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We are living in the most historically significant moment since the fall of the Soviet Union. The shift in global power away from the United States has reached the point where the payoff that comes from “running the world” is no longer worth the cost. In upending how it engages in the world, the United States has declared: “We’re out.”

In the post-America world, to borrow Fareed Zakaria’s expression, the United States will be much less burdened by the constraints and costs that come from global leadership. Yet given its commitment to remaining the world’s most powerful state, it will not retreat into isolationism. It will engage in international affairs in ways that privilege its core national interests over those of its allies and partners, for whom there will be no more “special deals.”

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With the United States no longer pushing back against hostile states to the same extent as in the past, the world will be a meaner and more dangerous place. Some countries will adapt and seize new opportunities. Others will fail to adapt, finding themselves weaker and poorer.

This tectonic shift has been long in the making, due in large measure to the 2008 financial crisis, decades of military overreach and China’s rise as a hostile (near) peer military and economic power — made possible in large measure by its economic warfare against the United States and its allies.

Struggling under those pressures, successive American administrations — Democrat and Republican alike — have spent the past decade warning allies in increasingly stark terms that the United States is no longer willing or able to underwrite the growing costs of the preferential defence and trade arrangements that underpin its global alliance structure.

Some allies understood early the inevitability of the moment we are now in and set to work preparing themselves for this new reality. Others remained committed to a foreign policy mindset anchored in visions of how they think the world should be, leaving themselves vulnerable to pressure from allies and adversaries alike as the contest over the next global order intensifies.

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Navigating this new world requires an understanding of how the United States will rebuild its national power as it readies itself for the possibility that today’s economic war with China could slide into a full-scale conventional war.

As the Trump administration has made clear, it will tackle America’s internal rot (drugs, illegal migration); rebuild its economic base (resetting trade deals); and focus its military power (reorganizing NATO), while building its defence industrial base and deploying its military sparingly.

Rich in natural resources, geographically connected with the United States and deeply integrated into its critical sectors, Canada is on the front lines of America’s contest with China. This is not something we can change.

To secure ourselves in the world as it is — not as we might wish it to be — we need a national strategy for Canada. The must-do list is long: make the economy much more competitive; unleash the resource sector to capitalize on trends such as re-shoring manufacturing and energy-hungry artificial intelligence; rebuild the industrial base to serve as a secure source of supply for our allies; secure the border with much-needed immigration and criminal-justice reforms; and rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces, at speed.

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At the same time, we must get serious about contesting China’s growing aggression, including its economic warfare aimed at Canada. When we let China abuse our investment and trade regimes to steal our valuable intellectual property and data, curry favour with decision-makers and fund malign information operations against those who would criticize Beijing, we open ourselves to coercion by the Chinese state. Worse still, we make ourselves unreliable and unwanted partners in a more dangerous world.

Natural resource wealth, geographic distance from the “hot” theatres of conflict and a high-tech ecosystem have provided Canada everything it needs to change course. We can make ourselves a strategic powerhouse in the post-America world. Or we can let ourselves grow weaker and poorer. Canadians deserve a say in that choice. Canadians need a prime minister with a new mandate, to lead us into this next, critical phase.

National Post

Raquel Garbers is a Centre for International Governance Innovation visiting executive from the Department of National Defence, where she has held the role of director general, strategic defence policy, since April 2018.

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