Canada Fights Back (Neon Liberalism #63, with John Banks)

Samantha and essayist John Banks discuss what steps Canada is taking to fight back against Trump's aggression. Mark Carney's "variable geometry" Davos speech, the dilemmas facing middle powers, and the future of liberal internationalism are covered. In Banks' view, the Republican Party has adopted the ideology of a continental "civilization-state," and as long as they remain a political force in America, Canadian-American relations will never again be quite so friendly.

Resources

With Friends Like These

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Transcript

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:00:10]**
Welcome back to Neon Liberalism. Throughout the great struggles of the 20th century, Canadians and Americans have fought together. Fought in World War One, in World War Two, on the beaches of Normandy, through the long struggle of the Cold War, we have always fought together for a freer world.

And now in the second Trump administration, our president is openly musing about conquering our northern neighbor, about making Canada the 51st state, threatening our longtime friend and ally. His cronies and thugs go on television and tell Canada to stop resisting, stop being so difficult. So I thought it was time to get a Canadian perspective on the state of American-Canadian relations and the state of the world.

So today we have on John Banks, who just wrote for us a great article about this topic, "With Friends Like These." So yeah, John, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

**John Banks [00:01:33]**
Oh, thank you for having me on, Samantha. I very much appreciate it.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:01:38]**
So I guess first question, big general question is, what's the view from Canada these days?

**John Banks [00:01:49]**
So, as you might have seen, as your audience might have seen from my article, there is quite an earthquake in public opinion when it comes to America. We now have, I believe it's about 59% of Canadians who are enthusiastically supportive of going to war with America in the event of an invasion or some kind of attack. Just several years ago, this would have been unimaginable. It would have been seen as crazy, almost as a fringe position. But now, given the active threats that we now face -- quite serious threats, I will add -- there's just no other room for any other position within public discourse right now.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:02:39]**
I mean, I'm curious about that, because I think in the States, a lot of people kind of view the president's talk about Canada as a joke or distraction, or just, "Oh my God, Trump is saying crazy stuff again." It sounds like you have a slightly different perspective on how serious this is, right?

**John Banks [00:03:01]**
And I think that's been shaped by the past ten years, especially when we look at the invasion of Ukraine. For instance, a lot of people saw men like Alexander Dugin or Igor Girkin as being jokes themselves, as crazy conspiracy theorists with these great visions of Russian grandeur. And while that was treated as a joke, it's no longer a joke.

We're seeing starvation around the world simply because the world's breadbasket has been cut off. There's a catastrophic amount of loss of life within Ukraine alone. Kids are being kidnapped. People are being massacred in the streets of cities like Bucha. It's unimaginable, but that is the reason why we need to take this so seriously.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:03:52]**
No, I think that's right. I think treating it like a joke is kind of a luxury belief in the purest sense of the term, right? If your neighbor starts making these kinds of threats, has conducted all kinds of strange military operations, you have to start worrying. And I guess, what would you say right now -- what's the Canadian on the street's perspective on these things? How is national feeling and sentiment changing?

**John Banks [00:04:30]**
I think that especially over the past year, we've had a rally-around-the-flag moment. Before, Canada, like much of the world, was going through an anti-incumbency wave. The Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, at the time, was extremely unpopular, and we were looking at a Conservative majority, almost a supermajority, within parliament. That's just how dire it was.

And since Trump took office and started launching these more substantive threats against our sovereignty, we've seen a reversal of the Liberals' fortunes. They got rid of Trudeau, they ended up installing Mark Carney as the leader, and the rest is history. Now, as it stands, the government is polling towards a majority, potentially, if a snap election is called -- and it might very well be by spring. That's really the shift that we've seen.

It's the same with Denmark. The left within Denmark had collapsed, and now it is resurgent. It is potentially going to form government in the next election if those trends continue.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:05:30]**
So we're already seeing, like you say, very real political consequences from this kind of rhetoric. What kind -- like, if I assume that our listeners are not 100% familiar with Canadian politics, right, what impacts is this going to have, that the Liberals won and the Conservatives did not?

**John Banks [00:05:52]**
So it's a little bit too soon to tell, because the Conservatives are still trying to find their footing. The Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre ended up having a leadership review and ended up winning it quite handily. But that being said, the rest of the country is extremely unfavorable towards him.

I don't think that there's going to be a whole lot of change over the next two years as far as that's concerned. I don't think that they're ever going to recover from that in the next three years or so. I think that we're going to see the Conservative Party become a bit more extreme, though, as they are denied power more and more. When Obama was in power for eight years, they went crazy in the States. We're going to probably see the same thing, because Trudeau had been in power for almost a decade, and now we're seeing four more years added to that. That's quite a long time in Canadian politics. It's also quite a long time in politics in general.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:06:56]**
So that's happening, and I guess to shift from what's happening in Canada to what's happening in America -- one of the things that you talked about in your essay is the National Security Strategy that was just published in America. We've talked a little bit about that on the podcast before, but it remains an important document. So I guess again, I want to ask, what's your perspective from Canada on this document? What does it mean? What does it say?

