Quickening of the New Détente

Minister of Defense, Honorable Bill Blair MP
Minister of Foreign Affairs: Mélanie Joly
Minister of International Trade: Anita Anand or Mary Ng
Minister of Finance: Dominic LeBlanc
Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs: Michael Chong
Shadow Minister for International Trade: Randy Hoback
Shadow Minister for Finance: Jasraj Singh Hallan
Leader of the Official Opposition: Pierre Poilievre
Deputy Leader of the Official Opposition: Melissa Lantsman
NDP Critic for Foreign Affairs and International Development: Heather McPherson
NDP Critic for International Trade: Blake Desjarlais
Honorable Greg Mclean MP

Canada’s trade with Russia has undergone dramatic shifts over the past decade, especially in response to geopolitical events. As I’ve written previously on Trade Stabilization, Canada’s reaction matrix should anticipate the Arctic as a renewal of international development and security architecture. In the short term, trade diversification is a priority.

Before the Maidan Coup in 2014 and pre-Crimea Crisis

• The 2013 fiscal year for Canada had 1.4b in exports to Russia, 0.86b in imports, with 2.3b total two-way in trade (CAD).

Pre-SMO Peak

• The 2021 fiscal year for Canada had 0.66b in exports to Russia, 2.1b in imports, with 2.76b total two-way in trade.

Post US/NATO Multilaterally Coordinated Sanctions on a “Marginal Trade Partner”

• Since the sanctions package have rendered Canada’s trade with Russia to near zero, or negligible, the estimated loss in trade since 2021 at the peak trade until January 01 2025, would have totalled 9.15b at a hypothetical 5% annual trade growth. Without the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine, Canada-Russia would have been trading well over 3.3b per year.
• Compared to 2013, Canadian exports were dominated by manufactured goods (98%), most of which being agriculture, followed by aerospace, machinery and industrial, followed by automotive. Conversely Canadian imports were 82% manufactured goods, and 18% resource based, largest of which being energy products, fertilizers, followed by metals and minerals. At the peak trade volume (2021), Canada had a trade deficit with Russia (~53%) making up 0.1% of exports and 0.3% of exports, compared to the trade surplus before the Maidan Coup (2013).

Russian-US Cooperation In The Arctic Is in Thaw. Canada Can Anticipate The New Détente

Following the peace talks with US-Russia concerning Ukraine mediated by Saudi Arabia, Russia announced that it has appointed a new ambassador to Washington, Alexander Darchiyev who previously served as Russia’s ambassador to Canada from October 2014 to January 2021. Darchiyev is currently the head of the foreign ministry’s North America department and will soon leave for the role in Washington. Moscow had not had an envoy in the US since relations had frozen, and the previous one had left.

The USA had been a key player in forcing Canada to freeze all relationships with Russia, in the US/NATO proxy war. Now that a trade war against Canada is taking place by the US, aggression against Russia is up for review. Moreover, if the world is being pressure-cooked for peace, why not be the first to pivot when the direction is knowable? 

Considering RT’s sharp shift towards pro US-MAGA since the US election, we might consider that the last time Voice of Russia experienced an extraordinary shift rebranding as RT, only wikileaks could explain it. Otherwise Putin had predicted exactly the shift demonstrated by JD Vance’s recent speech on the downfall of Europe.

The Financial Times describes the US-European split as the ‘End of an era’. Meanwhile the US 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico will take effect soon, starting March 4, 2025 indicating that Canada’s negotiations have failed. We have entered the high fragmentation stage of the international situation.

Bloomberg cited an official last week, reporting that they see potential in cooperation with Russia in the arctic. Rubio told Breitbart that the US wants to prevent China from becoming Russia’s largest trade partner, particularly in energy.

Russia and China have strengthened strategic relations over recent years, because it suits both countries mutual interests, despite China’s arms trade with Ukraine as a buyer. Both countries are sovereign in their right to diversify their partners. By freezing the frontlines, Trump’s Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, Richard Grenell, JD Vance, are seeking to isolate China’s energy relationship.

Fast is likely. Likely is fast

In order to undercut China’s access to discounted Russian energy, the Arctic is key. The final political solution remains to be seen in Ukraine, whether bending to Russia’s conditions also promise a highly transactional, realpolitik geostrategic energy realignment on the global scale.

By sidelining China, the US can undermine Power of Siberia II. What this otherwise could be seen as is creative energy diplomacy. While a diplomatic solution with Europe would revive energy flows to Europe potentially from Nord Stream II, with many unknowns involved, the New Détente could help to stabilize Europe’s energy crisis.

