Jen Gerson: Easter thoughts on a world renewed by war

Do Americans want to lead the free world, or not?

It’s a dreary mix of rain and snow on Easter Sunday here in Calgary, and apart from the squeals of delight of my children as they raced around the house tracking down tinfoiled chocolate eggs, there are good reasons to feel a little glum.

Conservatives in the U.S. are seriously debating the usefulness of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the loss of which would break the world as we know it. I have been chewing on Andrew Sullivan’s Friday column:

“Trump saying he wants to leave NATO — a defensive alliance — because it refused to join an offensive war of choice, was a new low. (NATO wasn’t in Vietnam either.) And this kind of breach is, at this point, irreparable. One Trump term could be rationalized away by our friends and allies. Not two. This is America now.”

Easter has me turning not just to matters of the present moment, but also to questions of rebirth, renewal — the future. How, exactly, are we ever going to step back from this brink?

Europe has the luxury of charting its own path away from America eventually. Canada? I’m sorry to say to the Elbow’s Up crowd, but not so much. We can strengthen our own economic and regulatory environment, and we should. We can grow our trade with China, accepting the moral compromises and half-stated truths that will accompany a closer connection with a state that uses forced labour in its domestic supply chain, to say nothing of what it gets up to on our own soil. Bad faith actors in the U.S. continue to spin our, uh, diversification in their own favour: how much trade do the Americans engage with China, again? Oh, right, some multiples of anything Canada is attempting.

Anyway, despite our outward belligerence, we are simply too economically and militarily interdependent with the United States to sustain a divorce in the long run. We lack the internal resilience required to make the necessary sacrifices. We don’t have the fortitude to engage in anything other than symbolic measures against an increasingly terrifying neighbour. Those symbolic measures aren’t nothing. They won’t be enough.

Which brings me to the ever-timely questions of Easter. Christos Anesti!

How do we restore trust in this relationship after the fever has passed? What does “re-normalization” look like? Americans themselves may not yet fully grasp how much damage has been done to their relationships with allies — or they see Trump as so weird, ephemeral, and even funny that they act as if everything will settle into the old norms once he’s passed. ‘Tis only a flesh wound!

The rest of us cannot be so sanguine.

And that’s before we address the fact that some of Donald Trump’s critiques toward other countries, including Canada, are valid and correct. We have underspent on defence, chronically. Generationally. The Americans are right to call us out on this, and they are not the only ones. We have let all of our allies down on this front — we weren’t the only ones, to be sure, but we were, perhaps, uniquely smug in the face of our own failures. We have lost some moral authority in defence of our own perch, and there’s no point trying to hide from this fact.

I will note that I used the word “some,” here, not “all.” Like most Canadians of a certain age, I have friends and colleagues who lost life and limb in Afghanistan answering the call of our neighbours after 9-11. I, too, am filled with an incredible sense of anger and betrayal to see the callow indifference some U.S. conservatives are now showing toward those sacrifices. Canadians didn’t go into Kandahar because al Qaeda bombed the wheat exchange in Winnipeg.

Further, NATO is a defensive pact, not an arm of the U.S. government. We have no obligation to participate in an offensive war we did not choose. If the U.S. wants the alliance to cooperate in its military aims, it must treat other countries like allies, not subject states.

I will also point out that criticizing allies for underspending in an alliance that proved so successful in the long term that there was little left to defend against is not the strongest argument for blowing up said alliance. It’s weirdly analogous to the logical fallacies used to undermine vaccines. “Well, I’ve never seen measles, so...”

One doesn’t need to go back very far in the history books to see why such preventative measures were deemed wise and prudent. Alliances served America’s interests. Keep it up, and we’re all going to learn old lessons anew.

Frankly, I think Sullivan’s assessment is correct. I don’t think we can just slide back into old patterns after two Trump administrations. There is something fundamental working itself through the American psyche right now, and until those demons are fully acknowledged and exorcised, there can be no return to the old normal.

And, no, it’s not just Donald Trump.

I get this sense even when I hear Democrats and liberals talk about Trump — the “Good Guys” so rightly outraged by the President’s latest un-American obscenity. (See: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell - JUST WATCH Praise be to Allah.)

But what, specifically, do I hear when they condemn Trump and his war in Iran, or his remaking of model institutions and their norms? Gas prices. “No Kings”. Grocery bills. The complaints are overwhelmingly proximal and immediate. With my foreigner eyes, I see little sense of a grander mission betrayed. Not just American exceptionalism, but also its special duty as leaders of the free world. I understand that isolationism comes and goes in historical waves in America but that, I think, is the problem.

Americans — not just the leaders it elects, but the polity itself — need to decide whether they want to lead the free world, or not. Are they willing to accept the heightened accountability and privilege that this leadership entails, or not.

Until they can answer that question for themselves, there will be no end to these weird political paroxysms. Trump is a longing for self-annihilation. There will be others.

And I want to add to this point: I don’t actually blame Americans who answer: “no” to that call. I can empathise with those who are tired of bearing a disproportionate burden for maintaining the world that they made.

I admit, I don’t quite understand the sense of victimhood that so many Americans express about this. By dint of birth, my ancestors had to survive in the world as it was: American forebears got to make that world. And the world they made allowed them to be, collectively, unfathomably rich and powerful.

That said, power extracts both cost and consequence, and I can understand why Americans may wish to stop. They have the right, I suppose, to unmake the world as they will.

If that’s their choice, so be it. The rest of us will adapt. We will have to. But just as there’s no exceptionalism without duty, the abrogation of duty will inevitably undermine the exception. America will remain dominant in culture and finance for my lifetime; but a world without American leadership in military, political and matters of deeper values is a world that will be led by polities that are ready to take up the mantle.

I do not believe that is a better world for anyone, Americans least of all. But the choice is not mine. I, like my ancestors before me, react to the world that Americans make.

The cycle continues, as from all death must come rebirth, and a making of a world renewed.

---

The Line is entirely reader and advertiser funded — no federal subsidy for us! If you value our work, have already subscribed, and still worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please make a donation today. Please note: a donation is not a subscription, and will not grant access to paywalled content. It’s just a way of thanking us for what we do. If you’re looking to subscribe and get full access, it’s that other blue button!

---

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Please follow us on social media! Facebook x 2: On The Line Podcast here, and The Line Podcast here. Instagram. Also: TikTok. BlueSky. LinkedIn. Matt’s Twitter. The Line’s Twitter.Jen’s Twitter. Contact us by email: lineeditor@protonmail.com