Opinion: Geography Is Not Destiny — But It Can Be Used That Way
There is a recurring argument in Canadian political discourse that deserves careful handling, not because it is wrong, but because of what happens after it is accepted.
The argument goes like this: Canada is geographically bound to the United States. We trade overwhelmingly with them, share a continent, and are militarily integrated through NORAD and intelligence cooperation. These facts are immutable. Therefore, while Canada can attempt to reduce vulnerability at the margins, any serious attempt to diversify away from the United States — economically or strategically — will always be limited.
Geography, in effect, sets the ceiling.
Philippe Lagassé’s recent piece in Debating Canadian Defence articulates this view clearly and, within its frame, responsibly. His point is not that Canada should submit to the United States, nor that sovereignty is meaningless. It is that policy must be grounded in structural realities, not wish-casting. Canada is not leaving North America, and pretending otherwise risks self-inflicted damage.
That diagnosis is not wrong.
But it is incomplete — and in the current environment, incompleteness has consequences.
Constraint Narratives Are Not Neutral in the Grey Zone
The problem is not the recognition of constraint. The problem is how constraint narratives behave once they enter an environment shaped by influence operations, grievance politics, and grey-zone pressure.
Modern coercion does not require troops, ultimatums, or annexation threats. As outlined in Fault Lines, Part 3, it works by identifying seams — regional grievances, procedural triggers, identity fractures — and applying pressure until internal instability weakens a state’s negotiating posture.
In that context, arguments about inevitability do not remain descriptive. They become functional.
When Canadians internalize the idea that meaningful independence from U.S. pressure is structurally impossible, several things happen:
Bargaining power is psychologically surrendered before negotiations begin
Internal dissent is reframed as evidence of futility rather than a political problem to manage
External pressure can be justified as “reality asserting itself” rather than as coercion
None of this requires malicious intent on the part of the analyst making the argument. But it does mean that otherwise reasonable claims can be absorbed into destabilizing dynamics.
The Question Constraint Framing Leaves Out
There is a question that constraint-based analyses rarely ask directly:
If Canada has so little leverage, why does the United States expend so much effort shaping the relationship?
Power does not lean this hard on what is truly valueless.
Canada’s leverage is not hypothetical or sentimental. It is material:
Critical mineral supply chains
Potash essential to U.S. agriculture
Freshwater, arable land, and environmental stability in a warming world
Arctic geography and infrastructure
Regulatory and political legitimacy that confer access to these assets
These are not marginal advantages. They are precisely the kinds of assets that generate pressure, interest, and — increasingly — attempts at influence rather than overt force.
Recognizing geography does not require pretending these assets do not exist.
Where the Analysis Needs Expansion, Not Rejection
Lagassé is right to warn against fantasy — the idea that Canada can simply pivot away from the United States without cost or consequence. But realism cuts both ways.
It is equally unrealistic to assume that deep integration eliminates leverage, or that proximity implies permanent hierarchy. Interdependence is not a one-way street unless one side agrees to treat it that way.
The danger, especially now, is that inevitability narratives flatten political choice into fate. That flattening is exactly what grey-zone pressure seeks to produce: the sense that outcomes are preordained, resistance is pointless, and internal fractures are merely symptoms of a larger, unstoppable logic.
As Fault Lines documents, this is how destabilization works:
Procedure is mistaken for destiny
Grievance is mistaken for inevitability
Pressure is mistaken for realism
Geography Sets the Field — Not the Outcome
Canada will remain deeply connected to the United States. That is not in dispute. But connection is not the same as submission, and constraint is not the same as surrender.
The real strategic question is not whether Canada can escape the American orbit entirely. It is whether Canadians understand how power now operates within that orbit — and whether we allow narratives of inevitability to do the work of coercion for external actors.
Lagassé’s analysis usefully grounds the debate in reality. But reality does not end at geography. It includes influence operations, status coercion, procedural manipulation, and the exploitation of internal seams.
Ignoring those dynamics does not make us more realistic.
It makes us more predictable.
And predictability, in the grey zone, is vulnerability.