Author: Dr. Arney Lange
“It is better to fetch a compass … and go around … than once to see those misshapen monsters.”
Virgil, The Aeneid, Book 3.
The primal rules of an unsupervised schoolyard do not disappear in adulthood. It can be a world of asymmetric power, shifting alliances and the constant threat of coercion. What is learned on the schoolyard is merely repurposed as grand strategy.
Like when someone smaller on the playground finds himself trapped between the spheres of influence of two rival bullies — seemingly forced to placate one to survive the other — so too do smaller nations navigate the global stage. And this has been the case since ancient times.
The Dilemma of False Choice
Yet, when applied to the Ship of State, this dilemma is often elevated as some sort of false historical binary — a binary choice between the so-called Scylla and Charybdis. On one side lay Charybdis, a devouring whirlpool of totalizing control and destruction. On the other stood Scylla, a multi-headed monster on the cliffside extracting tribute from all who sailed too close.
Similarly, the Carney government is arguing that Canada must steer perilously close to being swallowed by the tyranny of a whirlpool called his “new world order.” This is in order to avoid the snapping jaws of another monster — an extractive U.S., which appears to demand tribute instead of trade.
Leaders convince themselves that they must choose between these two hazardous dependencies. It mistakes an immediate schoolyard brawl with the U.S. for an unalterable course into totalitarian doom. The false choice implies Canada’s fate lies only in how we wish to be consumed. It forgets that survival often amounts to refusing to sail into the narrow strait in the first place.
Canada’s choice is not a binary one. Charybdis represents a globalist “new world order” driven by subservience to totalitarian regimes like China. Scylla pits sovereign free nations against each other, ensuring mutual economic ruin.
But the third option exists: Canadian agency.
We do not have to be helpless pawns in the rules of some other’s game. Canada must develop its own potential — seeking military and economic alliances with like-minded, free, democratic middle powers — and develop its own domestic prosperity plan.
History’s Impossible Options
The basic problem with the first option — the vortex of tyranny — is that Canada loses its freedom and sovereignty. In fact, a “new world order” was proposed years before. This mirrors the federal Liberal government’s lockstep association with the World Economic Forum and a “Great Reset.”
Canadians are meant to believe that our country’s only choice is managed decline — as dictated by authoritarian powers. Why is this government so eager to trade away our sovereignty and use our institutions and freedom as some sort of globalist experiment?
Then, there is the problem of the second option — the monster of extractive protectionism against whom should be friends.
At best, this amounts to an isolationist bunker mentality, and at worst, it amounts to economic collapse.
Like the ancient Athenian empire — which over-extended militarily while its domestic politics fractured — modern protectionism threatens the very foundation of the “shining city upon a hill.” The ancient Athenians started getting abusive to their allies, too. They over-extended militarily. They had a very dysfunctional politics back home. And so it became irretrievable for them.
Hubris led them to never recover their pre-eminence.
Canadians may push for raw, tit-for-tat trade retaliation against the U.S. — and it is ten times our size. But these trade counterpunches are tactical or operational at best.
Anger is certainly not a strategy.
We do not advance the cause of liberty by pitting one free nation against another. Military strength and economic strength are inseparable — and isolationism plays right into the hands of truly totalitarian regimes. The world — even from the schoolyard — is fundamentally bipolar between such tyranny and freedom — whether a tantrum or not.
This isn’t Canada first or America first; it is Canada only and America only.
A Third More Mature Way to Freedom
So what can Canada do? What is the third option?
Go around. Go around that impossible narrow strait and find another way. This is the too-often overlooked way. There are two variations: with or without friends.
Let’s consider Canada’s realistic options for friendly nations — that are also free and democratic.
A glance across the horizon reveals Canada is not alone. A scattered flotilla of other free middle powers also finds itself caught in exactly the same predicament.
A self-reliant third way shows that free nations ought to assert their autonomy and coalesce into a unified fleet. That is, a cooperative alliance strong enough to resist superpower coercion.
Call it a New Alliance Treaty Organization, NATO 2.0. Think of it as a common military and economic defence for free democracies to uphold civilization — with or without the United States.
Canada, Europe (such as the E.U. and U.K.) and the Indo-Pacific (Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Taiwan) would match or exceed the military and economic weight of China or the U.S. — with a combined market size of about 40% of global trade.
This alliance would decouple and de-risk all critical infrastructure, telecommunications and military supply chains from control of hostile regimes. But contrary to Carney, that doesn’t mean joining the European Union — because we are not European.
Like many schoolyard coalitions, this geopolitical armada is inherently limited. Why? It is not just the United States that has shown its economic isolationism. Other parts of the world will show their military isolationism.
Do you think that European nations would sign up to defend Taiwan if China were to invade? There has been enough trouble for Europe to coordinate a timely military response to help Ukraine from a Russian invasion.
As a result, paralyzed by their own internal issues, many middle powers continue to sail as isolated targets — unable to coordinate with others and vulnerable to sudden attacks from whatever tyranny.
Thus, Canada must find this third way even with few steadfast friends. Canada must welcome free democracies to trade (and fight together) when necessary. But we must get self-reliant and revive our own initiative regardless. We have to invest in our own defence and stand up for ourselves. We must get our own act together first before posing as some international busybody.
For now, Canada has to get its own cohesive national policy together.
Odysseus (from Homer’s Odyssey) did choose to sail through the narrow strait — and sacrificed the lives of his men in the process. He felt compelled to do so to reach home more quickly.
But Virgil tells of another leader — Aeneas.
He chose to circumnavigate the very same crisis entirely — by a safer, albeit more arduous, route. He was said to become the founder of the Roman civilization.
This is the difference between individual cunning of immediate sacrifice and preservation of a whole people to renew a nation.
It Is Your Wits and Not Your Size That Counts
Civilization has never been attained by succumbing to tyrannies of some “new world order” nor by dividing sovereign nations that all ought to value the same respect for each other’s freedom. Rejecting decline or chaos, Canada must choose neither. Go around the obstacle and, thereafter, get to a strong, independent, prosperous country and world.
When the grand maps of the statesmen are folded away, the truth of sovereignty returns to the simple wisdom of the schoolyard applied to adult realities.
With a waning rules-based order, a smaller person does not survive a brawl by trying to become a bully, nor by waiting for a protective clique that may never form. But you also do not have to react to every provocation.
When you have your own strategy, you do not need to own the map to refuse to play the bullies’ game. Survival, dignity and even liberty are found in the quiet resolve to simply walk away from a false choice, build alliances where you can and prepare to defend yourself.
Traps only function if the captain believes monsters control the entire ocean. For Canada, the bypassing of a lethal, narrow strait controlled by superpowers — even if it means taking the long way — is the ultimate assertion of national character.
Your sovereignty is not measured by the size of your hull, but by your willingness to chart your own course home.