Dr Martin Luther King Jr famously said that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that sentiment to be true, even if, just like sitting on the earth’s surface, we cannot see the arc. It seems flat; but it isn’t. Dr Janice Gross Stein, the respected founding Director of the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy recently wondered aloud whether we found ourselves back in the Age of Imperialism and Mercantilism. Good question.

The current US president, “He Who Must Not Be Named,” seems to have missed the last two hundred years of history. The man who is famously referred to as the guy who has “written” more books than he has read, does not understand that both imperialism and mercantilism harm the countries that practise it. That is why those two forms of international intercourse left the stage. Yes, there is an apparent growth of wealth for the initiating country (just like the earth appears flat). Mercantilist trade erodes the wealth of the nation that practises it, albeit slowly, even as wealth appears to be created. The opposite is true. If you don’t believe it, read the history of mercantilist powers like Portugal, Spain and even England. It was one of the reasons why the US South remained poor while the US North grew wealthy before the Civil War (only one reason, I say again).

What does any of this have to do with war? (The reason I write this stuff). Well, that leads us to imperialism because that is one of the offshoots of mercantilism. The civilized West long ago gave up the idea of building empires through the physical conquest of its neighbours. Agreed, there have been temporary resurgences: the Italian attempt to rebuild the Roman Empire; the Nazi quest for Lebensraum; the Japanese attempt to build their so-called Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, better known as the Japanese Empire; the Soviet absorption of Eastern Europe. The end of the Cold War and collapse of the USSR was supposed to have finally put that toxic idea to rest. Not so much.

The Chinese Communist Party under its current leadership breathed renewed life into this moribund and discredited concept in new and interesting ways. Deng Xiaoping, during his time at the helm (1978-1989) changed China in numerous positive ways and even established a methodology for the country to slowly evolve into a capitalist free-trading state, but his successors were unable to continue the trend and the current CCP has turned to militarism and a form of imperialism, albeit less obvious than its neighbour V. Putin, who is arguably not as intelligent as Xi. The Orange Menace to Canada’s south sees these two men as being “strong” and having other quake at the mention of their names and he is envious. Why cannot he be such a leader? And so, he has threatened Canada, Mexico and Denmark. This will be painful (for plenty of reasons) but we are unlikely to see him threaten anyone powerful. Bullies only pick on the weak.

What to do? Stop cowering in the hopes that he will look past us. Find trading partners who will keep their word and respect the rule of law. Rebuild the CAF in ways not seen since 1939. Join the Europeans in telling the US that they are welcome to wander off and live by themselves. Easy? Not at all; the US is the world’s strongest economy, but Moses did not come down the mountain with the rules saying we had to do what they said. It has been less than 75 years that we have wed ourselves to their lifestyle. We can weather this storm.

My prediction? The US electorate will hand him his walking papers long before his four years are up. He will certainly do damage – mostly to the US economy, but Americans, however blind sometimes, are NOT stupid.