heart.)
China didn't strongly suggest that Canada should become its 23rd or 24th province. Also, if the USA keeps dipping its feet into fascism every other 4 year election cycle, every other western democracy is going to start pumping lots of resources into a plan B
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They might be more worried about the recent attempts to annex them.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/25/donald...
I'd imagine the threats of annexation are more concerning than the tariffs.
Greatest security threat so far turned out to be USA.
Russia is weak, they cant even take ukraine. To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners. Since they havent done it, they either dont want to or there's something external to canada protecting it. Either case, an unfounded threat.
>I don't know much about Canada's current plans and how effective they would be.
Ya that original comment about russia/china wasnt a significant part of my post anyway.
>China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners. Since they havent done it, they either dont want to or there's something external to canada protecting it. Either case, an unfounded threat.
China has zero modern real world combat experience though. they would get steam rolled in any peer to peer or near peer conflict imo.
The idea that China is going to ship 300 million troops to Canada seems absurd on its face. There is just no geopolitical scenario where that happens.
This is more about Canada having enough troops to contribute if NATO decides to intervene in a China-Taiwan war.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million
Maybe 1% of that. Also, numbers are important, but so are equipment, training, and leadership.
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million
You may want to check your facts:) The PLA is estimated to be about 3M poeple at the high end of estimates and probably closer to 2.5M people.
Which puts you at 100x too large:)
> China is strong, their standing army is probably 300 million and if they invaded canada. Our <100,000 CAF will be goners.
Having 300 million people and being able to move them across the Pacific Ocean are two very different things.
Yeah, China's building a lot of landing craft. Are those landing craft capable of a 10,000 mile voyage? I doubt it. Does China have a way of loading and launching those ships 100 miles from Canada? I doubt it.
TBH I think taking land is stupid, at least taking a lot of land is stupid because you are left with a huge cost and people who hate you. The US has already gone past that point and I doubt China wants to go back this route. Taiwan for sure, but the rest of the world? meh.
I wouldn't call Russia weak. They have their strengths, one of which is insensitivity to losses. They can grind 20000 soldiers to get a small town, and nobody cares. Also, total control over population, brainwashing the youth, military-oriented economy.
Also, Russia knows how to operate in Arctic, and has real combat experience that none of NATO countries have.
> To think they'd have a shadow of a chance against NATO is a joke.
Which NATO with what army? Do you think Bundeswehr is combat-ready? Is society in any NATO country (except Poland and Finland) ready to fight?
Russians will easily take Baltic countries, for example, is it NATO? Will NATO commit into full scale war with Russia over Estonia? They don't even have guts to block shadow fleet tankers and shoot russian drones over their own territory. Or forget doing something, they can't even stop buying russian oil and gas, because their population will pay more and be upset.
Ukraine stopped them like a bag of teeth would grind teeth of someone who decided to eat them. West is not Ukrainians, even after all these wake-up calls.
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