Can America’s Allies Survive the Transatlantic Rupture?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Chrystia, thank you so much for doing this.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

It is wonderful to be with you.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

We are having this conversation just before the four-year anniversary of the full-fledged invasion of Ukraine, and I want to talk about Ukraine for most of this conversation, given how central a player you’ve been, both in the Canadian government and now in your new role advising President [Volodymyr] Zelensky in the Ukrainian government.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

And let me just say unpaid, volunteer role.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Got it. Of course.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

No executive authority. I just don’t want to overstate my position.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Absolutely, simply establishing your credibility and insight on this issue. But since we are at the Munich Security Conference, we’re here a day after [U.S. Secretary of State] Marco Rubio gave his speech, a year after [U.S. Vice President] JD Vance gave his rather disquieting speech to audiences here, and a few weeks after your former colleague, [Canadian] Prime Minister Mark Carney, gave his speech at Davos on the rupture, this moment of change. I’m interested in how you see the state of the order, the state of the alliance. There’s a lot of angst about that here. Are you as pessimistic as Carney seems to be and as many others here are?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

I think the Rubio speech was interesting, and the reactions to the Rubio speech were interesting. You heard that [President of the Munich Security Conference Foundation Council] Wolfgang Ischinger, his opening comment there after the speech, did you hear “the sigh of relief” in the room? That was one take, and one take to which I am partial. One European take was, “Okay, this is an olive branch. They’re not going to be beating us up so much. And maybe we’re not going to go back to normal, but maybe we’re not going to have a divorce.” I think the other European take was a bit more guarded. And I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Well, actually, this was the same message but delivered with a smile.” And actually, I think both takes are correct. It was the same message but delivered with a smile. That makes a difference, though. When you have a partnership but a disagreement in that partnership, it matters whether, in public, you’re yelling and screaming at the partner versus being a bit more generous and friendly and partner-like.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The fact of wanting to seem conciliatory, it’s meaningful symbolism.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

It’s a fact itself. Yeah, yeah, that has a meaning. I think that is significant. And I think that, obviously, and the Europeans have been very, very clear about this. They believe in the transatlantic relationship. [German] Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s speech was powerful and important. And the United States could not have a more pro-American, a more Atlanticist chancellor than Friedrich Merz. And a Republican American government could not have potentially a better partner than Friedrich Merz.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Pro-business figure.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

He is a small-c conservative. He used to work for BlackRock, for goodness’ sake. He is an avowed Atlanticist. In 2018, he gave me an award for working on the transatlantic relationship in his capacity as chairman of Atlantik-Brücke, Atlantic Bridge, the premier transatlantic supporting organization. So this is a person who you should be able to be friends with if you are American, but even he was speaking about a rift.

Now, he spoke before the Rubio speech, but I think what you have with the Europeans is a very strong conviction across all parties that a strong transatlantic relationship would be great to have, and you’ve heard that from everybody here, but also a recognition that love must be reciprocal and that if Washington doesn’t want a strong relationship, Europe has to behave accordingly. And I think that recognition that the desire for a strong transatlantic relationship is maybe weaker today than it has been in the past, that remains the case. And we’ve heard Europeans talking about that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I’ve been struck in conversations here that many Europeans, Canadians, other American allies who are in the halls here have said versions of, look, some of us realized during [U.S. President Donald Trump’s] first term that we needed to create more options for ourselves, that we couldn’t be so dependent, especially in security terms, on the United States, which some of us realized after the Vance speech here in Munich a year ago or after the “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced and all the various iterations of the trade war that followed, that we needed to do a better job of creating options for ourselves economically. But we haven’t really gotten serious about it, and only now, in the wake of Greenland, I think the Mark Carney speech was, at least kind of symbolized this, but I think Greenland is what really drove it home for a lot of Europeans. “We really need to rethink how we’re approaching this moment.” I imagine those conversations are happening in governments around Europe and Canada and probably in East Asia as well. As you think about options for navigating this moment and trying to create some degree of choice for middle powers or American allies without fully breaking the relationship for reasons you laid out, how would you think about the strategies that are available to both Canadians and others at this point?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

There are so many points you’ve touched on there. I’m actually going to start with two phrases you said. You said, American allies and middle powers. And one thing that I think is really, really important to underscore is, that is a Venn diagram, that is not two overlapping circles. There are some American allies who are middle powers. There are some American allies who actually are, I would say, a great power, and that is Europe. And then there are some middle powers who are not American allies. And that is, I think, the central point. I think the notion that all middle powers, simply because of their middle-ness, will have the same interests is simply wrong. And so, probably Canada and South Korea have a lot that we can and want to do together and have been doing together for a long time, by the way. Canada and Iran, probably fewer interests in common. I think that is a central point.

