China is not an option, but a reality. I wasn’t consulted when people started buying massive amounts of cheap crap from china. Now, we are reliant on them for many things. Of course i agree that we should deal preferentially deal with democracies. Your strawman arguments are tiresome.
You are right about china, and until Trump started with the “51st state” by “economic coercion” i was totally opposed to cooperation with china. i still am, if i am being honest: i should have said “the only advantage”.
as for targeting canada - i am indeed worried about russian and chinese interference in our political system. however, us interference is just as bad. maga is spreading in canada with US dollars driving the advance. we are awash in american fake news and disinformation. americans spy on everything we do. all of our government data is hosted on azure cloud, and microsoft has admitted to european parliament that it has to obey us laws first - that is why germany is moving away from MS to other providers. we should do the same.
I would be delighted to build closer relationships with functioning democracies, but they are getting fewer and harder to rely on. meloni is a fascist, as is orban and erdogan - and that is just within nato! even japan just went far-right. for now we are stuck doing business with both china and the us. among the countries rated as « full democracies » by the economist, the largest economies are germany and uk; we already cooperate and trade with them.
i’m just saying that i feel like the threat at our doorstep is scarier than the threat across the ocean.
I am not a china fan but it does have one important advantage over the US right now: China is not actively threatening us.
If the americans ever wake up and hang trump from a lamppost, we could pivot back. a lot of stuff would have to change.
ideally, canada should be friends with other democracies. unfortunately, many other democracies are in the process of electing far-right whackadoos and mini-trumps. we don’t have an abundance of choices.
Shit just keeps getting worse down there. Plus they sent the most ridiculous bag of farts as the US ambassador to Canada. This Hoekstra idiot is so foul that he has done more to unite Canadians than anyone except Trump himself. He is a serious contemder for most hated man in Canada.
Hmm. I’ll take Canada’s stagnation over america’s precipitous decline any day.