**John Banks [00:07:29]**
So, setting being Canadian aside, as somebody who looks at defense issues with great interest, what really stood out to me is that the National Security Strategy was completely different from others before it. It was not a document outlining the strategic goals of the United States, nor was it laying out how to concretely adapt and try to fulfill those goals. Instead, what we saw was an ideological proclamation, right? This idea that the United States, much like Russia, much like China or India, is now a unique civilization and is the guardian of that civilization, whether they posit it as Western civilization or American civilization or Americanism, whatever you want to call it.

Fundamentally, it's the same sort of belief system that undergirds the politics of authoritarian states, particularly in Asia. Those are the models that the United States is now looking to. And when they talk about civilizational health or civilizational self-confidence, what they're really talking about is a cultural program that is more in tune with their politics.

When they talk about trying to enforce cultural health or cultural self-confidence in Europe, for instance, what they're saying is that they are going to interfere in European or Canadian or whoever's politics and try to push a more ideologically friendly version of those narratives. For instance, the Undersecretary of State, Sierra Rogers, if I recall correctly, she ended up announcing that there were going to be visa bans for certain UK nationals, one of which, of course, was involved in labeling residential school denialism as disinformation. And as a result, she was being banned from entering the United States on what they were calling a "Canadian blood libel."

To be clear, the residential school case -- it's quite crazy if you know what the residential school issue is, right? The Catholic Church, with the blessing of the Canadian government, was abusing kids, abusing First Nations kids within those schools. Children died as a result of this. Children were raped, they were beaten, and as a result, there were cycles of violence that continue today within communities of the victims. What happened was an act of cultural genocide that was meant to erase their culture through trauma. And that's what they are calling a "blood libel" -- simply acknowledging that.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:10:16]**
Yeah, so that's a very illustrative example. I mean, in America, we've seen similar kinds of attacks on culture, on history, right? There are attempts to remove any kind of memorial of slavery, any kind of remembrance of slavery, of the crimes that were very much, 100% committed by the founding fathers, by other American figures.

So there's this cultural element to it -- they want to reshape our cultures and your culture and everybody's culture in this more nationalist direction. But I've read that National Security Strategy, and there's the cultural element, but there's also the demographic element. There's a demographic obsession almost. When they talk about civilizational health, it seems sometimes like they're talking about culture, but other times they're talking about it in a much more demographic way. And I was wondering, what's your perspective on that, and how that's shaping American foreign policy?

**John Banks [00:11:28]**
So I think part of that also folds into the conception of what they believe civilization is. I believe I had linked in my article that there are linguistic, legal, political, and religious elements to that as well. But yes, there is also very much a demographic obsession as well, particularly focusing on white people and white men. I think really, that is just how the majoritarian politics of civilization states manifest, at least in this case in America.

We see the same thing with India, for instance, with Hindutva. We see claims in Russia that Christians are still being discriminated against, and that sort of thing. I don't think that it's necessarily unique to the United States. I think that the demographic focus and immigration focus especially borrows a lot from the American civilizationists, as I'll call them, because that's what they are beginning to call themselves -- not the alt-right, but "civilizationists." They're obsessed with this idea of civilization and positing their enemies as anti-civilization.

As far as those demographic concerns go, I think that this can really be drawn back to the alt-right of ten years ago. We can go back to Christchurch, in which they're talking about demographics being destiny. It's that same violent, extreme undercurrent that is now moving towards the United States government and to the levers of power. We cannot be silent about that.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:13:13]**
No, I think you're right to highlight both. There's a particularly American inflection to it, but it's a kind of authoritarian politics that we see in a lot of countries. We see this kind of Great Russia language, with Russky Mir in Russia. We see the Chinese Communist Party increasingly leaning on Han nationalism. There's Hindutva in India, where you have a tendency towards authoritarian politics, towards an obsession with having the right kind of demographics, a very us-versus-them, blood-and-soil conception, and also this politics of cultural supremacy -- that we're the best and we've done no wrong, and we've never done anything wrong, and in fact it's a crime to suggest that we've ever done anything wrong.

It feels very much like an authoritarian playbook being played out in different ways, in different places. And so I guess my question would be, as a Canadian -- I keep on saying this -- but what's Canada's national self-conception that contrasts with this kind of civilizational politics?

**John Banks [00:14:29]**
So we are a multicultural society, a binational society in terms of language, and we are essentially a mosaic. That is how we have conceptualized ourselves for, I would say, the past 60 years at least. Canada is a very young nation. Our real first conception of nationhood really emerged during the First World War, as we fought with the British, and even more so during the Second World War.