On December 6 2024 Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly launched Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy. Al Jazeera described the policy as a scramble against threats. In the 2022-2023 Arctic Security Senate Report, and in a similar policy document on Arctic Security by the Wilson Center, Canada’s main focus is on massive security shortfalls. The policy papers warn of major consequences if Arctic sovereignty is not strengthened, politically, militarily, and economically. Become strong, or become irrelevant.

While the direction of the Canadian government is working within the interoperable logic of the old world order, the New World Order is trying to emerge.

Take India for example, who is multi-aligned, but non-allied. The importance of leveraging neutrality in an unstable or displaced international order rests in balancing interests in non-aligned pressure.

Canada has valuable Geostrategic anticipations

First developed in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the NAWAPA—the North American Water and Power Alliance—was a grand continental scale engineering proposal first developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers and the Parsons Corporation. The concept remains one of the most ambitious ideas to examine the continent through a lens of development and security, rather than geopolitical power games.

The basic concepts of the plan involved capture of massive volumes of freshwater from Northern rivers of Alaska, Yukon, and Northern British Columbia. Store and redirect this water in a vast reservoir system of canals, tunnels, aqueducts, and pumping stations. East towards the Great Lakes, South through the US West, and Southward into Mexico revitalizing deserts and renewing agricultural potential. The scope would involve hundreds of dams, reservoirs, and hydroelectric plants creating new waterways, envisioning complimentary projects of nuclear, maglev rail, and new cities along the infrastructure grid. The project concept holds planetary importance when fully realized.

Positioning Canada as the ‘Arctic Civilization’ also lays the groundwork for pre-interstellar necessities, of prototyping for space colonization, and replicating projects like Umka (Russia’s Arctic city).

In regard to the Arctic, the economic corridor potential are very high involving Canada. All of which, through development, logistics, and security potential unlock resource development in the regions.

1. The Northern Sea Route (NSR) – Russia led. Transporting LNG, oil, and minerals from Siberia to Aisa and Europe.
2. Northwest Passage (NWP) – Canada led. Running through Canada’s Arctic Archipelago, connecting Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through Canadian waters.
3. The Arctic Bridge – Canada Russia link. A shipping route connecting Churchill Manitoba with Murmansk, Russia.
4. Alaska-Canada-Rail (A2A) Corridor – Canada US land link. A proposed rail corridor linking Alaska’s ports to Alberta, connecting the Pacific to interior Canada and the US Midwest facilitating export of Canadian oil, gas, and minerals through Alaskan ports to Asia. Reducing dependency on the US Gulf and West Coast ports.
5. Arctic-Atlantic Corridor – Greenland-Iceland-Europe. Not strictly Canadian, but regionally connective, opening possibilities for other trade diversification options.
6. North American Arctic Corridor (NAAC) – Canada-US-Greenland. A conceptual idea from Canadian policy circles linking Canadian Arctic ports, Alaska, and Greenland through a coordinated transport and defence framework.
7. Siberian-Pacific Corridor (via Arctic LNG projects) Russia-Asia energy corridor. Pipelines and maritime routes moving Russian LNG from Arctic ports like Yamal and Arctic LNG 2 to China, Japan, and South Korea remains a competitor for Canada’s geopolitical potential.

 Canada’s Arctic Interception Strategy

After Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s delusional ploys to respond to Trump tariffs amid rising Albertan secessionist sentiments, one thing is clear. Provincial successionism/ American annexation, sedition, and republicanism are very different things, all of which having the power to sabotage national realities with alienation.

The trade war looms with consequences taking effect in coming days. While the Alberta government has critically mis-understood the nature of the US Empire’s threats, not an ally in the nature of the international situation, the US reserves the right to be as mysterious or dishonest about its reasonsings. Ottawa can pivot the Arctic as a unifying reason to develop, in diplomatic intercepts with trade/security diversifications in mind.

Canada is a Middle Power, not a pole in the polarity of the international order. It has the means to react and leverage power in a realistic assessment of the world as it is, rather than how we want it to be. The superpowers have the modality of idealism and dictate.

Two-step considerations do not need to be one dimensional, as in good states and bad states. But rather identifying what Canada may have that Russia or any state needs in considering steps towards changing circumstances and power alignments.