And I wouldn’t confuse what is a strategy for middle powers with what is an equally, maybe even more central question, which is, what is the strategy for U.S. allies today? That to me, speaking as a U.S. ally, is probably the central question, and it’s maybe the central question in the world because if you’re not a U.S. ally, you kind of know where you stand and you’re maybe quite happy because you see the alliance, if not in disarray, facing a great deal of internal uncertainty.

And when it comes to U.S. allies, I think actually people are settling into some pretty clear views. One is that, on security, people need to take care of themselves a little more and not simply rely on the United States. And actually, that’s a point of great agreement. That’s what American presidents have wanted for a long time. And I think it’s now a truth universally acknowledged, and I think that’s a really good thing.

On trade, there’s more of a paradox because the paradox is the American allies still want to trade with the United States, and it’s not entirely clear what kind of an economic relationship America wants with its former allies. So the paradox is, on the one hand, you have the allies sort of saying, “This is a rift. You guys don’t want to be our friends anymore,” but also, actually, we do want to be your friends. We do want to have that trading relationship. And then I think the final thing, which is now increasingly clear, is people are settling on a different strategy when it comes to dealing with the Trump administration. The initial view with this Trump administration was that some kind of appeasement or conciliation was the right approach. I was never a big fan of that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You were in government at the time. You were deputy prime minister at the beginning of the Trump administration, so you were—

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Well, Trump one.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Trump one. Yeah.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

And my experience with the [North American Free Trade Agreement] negotiations, and actually former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau continued with this approach, our view was, you need to be respectful, you need to seek areas of mutual interest, you also need to hold your ground. And my motto during the NAFTA negotiations was, “We will not escalate, but we will not back down.” And we really looked aggressively, energetically, for areas where we could do things together, do new things together. And the new NAFTA, the [U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement] includes some really significant, I would say, revolutionary measures that you haven’t seen in previous trade agreements, like the labor-value content, things supporting high-wage manufacturing jobs, a very Trumpian issue. And I would give [former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer] a lot of credit for the creativity that went into that. We also agreed to consult and collaborate with each other in our trading relationship with China. So we looked hard for areas where we could do things together, but we were also clear that we weren’t going to be pushed around.

I think that was not a truth universally acknowledged initially. And I think there was actually, behind it maybe a little bit of infantilization of President Trump. I think a lot of other leaders of governments kind of thought they could maybe sweet-talk him and offer a few over-the-top compliments but ultimately get their way. I think President Trump is a lot smarter than some of his critics give him credit for. You don’t become president of the United States twice by accident, and you don’t reshape the Republican Party by accident. And I think what people have realized is, that approach doesn’t work and that actually when you are faced with demands or pressure that is unacceptable, if you have leverage, you have to be prepared to use it.

And that’s what Canada did in the first NAFTA negotiations. When the 232 tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum [Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962] were first put in place, we considered those to be illegal and unjustified. We also thought they were fundamentally not in the interest of the United States or of Canada. And so we retaliated dollar for dollar, acting together with Mexico and the European Union. That was not the approach taken in 2025, but now post-Greenland, I think Europe has realized that capitulation didn’t work. And I think the great capitulation is over. I would say the difference between the Vance speech and the Rubio speech reflects a Trump administration that is trimming its sails a bit in response to that stronger position.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You can, I think, imagine various courses for that. One would be escalation in a way that would be quite damaging to the alliance. One would be continued tit-for-tat in some sense here, but that in fact gets us through this period even if it doesn’t leave the alliance, might fray the alliance but not break it. How do you see those risks?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