I think that we very much have a national identity that is in part based on British culture and British legal traditions, more so than the United States. And I also think that simply by virtue of being not America and a liberal democracy -- a pluralistic liberal democracy -- is simply enough to set us apart from the States. But we have much more to that, that is frequently not talked about.

My father was the child of British immigrants who left during the Second World War. There's still very much that underlying cultural current that defines a lot of our national identity. We just don't talk about it as much because, one, there's a lot of baggage there for obvious reasons, and two, because our mosaic is more important and it is larger than simply that. That's just a foundation.

The United States takes itself as a melting pot that tries to encourage assimilation and a sort of cultural homogeneity. In a sense, Canada just simply does not have that. And now that America is taking this more civilizationist position, it is manifestly incompatible with Canadian national identity -- and in fact American national identity too, because the civilization state tries to decouple any sort of real cultural foundations and tries to make the state the sole arbiter of culture, if that makes sense. It's very much like a Gramscian totalitarianism.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:16:45]**
Yeah, what's the line? It sounds better in the original German -- ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer, yeah?

**John Banks [00:16:53]**
And DHS was using, or DOL was using, similar mottos within their propaganda.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:17:00]**
Yeah, that's absolutely right, with what is it -- "one nation, one homeland, one something or other." One leader, yeah. That one's quite literal. That's indeed what "Fuhrer" means.

So, but before we start talking too much about Nazi Germany, I wanted to ask you about something else that came up in your essay, which is this identification of Canada as a mosaic, as incorporating many different cultures, many different -- at least two -- languages. But you also talked about immigration as increasingly being a centerpiece of Canadian identity and the national project. And I was wondering if you could say a little bit about that.

**John Banks [00:17:53]**
So I don't think that immigration necessarily is a component to that. But just like America, we try to be that sort of beacon for the rest of the world, and we try to sort of set our national identity in relation to the rest of the world and how they aspire to try to join Canada, much like the United States.

I think that that is starting to change, because Canada did let in quite a lot of immigrants over the last ten years or so, and because of that, we've seen a lot of increased anxieties among the public generally. Even liberals in Canada, for instance, are starting to see that sort of pushback within their own camps. And that's part of the reason why Mark Carney ended up turning some programs like the temporary foreign workers and foreign students programs, and ended up actually having cutoffs reduced significantly.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:18:59]**
Yeah, I think that's right. Canada has seen a lot of immigration, like a lot of places, starting to see some level of anti-immigrant politics. So I think we've talked a little bit about how this kind of civilizationist view that's kind of taken over the Trump administration is in contrast to this more liberal vision that is part of Canada's national identity, and is currently, as you said, going to be running Canadian politics for the foreseeable future. And so we have seen -- unfortunately, it breaks my goddamn heart -- more tension between our countries. I guess my question for you is, what's Canada doing about it?

**John Banks [00:19:55]**
So if we go back to Mark Carney's Davos speech, he talks about the need to have a "variable geometry" -- to form relationships with states based upon shared goals, but specifically for dealing with those shared goals and interests. We're working with China, for instance, to try and work on climate change, trying to adapt climate change technology and infrastructure for combating climate change within both of our countries. That doesn't mean, of course, that we're going to have security arrangements with China. Doesn't mean that we're going to start sharing our necessary integral IP with the Chinese economy.

I do think that there's going to be a significant limit to what we can do as far as that goes, simply because America does have quite a lot of pull with our other allies as well, and particularly with countries like Qatar. I think that's one step that we're taking.

One other step, I would say, is that we are currently trying to move away from our dependence on the United States. Right now, we're extremely dependent on the United States importing our goods and services. We need to build better relationships with emerging economies, particularly in East Asia. I believe that there were several announced deals with not just China, but there's going to be one with India, one with Malaysia and Indonesia, if I recall correctly. Those are all going to be emerging economies that are going to be vital trading partners in the future regardless of whether or not we do this. But I think that trying to establish those relationships as early as possible is integral to moving us away from the United States.

The third thing that we're kind of doing is trying to establish infrastructural independence -- digitally speaking, data sovereignty and that sort of thing -- making sure that we have enough domestic compute to not rely on the United States. As it stands, civilization states like India and China and the United States are currently battling it out for people's data worldwide.

A lot of people don't really know this, but Mauritius, for instance, the island nation off the coast of Africa, nestled in the Indian Ocean -- Indian techs actually went to their undersea cable station and actually pulled information and data on Mauritians' browsing habits and the other data that they were sending overseas in order to try and preempt Chinese collection of that data. The United States is going to try and push the same in Canada, in Mexico, and across the world as well. And we need to also push back against that.

