How Canada Should Respond to Trump

Heed the lesson of Thucydides: Only brutality can deter brutal men.

There is an ancient line that expresses a bleak and brutal understanding of human relations: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

It comes from History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides. There was a time when you could be sure that a statesman of any stature would have read Thucydides, but that time has long passed. I’m fairly confident Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau hasn’t read Thucydides. And I’d bet my house that Donald Trump hasn’t.

Which is a shame. Because Thucydides has much to say about Trump, his threats, and how his victims should respond.

The Peloponnesian War was a long struggle between Athens and Sparta. Athens was famously democratic and Sparta famously militaristic, so moderns unfamiliar with classical Greece tend to think of Athens as the good guy.

But the Athens portrayed by Thucydides — who was himself an Athenian general in the war — is a chillingly ruthless empire that used its naval power to force city-states on the Greek islands to submit to Athenian rule and pay tribute. One by one, they bowed. Then the Athenians turned their attention to the island of Melos, settled centuries earlier by colonists from Sparta. Melos was neutral and no threat to Athens. But the Athenians didn’t care. They sent a fleet and army and demanded Melos submit and pay tribute, or be put to the sword.

In Thucidydes’ telling, the Melians and Athenians meet. What followed is known as “the Melian dialogue,” a landmark text in international relations.

The Athenians start the discussion by bluntly stating right and wrong are irrelevant and they will not listen to any argument rooted in justice:

Athenians: We on our side will use no fine phrases, saying, for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done us — a great mass of words that nobody would believe. And we ask you on your side not to imagine that you will influence us by saying that you, though a colony of Sparta, have not joined Sparta in the war, or that you have never done us any harm. Instead we recommend that you should try to get what it is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we both really do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

The Athenians go on to say it would be equally good for both Athens and Melos for the Melians to submit.

Melians: And how could it be just as good for us to be the slaves as for you to be the masters?

Athenians: You, by giving in, would save yourselves from disaster; we, by not destroying you, would be able to profit from you.

Melians: So you would not agree to our being neutral, friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side?

Athenians: No, because it is not so much your hostility that injures us; it is rather the case that if we were on friendly terms with you, our subjects would regard that as a sign of weakness in us, whereas your hatred is evidence of our power.

In the Athenian mind, only power matters. To be hated is fine, provided those who hate you are weak. To be hated can even be good, because others see the hatred — and your boot on the victim’s neck — and that increases their perception of your power. Which is itself a form of power.

Unable to appeal to justice, the Melians struggle to make the case that Athens would also suffer if it attacks Melos. The gods will punish Athens, they say. Or the Spartans will support Melos.

Sparta won’t help, the Athenians respond. Nor will the gods be concerned, they insist, for Athens is acting in accord with an ancient law of nature known and respected by the gods.

Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can.

The Melians argue some more. The Athenians wave their words away.

Still, the Melians refuse to give up “the liberty which our city has enjoyed from its foundation for 700 years.” Again, they urge the Athenians to accept their friendship.

The Athenians declare war and lay siege to Melos.

The Melians resist bravely but the Spartans do not come to their aid. And the gods do not punish Athens.

When all hope was lost, writes Thucydides…

…the Melians surrendered unconditionally to the Athenians, who put to death all the men of military age whom they took, and sold the women and children as slaves. Melos itself they took over for themselves, sending out a later colony of 500 men.

Donald Trump may not have read Thucydides but his thinking is entirely Athenian (minus the democracy bit.)

There are no standards of justice and fairness that apply to the weak and the strong alike. Instead there is a monomaniacal division of people into “winners” and “losers,” with glory to the winners and contempt heaped on the losers. Critically, what makes winners praiseworthy isn’t how they won. It’s that they won. They are powerful and that is all that matters — just as it is the powerlessness of the losers that makes them contemptible.

This is why, throughout his career, Trump routinely refused to pay architects, contractors, and lawyers who worked for him. He had the money to drag out disputes in court, they didn’t, so he could squeeze them to accept a fraction of what they were owed. Fairness was irrelevant. He had the power and they didn’t. That’s all there was to it: The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

This is also why Trump has nothing but praise for authoritarians, dictators, and even gangsters — he loves Al Capone — but he constantly belittles and insults loyal friends and allies of the United States. Authoritarians, dictators, and gangsters are powerful, which is inherently praiseworthy in Trump’s mind; America’s many, smaller friends and allies are not, which makes them pathetic.

The logical consequence of this thinking is seeing all human relationships — even the relationships between nations — as zero-sum. For you to gain, I must lose. Mutually beneficial relationships are a tale believed by suckers. This is why Trump is so contemptuous of international trade and why his thinking about trade and trade deficits resembles the mercantilism that dominated the 18th century before economists in the 19th century showed that trade can make both parties better off — and before the world saw this central truth of human existence demonstrated over and over again for more than 200 years.

If my description of Trump’s thinking sounds unfair, please, read anything Trump ever wrote. (Or rather “wrote,” since it was all done by ghostwriters.) The zero-sum theme of “strong” winners taking from “weak” losers is relentless. "It's become a cliché to say that business, especially trade, is like war,” Trump “wrote” in The America We Deserve. “But cliché or not, it's true." It is not true. War is pure zero-sum, while most business is not. But the fact that Trump thinks this is a truism he can simply state as fact reveals so much about him.