For example, Russia has been diplomatically isolated in Arctic governance through the ‘Arctic Council’. Canada could help facilitate Russia back into multilateral arctic governance, as a key player within the next decade if the decision matrix has room for two or three step scenarios where international fragmentation is high. Conversely, using European powers, it may be possible to deny threats from the sovereignty of the North, whether Russia or the USA escalates. Pivoting to Russia would have consequences with Europe first, whereas pivoting to Russia after European fragmentation would be unscathed in search of new arrangements.

Canada’s response should assess each and every possibility available in it’s decision matrix, by realism and priority.

Canada’s greatest leverage lies in controlling Arctic logistics—ports, shipping lanes, and energy exports. Exertion of sovereignty gives Ottawa indirect influence over any Russia-U.S. Arctic arrangement. Finally, alternative Eurasian corridors, or joint interoperable Canadian-European Transatlantic security realignments are ambitious possibilities but allow Canada to prepare for a multipolar future beyond U.S. economic warfare.

Ukraine in Limbo Bimbo 

The failed deal to financialize: selling souls, until there’s nothing left?

We are now one month into the ‘timeline’ that became knowable about a month ago regarding the new Trump administration’s plans to end the war through pressure. The point I was trying to make in January was not that Trump would arrange a direct path to peace, but rather put Ukraine into a pressure cooker where they would be forced to make decisions.

US and Russian officials met for talks mediated by Saudi Arabia in Riyadh, February 18 2025. Amid the discussion to end the war there were no peacekeeping nations from NATO countries present, Nebenzya describing the EU and UK as being incapable of reaching any agreement with Russia by being blinded by “primitive Russophobia”. Russia’s conditions remained firm.

Zelensky has now made his first visit to the white house since the new administration took office and it did not go well. Open displays of antagonism and hostility.

The offer on the table from the US needs to be described as the “Ukraine-US Minerals Agreement”. While the deal was not signed, considering how badly the white house visit went, its contents are shocking.

Ukraine-US Minerals Agreement: Financialization and Foreign Control Over Ukraine’s Resources

Key provisions

• Establishment of a Joint Investment Fund
  • The deal creates a “Reconstruction Investment Fund”, which will be jointly owned and managed by the U.S. and Ukrainian governments.
  • The U.S. Treasury Department and Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance will oversee the fund, but the exact level of U.S. decision-making authority remains vague.
  • Ukraine is required to contribute 50% of revenues from the monetization of its natural resources to this fund. This includes:
  • Minerals (graphite, lithium, rare earth elements, etc.)
  • Hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas)
  • Other extractable materials
  • Critical infrastructure (liquefied natural gas terminals, ports, and state-owned energy enterprises)
  • The fund reinvests revenues, but it is unclear how much will be retained by Ukraine versus siphoned into U.S.-controlled investments.
• U.S. Economic Control Over Ukraine’s Resources
  • Neither Ukraine nor the U.S. can sell or transfer their stake in the fund without mutual consent, meaning Ukraine would be locked into the agreement indefinitely.
  • The U.S. government will have decision-making authority to the extent allowed under U.S. law, effectively granting Washington control over Ukraine’s mineral exports.
  • The fund aims to increase private investment and foreign control over Ukraine’s mining and energy industries, potentially opening the door for U.S. corporations to dominate the sector.
  • The agreement ensures Ukraine cannot encumber or pledge its resource contributions to other creditors or institutions, preventing Kyiv from leveraging its assets independently.
• Ukraine’s Loss of Financial Independence
  • The agreement limits Ukraine’s ability to use its mineral wealth to fund its own reconstruction without U.S. oversight.
  • The U.S. reserves the right to protect its economic interests in the fund, which could mean prioritizing U.S. financial returns over Ukraine’s economic stability.
  • The fund will operate under commercial principles, meaning its primary function is profit generation rather than national development.
  • Revenue distribution remains unclear—Ukraine is expected to give 50% of future revenues to the fund, but the actual percentage of proceeds returning to Ukraine is unspecified

If the deal had been signed, it would have arranged aid and security arrangements by the USA, but not any NATO-style mutual defence commitments. While a US military presence was hinted as a means to “protect economic interests” in the region, this can also be done with private military contractors (mercenary PMC arrangements).

While many Western countries have similarly financialized the war, through bonds and debt schemes, the US deal marked one of the most blatant escalations in otherwise “buying Ukraine”. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are particularly notorious here as well.

For some background regarding the neoliberalization of Ukraine’s economy, an article from 2023 on Consortium News titled ‘Ukraine’s Big Mistake’ explains it quite well.

Sincerely,