We are starting. I don't think that we're doing a sufficiently good job on that front. I think that we need to also move into other services as well. Start tackling America's platform monopolies within Canada. We need our own social media. If the United States has a monopoly on social media and news within this country, we are screwed. They will be forming our citizens' perceptions and building narratives that attack Canadian national identity and our conception as a nation state.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:23:30]**
Yeah, so there's a lot in what you've just said that I want to talk about. But one thing I do kind of want to ask about first is something that Carney talks about in that Davos speech. It's a great, very important speech, by the way. If you're listening to this, I recommend you go read it. It's not hard to find. It's a very striking speech.

But one of the things he talks about is that Canada's a middle power. You've talked about civilization states like the United States, which is the largest economy in the world, 300 million people, enormous military. China, a billion people -- I think they're the second largest economy in the world. India, another billion-plus people. These are the heavyweight gorillas of the world stage, and are increasingly moving into great power competition. And I guess the question is, how do you, as a self-described middle power, kind of navigate that? What's that like?

**John Banks [00:24:37]**
It's not entirely clear to me, and I don't really think it's entirely clear to the civil service as well. As it stands, we're struggling to try and conceptualize that in terms of policy. I will say that this vision of trying to build alliances with middle powers will be effective, but up to a point. If the other powers are geographically isolated from us, they're not going to rush to our aid. If the United States attacks us, for instance, if the United States starts issuing sanctions, or worse, just starts seizing our assets -- which they very much have the power to do, although they don't really use it -- we would be screwed regardless.

I think that when we try and build those sorts of relationships, we're not doing so at the expense of the United States. But I also think that the United States will try and push back against us and against our attempts to build those sorts of relationships.

I think that one thing that we really need to talk about, or at least address this elephant in the room, is that we will have to move beyond simply middle powers and engage with America's adversaries as well, and rivals for that matter. Qatar is kind of a middle power -- that's one example that we really do need to engage, because, as Carney said, allies need to start hedging against the great powers within their region. They need to "buy options," and other analogies.

That's necessary. It's not something that gives me a whole lot of pleasure, because ideologically I'm a liberal, I'm quite internationally focused. But we don't have a choice. Practically speaking, there's nothing on the table for us except for trying to work with more authoritarian societies that sit within that middle-power section. And a lot of those societies are authoritarian, make no mistake. And a lot of them also do see themselves as civilizations. Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, for instance, would all think of themselves in those terms, and all of which, I would say, are quite powerful actors within their respective regions.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:26:56]**
Yeah, that's right. I think one of the things that Carney talks about in his speech is the end of the rules-based international order. And I personally hate that phrase. I hate the phrase "rules-based international order." I think people use it in a way that is totally incorrect, and he's using it incorrectly there, but that's maybe a different rant for a different day.

What I think is absolutely correct in what he said is that over the last several decades, we built a world that was deeply interconnected -- interconnected in terms of trade, in terms of data as you've emphasized, in terms of social media organizations, culturally interconnected, financially interconnected -- and that this was all kind of started on the promise that there are rules, they're clear, we're not going to abuse them.

And what has happened -- and this is kind of documented in Henry Farrell's book *Underground Empire* -- is that most of the power wound up concentrated in the hands of America, and especially the American president, and that increasingly we've been seeing weaponized interdependence. We built this big interconnected web, and now we are starting to use that for leverage, initially against our adversaries, whether that was Iraq or Afghanistan or international terror groups. And now we're using that exact same kind of leverage against our longtime friends and allies.

So I guess, how do you see that evolving in the future? How do you escape that dilemma?

**John Banks [00:28:50]**
For America or for Canada?

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:28:52]**
For Canada.

**John Banks [00:28:58]**
I couldn't tell you. I couldn't tell you how we could really go back to that. Outside of trying to maintain relationships with the European Union, for instance, maybe trying to build on a common regulatory block might be the route that we have to take. But outside of that, it's going to be very difficult, because those institutions that set those rules are basically governed by the whims of great powers like the United States, but also increasingly China as well. I don't think that we can really escape that, and I don't think that we're going to be able to necessarily build our own alternate structures. I don't think that's going to be viable.

That said, I think it is important to not lose sight of the fact that the rules-based order -- now, you hate that term -- but following the rules and creating a sort of predictable trading environment is necessary for economic growth. It's necessary for attracting foreign investment, and the United States is doing the complete opposite right now. They are seeing the gains of that, but that's not going to last. If they keep pushing around allies, they will just start cutting off trade. We're already cutting off trade. But if the United States starts doing that with the world at large, they're going to isolate themselves further. Nobody's going to want to buy their stuff. Nobody's going to want to sell them anything.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:30:33]**
Yeah, so just to clarify why I hate that phrase, the "rules-based international order." I hate it because people talk about it as if this has been the consistent aim of American and Western foreign policy since 1945, and that's crazy, because the phrase "rules-based international order" does not exist before, like, 1998. Just doesn't exist. I might be off by a year or two, but it just doesn't exist. It doesn't exist in foreign policy circles until about 2008 when it gets mentioned, I think, by an Australian prime minister, like the Australian defense white paper, and just kind of spreads out from there. And then suddenly everybody's talking about it as if everybody had always been talking about it.

