U.S. Pauses 86-Year Canada Defence Board as 2025 Strategy Recasts Allies as Targets
Updated
Updated · The Conversation · Aug 31
U.S. Pauses 86-Year Canada Defence Board as 2025 Strategy Recasts Allies as Targets
1 articles · Updated · The Conversation · Aug 31
Summary
February 2026 marked a break in U.S.-Canada security ties when Washington paused the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, a bilateral body that had operated continuously since 1940.
The pause fits the Trump administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which rejects the post-1945 rules-based order and treats hemispheric dominance, resource control and industrial re-shoring as national security priorities.
Canada is presented as newly vulnerable because tariffs are described as economic warfare aimed at weakening key sectors such as autos, rather than as leverage for a conventional trade deal.
That shift reaches beyond trade: the report says even NORAD now looks increasingly untenable, pushing Canada toward domestic arms production or procurement with Nordic, European and Korean partners.
More broadly, the change suggests Washington no longer sees allies as first among equals, but as states inside a U.S. sphere of influence alongside resource-rich targets such as Greenland and Venezuela.