Dr. Strangelove diplomacy: How the Pentagon's symbolic defence board freeze with Canada could backfire

[Spazito]

Although greeted with a mixture of angst, anger and genuine confusion in this country, it is undeniable that the Pentagon’s move this week to freeze one of the oldest pillars of continental defence co-operation — ostensibly to punish Canada — carried with it notes of dark comedy.

Following Elbridge Colby’s social media edict pausing the U.S.–Canada Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD), one was hoping to see among the replies: “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the war room!”

There is still time.

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Americans: We’re suspending the PJBD and putting it under review.

Canadians (and most people): You’re pausing the what?

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The advisory body has met only seven times in the last decade, the last time in the fall of 2024.

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The irony is, if most Canadians hadn’t heard of the PJBD before Colby’s X post on Monday, they have now, and have been handed another grievance or reason to be resentful of the imperially inclined United States — even if they had no idea the board existed, or what it did.

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"It is self-defeating, just like attacking Iran and not having a plan for the Strait of Hormuz," Saideman said. "It's the same people making the same kinds of decisions, assuming that they can impose their reality on everybody else, but they forget everybody else has an agency, everybody else has domestic audiences."

more

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/u-s-pulls-out-defence-board-canada-9.7206489

It's a long article/analysis but is worth the read, imo.