And I think that misunderstands what shaped the world in the 20th century. That's what I really dislike about it -- I think it's the wrong analytic frame for looking at the 20th century and the 21st century in a lot of ways.

That said, you're right that turns out international trade, consistently applied laws, that stuff is really good. And you can have weaponized interdependence for a little while, but the more you lean on it, the more people are like, "Yeah, we don't have the rule of law. I can't do business with somebody who might just take all my stuff one day. Why would I invest in that if things are just going to go off the rails?"

So I kind of want to ask you, though, maybe a more difficult question. You've talked a bit about the difficulties of being a middle power, that maybe we're gonna have to start working with more authoritarian countries -- not necessarily on security, but on climate or on economics or on something else -- and that Canada's geography is not favorable to balancing. You don't have any -- you've only got one neighbor, more or less. And so there are certain difficulties. Where are you at on a Canadian nuclear deterrent?

**John Banks [00:32:53]**
So, I don't think that nukes -- yeah, I get that the question has to be asked. I think that nukes are a useless boondoggle for the most part. And for Canada, I don't really see much of a benefit, because even if we have a nuclear deterrent, the United States has a metric shitload of missiles and defense systems to negate that. It would have to be, at the very least, a nuclear device that is not a missile and is instead smuggled across the border.

I think that there are other deterrents that we could really look towards. Radiological, which isn't great, but is also something that we could look at. It's a lot less expensive, it's a lot less impactful as far as image goes. There's obviously the nuclear taboo that doesn't get broken if you have a radiological device -- a dirty bomb, right, is the common phrase.

I think that those sorts of deterrents are also obviously limited, but they are scary enough, and they are certainly much easier to deliver a payload like that, that it would keep American war planners up at night. I think that's really the thing that we need to look at most -- not necessarily a nuclear deterrent, but simply unconventional deterrence. Making stay-behinds -- that's also politically dicey as well, for obvious reasons -- but stay-behind civil defense, having those sorts of alternative means of waging warfare, is integral, especially today.

Information weapons -- we should really be looking at the active measures of other countries and looking to implement those against states that are hostile against us. We have much to learn from the Russians. Again, I'm not pro-Russian in the slightest. I'm very anti-Russian, for that matter. But observing Russian active measures in places like California, for instance -- those active measures are being replicated against us by the United States in places like Alberta. We should also be looking at means of doing the same back to them, and doing so would very much incentivize them to stop attacking us, particularly if we started going after the Republican Party specifically. That's a whole other conversation.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:35:23]**
I'm not sure it is a different conversation. I mean, first, I want to say, I absolutely agree with you. I believe in studying my enemies. I think you can't not study your enemies. You have to understand their tactics, and when their tactics are useful, sometimes you have to adopt them. That doesn't mean adopting their ends. That doesn't mean adopting all of their tactics. But you have to learn from the other side, especially when the other side is winning.

And I think the Russian comparison -- or, sorry, you wanted to--

**John Banks [00:35:57]**
One thing that I'm going to add is that they were also targeting Texas as well. So there were two Russian intelligence officers: one by the name of Alexander Ionov, who had targeted Californian separatists, and one by the name of Yuri Lyubomirsky, who you're not going to hear of, who was actually targeting the Texas nationalists.

And Lyubomirsky was actually an associate of Maria Butina, who was the intelligence officer that was captured by the United States. Not a lot of people know this, but he was actually her replacement for taking over Right to Bear Arms -- Pravo na Oruzhiye. That's what he was up to. And he was recruiting white nationalists, including the Texas nationalist Nathan Smith, I remember.

That's what they were up to. The United States is trying to do the same thing to us. They are trying to recruit people working with the Alberta Prosperity Project in particular. They've had conversations with State Department officials. That's the sort of active measures that the Russians deployed against Ukraine. It's the sort of thing that we need to look at, not just to combat it, but also to push back, specifically using our intelligence assets to do so.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:37:11]**
So I think the -- no, I think the Ukraine comparison is especially instructive, right, that we saw Russia kind of prop up these separatist movements that are, kind of like, sock puppets. And then they turn around and use that sock puppet to say, "Oh, these Russians in Ukraine long for freedom. We're just rescuing them from their Ukraino-Nazi oppressors." It's all part of the pretext for war, and I think possibly for the annexation of Crimea anyway.