There’s a reason why Trump’s crude, dumb, utterly wrong thinking is so deeply embedded that it hasn’t budged an inch over a career spanning more than half a century. In childhood, Trump had it drummed into him by his sociopathic father, Fred Trump. Then the father introduced the son to Roy Cohn, who mentored his apprentice in the dark art of screwing the other guy. Trump was weaned on this way of thinking, he built his career on it, he owes everything he has to it. If Donald Trump ever read the story of Athens and Melos, he would surely see only a winner and a loser, and we all know exactly what Trump would say: The Athenians are “strong” and “smart.” The Melians are “losers.” He would say nothing about the slaughter and mass enslavement.

In January, this man will return to the most powerful office in the world, but this time he will operate with far fewer constraints. His gangster-like threats have already begun.

Canada and Mexico must do as he demands, Trump said, or he will hit both with 25% tariffs on all exports to the United States. The fact that this violates a trade deal he himself signed is irrelevant, of course. That’s a claim based on justice, and Athenians don’t give a damn about that.

So how should the targets of Trump’s bullying respond? And by that, I don’t mean only Canada and Mexico. They are only the first of many to come. But to keep things simple — and because I am Canadian — I will focus on Canada.

The United States is Athens. Canada is Melos. What should we do?

First, do not appeal to justice, as in, “but that violates the agreement you signed!” A man who can do what Trump did to all those architects, contractors, and lawyers lacks the shame which gives appeals to justice their power. To such a man, appealing to justice is a mere admission of weakness. It only boosts the contempt which he feels for his victims — a contempt Canada is now experiencing in the form of bullying “jokes” about the Canadian prime minister being the governor of the 51st state.

Second, do not appeal to friendship or alliance, however old and deep. They are evidence of a mutually beneficial relationship — the sort of relationship Trump simply does not believe is possible. They are meaningless to him. And could also be taken as an admission of weakness. (As for whatever this is? Please do shut up, prime minister.)

Third, do not do as he asks.

Trump says he wants action on the Canadian border and fentanyl flowing from Canada to the US, but those are trivial issues relative to the problems the US has with its southern border. And as the entire modern history of the US/Canada relationship shows, if the US wants cooperation on specific policies it has only to ask. So why threaten to push Canada off a cliff to get what the US could get with a phone call and a few quiet meetings?

Because the demands are only a pretext. Even if Canada could satisfy them to Trump’s liking, which is unlikely, he will find others.

The point of Trump’s bullying is — psychological gratification aside — to exhibit his power to the world, just as the Athenians did in destroying a city-state that was as harmless to Athens as Canada is to the United States. That’s why his seemingly gratuitous humiliations are not gratuitous. They’re the point. And in Trump’s mind, if Canada does as he demands it will only confirm that he is strong and Canada is weak, increasing his contempt.

So what should we do? Melos ultimately landed on the right solution: Threaten the bully. Say, “if you come for us we may not be able to stop you but we will make you bleed.”

That didn’t work for Melos because Melos really was too weak to make credible threats. But in this critical way, Canada is not Melos.

Canada is a nation with the second-largest land-mass in the world. We have more people than California. Our economy is the tenth-largest in the world. Canadians have a habit of thinking of Canada as a relatively minor country, a peripheral country, a lovely place filled with lovely people, but a country that does not throw its weight around because it has none to throw. Aside from “does not throw its weight around,” that is entirely wrong. We have abundant wealth and resources and we are more than capable of getting in the ring. Doubt that? Go dig up some Nazis in Normandy and ask them.

Canada is the second-largest trading partner of the United States. Our automobile industry has been tightly integrated with the American industry since the 1960s. And while the United States is a major petroleum exporter to the world, it imports almost as much as it exports — and one-half of those imports come from Canada.

If Trump slaps all Canadian exports to the US with a 25% tariff, American industries, businesses, and consumers will pay a lot more for a huge array of goods and services. Inflation will surge.

But that’s not nearly enough pain, not least because Trump is likely to exempt Canadian exports his interests are particularly sensitive to, such as petroleum. So we need to respond with our own brutality.

We need to make the bastard bleed.

Threaten to put sky-high tariffs on all imports from the US. But far more importantly, cut off trade. Uranium, potash, go down the list. Slap export taxes or bans on the lot. Choke the life out of the American automobile industry and give Michigan the economic equivalent of a coronary — at exactly the moment that Chinese car manufacturers are threatening to swallow global markets. Explode the price of oil in the United States, watch the numbers grow on gas station signs, and listen to the howls of American drivers.

Donald Trump may be a sociopath with a brutal and primitive understanding of human relations, but he’s not indifferent to his own interests, and when American prices soar and American industries contract and American jobs are lost, his interests will be hammered. He will bleed.

I don’t underestimate the damage this would do to Canada. It would turn a disaster into a catastrophe. But the goal, remember, is not merely to make Trump bleed: It is to make him back off by credibly threatening to make him bleed. And there is no other way. We either threaten savage reprisals that hurt Trump and devastate us or we slowly get beaten into submission and penury.

I’ve never been a fan of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, to say the least, but his public comments suggest he understands the need to curl up his pudgy fist and fight. God bless him. The Western premiers who leapt up and promised to do Trump’s bidding, and angrily ruled out hitting the Yanks hard, are fools.

No appeal to justice will stop what’s coming, no appeal to the virtues of the world’s longest undefended border and the massive benefits free trade has delivered to both countries will make any difference. Save those for the American people. The majority of American voters may have cast a ballot for a sociopathic, zero-sum thug, but that is not how they think. They understand fairness. They understand mutual benefit. And they know — or can be convinced — that the American friendship with Canada, through peace and war, has served both countries magnificently.

But their new president? That talk is nothing more than the mewling of the weak.

Melos was prepared to make the Athenians bleed but could not. We can make Trump bleed. We must prepare to do so.