Absolutely.
We could have a nice argument. I would say that the Americans, particularly under FDR, very decidedly moved against isolationism in the post-Second World War period. That's a point of discussion we can have over a coffee or beer.
On your point of what it means for Canada, you're absolutely right. The Americans, in terms of any form of isolationism, will of course say the defence of North America becomes the most important. Where it will, in my view, have the biggest impact on Canada is in our freedom of action. In other words, any time that they've moved to isolationism, the Americans will turn around and say, “Okay, Canada, we're doing this for North America. This is going to cost you this much more.”
Dr. Charron has emerged as our leading scholar on NORAD today. If we look historically, we see some of the previous scholars on NORAD, such as Dr. Sokolsky and Dr. Jockel, have pointed out that we have a pretty good deal. The Americans, because they tended to see benefits of close relationships, tended to pay for the bulk of what NORAD was requiring.
A more isolationist America, which I think Trump summed up when he pointed to the Baltic states and said, “You have to pay more for NATO membership”, goes against everything we've said in terms of proper deterrence. It's that attitude that you have to pay for more. I think that's the first thing you have to worry about.
The second part on isolationism is, if you don't have that capability of saying, “No, we want to do this; we want to make sure we have the ability to make important decisions” when it comes to submarine forces, or interceptors, or any of these aspects, that means you have to have that more capability so that if the Americans do start thinking more insularly, you're ready to say when we're protecting North America, “We already have these assets. This is the role we're playing, and by the way, you can't tell us in terms of doing this because we're already spending a whole bunch of money here.” Hopefully, more reasonable voices in the U.S. will understand that so we're not just told by an isolationist America, “Thou shall be doing that”, with all the sovereignty ramifications carried with that. That is my big fear.
The bigger fear, if you want to go really extreme, is the type of emotional backlash that we've seen starting to be unleashed. Look at what's happening in Britain as they move towards separation from the EU. As we're seeing the rise of some of the far right in France, we see that the question becomes that isolation tends to be associated with extremism from a national perspective. I don't think we want to be focusing too much on that, but we need to be cognizant of it within the Canadian context also.