**John Banks [00:37:47]**
And genocide, though. That's elimination. It's eliminationist rhetoric -- calling Ukrainians gay, satanic Nazis out to rape your kids and make them gay, and all of that shit. It's eliminationist rhetoric that's taken straight from Nazi Germany, Rwanda, and other places where genocides have occurred. That's the intent.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:38:07]**
The Russians have absolutely pursued that policy in occupied Ukraine. I mean, we've seen child theft. We've seen the attempted destruction of Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian language, the Ukrainian people.

So this is -- I take your point that this is very serious. So I guess I've been meaning to ask you about the Alberta separatist situation, something that maybe many Americans are not really familiar with, because it seems kind of like maybe some weird Canadian political sideshow, but it seems like it might not be. So what's going on with the Alberta separatists right now?

**John Banks [00:38:49]**
So Alberta's separatism, in reality, is not actually that popular. It polls around 10%. That's not to say it's not a political force, but it's definitely not the sort of immediate threat of a political, legitimate annexation or secession happening. They believe that -- and largely the people who want independence don't want to become an American state. They want an independent state. Functionally, however, if you even talk to the people like the Prosperity Project and that sort of thing, they're basically suggesting that they're going to turn Alberta into a client state of the United States. I think that's where it really becomes dangerous.

And going back to that sort of Ukrainian situation, it begs the question of whether or not we're going to find little green men, for instance, on our doorstep. I think that is really where the threat comes from -- from the United States trying to unilaterally force Alberta to leave Confederation.

I don't think that we're going to see some sort of separatist insurgency campaign, for starters, because it's not that popular. And the other part is a lot of those people who do support it are very old. That's something that a lot of people don't necessarily understand. A lot of those heavy conservative voters who decided to start going to the Alberta Independence Party, or whatever it's called -- they're old. It's all old people. If you look at the videos of them taking videos of people in line for voting for their little independence petition, it's all old white people. They're not going to be fighting any sort of insurgency.

So I don't think that there is necessarily that sort of threat. I think that it's going to mostly be the Americans that really pose that sort of issue, or at the very least trying to break down ontologically how people see themselves as Canadian. It's the same as the Russians would do. The Russians didn't invade California or invade Texas. They simply made propaganda to try and make Americans think of themselves less ontologically as American and more as a Texan or Californian.

And I think it's also really important to bring up the Russians in this context, because Russia's RT, for I would say a year at least, was trying to promote Alberta independence as well, preceding the United States. I would say as far back as 2018 they were interviewing the guy who was in charge of Wexit, whose name I can't recall off the top of my head. And that continued on for some time.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:41:37]**
Yeah, so I guess, what would you say is the state of American support of Albertan independence? What kind of active measures do you see happening right now?

**John Banks [00:41:55]**
Right now we've seen mostly just talks with the secessionists. That's really the extent that it's gone so far, as far as we know -- that's what they're willing to admit. I think that the real threat is implied in the words of people like Bannon, who talk about turning Alberta -- or Canada -- into the next Ukraine. I think that's where the real threat lies, rather than just simply the contacts.

That being said, it sounds to me like they're going to try and build on those contacts in the future. I don't know what that's going to look like. I don't know if this is really something that the Americans are going to choose to pursue, given the political situation in the United States. The Republicans have a lot less leverage going into the midterms compared to last year. They don't have nearly as much leverage over us as they did then.

I think that once the Republicans, God willing, lose the midterms, that's going to be something that's less manageable in the short term, and something that's instead going to define Republican politics for the next 30 years. Trump might be gone, but Trumpism isn't going away. And I think that it stands to reason that the sort of expansionist, continental empire position that's being taken up by the Trump administration is going to become the norm of the Republican Party going forward.

I think that's where the real threat is -- not necessarily a couple years from now, but down the line, ten years from now, fifteen. That's what really worries me. If we're looking again at Ukraine -- your audience might be a little bit tired of me going back to that -- but the invasion initially happened in 2014 in February. It was only eight years later that the Russians ended up actually invading the mainland proper of Ukraine, beyond the Donbas, pushing into Zaporizhzhia and others.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:44:16]**
Yeah, that's right, that first they seize Crimea, and then there's this long-running kind of civil war that, again, there are factual Russian military units. Bellingcat traced -- there was that Malaysian airliner that got shot down, that was just shot down by straight-up Russian army units in the Donbas.

**John Banks [00:44:37]**
Yeah, it was Girkin's orders.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:44:40]**
So, but I don't want to do a whole -- we talk a lot about Ukraine. But anyways, to come back to the Alberta situation, I basically think you're right. Kind of looking at Trump's foreign policy today, mostly what I see first and foremost is opportunism. When George W. Bush says we are going to war in Iraq, we're just going to go. We're driving straight there. We're going to bend every arm of government towards making that happen. Whether it's a good idea or a bad idea doesn't matter -- we're going.

I see Trump as much more of an opportunist, right? He starts -- the strikes in Iran are a good example of this, where he only presses go on this mission after Israel has already done a large-scale suppression of enemy air defenses. And he thinks, "Oh, I can do this thing and it won't be risky, and I can just get in and out and get my own little share of the glory."

He starts pushing on this insane Greenland annexation business at the start of his term. Doesn't really go anywhere. Kind of forgets about it. He brought it back for a little while. He got a lot more pushback this time. He seems to be kind of backing down about the Greenland thing. He's just looking for weakness, basically. I think that's how he plays this game. And like you said, I think his hand is going to get weaker and weaker as time goes on.

**John Banks [00:46:13]**
Yeah, his personally will get weaker, but the fortunes for the Republican Party as a whole will likely stay the same, and that's where that threat emerges.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:46:22]**
Yeah, so that's what I want to ask you about now -- not just Trump, but the future after Trump. I, like you said, truly hope -- I strongly suspect we're going to crush them in the midterms. I think it's very important that we win the elections in 2028, that we are going to bring a liberal back into the White House, somebody who wants to try and put back together the international order. What do you think the prospects are for that? If a Democrat comes back into the White House--

**John Banks [00:47:01]**
None. It's gone. That's going to be one of the frustrating things -- going forward, Trump is not just going to define the Republican Party, but foreign policy. America can't go back. Nobody's going to trust them. We can't go back.

The Democrats are going to have to accept that if they want to try and earnestly build up a stronger relationship with American allies, the Republicans can't be in the picture. It's not the ideal scenario. But looking back at Lincoln, for instance, or the comparisons that Joe Biden was facing with FDR, or even Cincinnatus.

Cincinnatus, as some people might not know, had a son who was accused of treason by his political enemies. And Cincinnatus's response was to exile the people slandering his son as a traitor. Joe Biden didn't do that. FDR tried to expand the courts. Joe Biden didn't do that. FDR failed, mind you, but also very much pressured the court into accepting the New Deal policies, which in its own sense was a success. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for traitors, temporarily. We didn't do that. The United States didn't do that following January 6th. There was the perfect opportunity to do so, and instead they prioritized healing.

Now they've healed the nation into this.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:49:08]**
Yes, very much so.

**John Banks [00:49:10]**
It's like trying to cure cancer with a gunshot to the head. It does not work. You've allowed the cancer within that society to metastasize, and now we are seeing the consequences of that. It's not just foreign concentration camps or people being murdered within your cities, which is happening right now. It doesn't just mean the surveillance state that's going to be built up. It means the complete collapse of American power as we know it, and the formation of a new sort of American power that is much more imperial. It's continentalist. That's fundamentally what it is, and that's fundamentally what they're proclaiming within the NSS -- that America has the right to establish a continental empire within the Americas.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:49:21]**
I think that's right, as far as what Republican foreign policy wants to achieve. I do not want to let them define American foreign policy. I agree with you that we can't go back to the way things were -- domestically, in foreign affairs, the world that was is gone. It is in the rearview mirror.

And so I guess my question for you then is, you've talked about how you're a liberal, you believe in this international liberal project -- so do I. I'm an American, but I want to fight for a free world. How do we do that? In the future, how do we do that?

**John Banks [00:50:14]**
Well, that's a difficult question, and it's also difficult because there's a lot of contradictions within liberal society right now. When you have to deal with an authoritarian faction -- if one faction in a two-party system decides to give up on democracy, you don't have democracy anymore. You might be going through the motions of democracy, but it's not there.

I think that if there's any way that you could either come back from this or try and establish any sort of new sense of America, a new normal, I think that you're going to have to earnestly look at whether or not the Republicans can be allowed to govern. I don't think that's necessarily a politically savvy thing to say, but that is going to be the reality.

If the Republicans are allowed to continue on the road that they're on, it's entirely possible that you might see America look a lot more like China as a one-party state, seeing itself as a civilization that has an unbroken history for centuries, that's uniquely entitled to conquering and subjugating its neighbors, whether that's as a hegemon or as a contiguous continental empire.

I think that so long as the Republicans are there, that's going to be where America is heading. And it's not just the Republicans, of course. There are other factions in the world that want to see something similar, whether that's Fidesz in Hungary, Marine Le Pen in France, or the Alternative for Germany. I don't know if you're familiar with Maximilian Krah, but this is a guy who very much was spying -- or had his staffers spying -- for Russia and China on Germany. This is the model that they look towards.

Nick Land was the Dark Enlightenment philosopher. He was a travel agent working in Beijing, making these brochures, like travel brochures in Mandarin. He openly worships Deng Xiaoping. This sort of Chinese model is very much what the Republican political program is based on. And so long as they are in power, we are going to see this sort of long march through the institutions. We're going to see this sort of patriotic education being enforced on us -- not just on Americans, but on us. They want to push this program in Canada as well.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:53:00]**
Yes, I think that's right. And I think you're kind of highlighting something we've talked about here on the podcast several times -- the authoritarian international. These people might disagree about important things, but they kind of work together across international boundaries. They push the same kinds of authoritarian politics in other countries, like you're talking about AfD working with Russia, the Republican Party again being supported by the Russian intelligence services -- a thing that very much did happen.

And so I think, for me, that's just what's up. They're doing that. We have to start doing the same goddamn thing. We, as liberals, as people who believe in freedom, have to learn to do the same goddamn thing and work together across international lines. Fight the same people, fight the same coalition across international lines.

You've talked a little bit about how Democrats in America should approach this problem by crushing the Republican Party, which -- I would never endorse anything illegal or unconstitutional, but in some ways we do need fundamental reforms that mean that the Republican Party as it exists can't come to power again like that. They're just really bad.

I would ask you, though, what do you think Canada should be doing? You've talked about Canada taking a stronger hand in American politics. How do you think Canada should approach that?

**John Banks [00:54:50]**
I think that we should be putting millions of dollars into political advertising specifically targeting Republicans. And that goes back to the active measures that I think that we should be deploying against the United States in turn. I think that really, our options are quite limited, unless we get into some sort of unlimited warfare scenario, in which case our options actually open up significantly. But as far as tackling American influence goes, we can't wait it out. It's not going to be waited out. It's fundamentally going to have to be attacked head on.

Part of that is going to be -- as it stands right now, we are building domestic compute, and that's going to be one of the biggest issues for us going forward, because the United States has unparalleled computational power. The closest competitor is China. China has better hackers, but America has better compute, and more compute at that. I think that building up those sorts of domestic capabilities, isolating the United States, is going to be the first steps that we take.

But adding to your last question, I think that Canada needs to take the driver's seat in trying to build an international liberal democratic movement. I think that your solution is very right, but I think that your diagnosis is wrong. We're not really seeing international collaboration as much as a confluence of various factors. We don't really see Hindutva, for instance, working with China or with Hungary. It's a confluence built on a metapolitics that has enabled more nationalist, tribalistic thinking.

I think fundamentally, Canada's project is going to be rooted around establishing, identifying, and communicating the shared interests that we have with our liberal democratic partners and with movements around the world. I think that's where it starts. It might have to end at a much darker place. If it gets really bad, Canada might need its own assassination program, which also isn't great to think about, also quite illegal as far as our laws are concerned. But the reality is, if we have certain political operatives operating against our interests, with the collapse of norms as they are internationally speaking, I think that it's not really out of the question to have a program like that. I also don't think that it's necessarily out of the question to start running active measures, as crazy as that sort of thing might have been seen a decade ago. I hope that answers a little bit.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:57:53]**
I mean, I think, to put it mildly, we are living in a pretty dark timeline with a pretty dark future. I take what you mean that we're not really seeing explicit collaboration between the authoritarian governments. A lot of them hate each other for various kinds of reasons. But like you say, a confluence -- a confluence of vibes, of interests, in certain ways that have enabled them to kind of penetrate Western societies and undermine liberal societies.

For me, the touchstone is really the interwar years, this sense of a street brawl between ideologies, where the dividing lines don't always run between nations, but just straight through nations, straight through domestic politics. And it is a street brawl for the future of the world. So I hope we get out of it in a good way. But there are dark possibilities in our future.

**John Banks [00:58:57]**
Yeah, and necessities that we might have to take up that are similarly dark.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:59:05]**
Well, on that cheery note, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and talking about some of the dark possibilities that the second Trump administration has unleashed.

**John Banks [00:59:18]**
Yeah. Do you mind if I just tell your audience one thing?

**Samantha Hancox-Li [00:59:22]**
Go right ahead.

**John Banks [00:59:23]**
At the start of the last century, America tried taking up the civilizational vision before, when it invaded the Philippines. We saw Rudyard Kipling, for instance, publish "The White Man's Burden," extolling America to civilize the rest of the world. There was a competing vision at that time that was forwarded by Mark Twain, lamenting in "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" that America played the Joseph Chamberlain game and lost the chance to add another Cuba and another honorable deed to its good record.

That vision did not manifest then, but it did manifest in the 70 years after the Second World War. This fight is not over -- this fight between the vision of a liberal democracy and the vision of a civilization state. That conflict is not over. We have not lost yet, and we can still win decades into the future. This fight isn't over.

**Samantha Hancox-Li [01:00:26]**
That's right. We have not lost yet. All right, John, thank you for coming on the podcast.

**John Banks [01:00:31]**
Thank you so much.