I actually see neither, and I don’t think there’s any tit-for-tat going on. There hasn’t been a European counterclaim on U.S. territory, right?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Fair. Yes.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

And I do think the “do not escalate, do not back down,” it’s an approach that worked during the first Trump administration, and I think it’s an approach that works today. And I think it is important to be respectful. It’s important to say, “Actually, this is the administration Americans have elected and we respect that and we acknowledge that.” It’s important to be clear about the goal, which is, we think there is a win-win outcome here. And then it is important to say, “If you’re going to push us in ways that we think are unjustified, illegal, make claims on our sovereignty, we are not going to accept that passively. We are going to respond.” And I think that, certainly how the Trump administration works, but maybe this is more broadly true, is there is pushing as far as you can get to.

But what I think makes the position of American allies actually particularly strong is what they are seeking, I believe, is actually in the interest of the United States. And that’s actually a great negotiating position to be in. If what you are saying is, we want to be your allies in the world, we want to work with you, let’s say the Greenland sort of military alliance space, we want to be your allies, we want to maintain this partnership, which for 80 years has underpinned, actually, the time of greatest American economic flourishing in American history, we want to keep on doing that, and the only thing we’re saying is don’t try to take over our territory. That’s a pretty good offer to make to the United States. Likewise, on the trade front, the issue is, we think it would be good to continue to trade with each other. In the case of Canadian aluminum, we think it would be good to continue to sell our aluminum to you, which is basically electricity in solid form, at a time when you are concerned about not having enough power to build your data centers. That’s a pretty good position to be arguing.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

How do you assess the Trump rhetoric, the threats about the 51st state and meeting with Albertan separatists and all of that? Is that something that, from a Canadian perspective, you need to take seriously and push back on? Or is that noise, in this particular moment at least?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

I think you need to take it very seriously. I would put the “that’s just noise” attitude in the great capitulation set of responses. I think that if any country makes a territorial claim on your country, the only response has to be firm, clear, immediate. And actually, something that has made me very proud as a Canadian is the way the political lions in the Canadian landscape, our former prime ministers, have been so clear and so strong across party lines. Jean Chrétien, who is now in his 90s, was very clear right away when the 51st state stuff came out. And he had this great line. He said, “From one old man to another, cut it out.” Stephen Harper, who’s a conservative, I’m a liberal, has also been really, really strong on this. And he has said a couple of times that Canada should be prepared to pay whatever price to maintain its sovereignty. And I cite him because he is not only a former conservative prime minister but was an MP from my home province of Alberta and very popular there. So it’s a big mistake to dismiss stuff like that as noise.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And if you take it seriously, what do you worry about in the next couple of years if those threats continue and are in fact worth taking seriously?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

I think you just have to be strong in defense of your sovereignty. And I think, actually, to quote Jean Chrétien again, he also likes to joke that President Trump should be awarded the Order of Canada because he has united Canadians in a way that we hadn’t been united before. And he’s reminded us. . . . Canada is not a real heart-on-sleeve country when it comes to Canadian patriotism, but we’ve become that way, and that is because we feel the threat. And so I think that’s what we need to do.

But I do, Daniel, want to say something else and maybe a bit different, which is, and I actually think the Rubio shift in tone speaks to this, I think that it is a real mistake to write America off. I think during the first NAFTA negotiations, part of our approach was something we called the donut strategy. And what that meant was, of course, we knew that our interlocutors were the executive, the Trump administration, and we focused on that. We took it very seriously. But we knew that America was very big and went far beyond that. And so we worked hard with Congress, we worked hard with the Senate, we worked hard with governors, we worked hard with mayors, we worked hard with unions, we worked hard with businesses. And there was sort of a sense that all of Canada was drafted into that. It was kind of like, if you know an American, if you have an American client, heck, if you have an American friend, talk to them about the value of this relationship.

And that is a very important approach I think everyone needs to be taking right now because America’s relationship with Canada, America’s relationship, the transatlantic relationship, I would even say America’s relationship with the nongeographic West, of course, is importantly defined by the president Americans elect, but I think it’s something that all Americans have a stake in. And part of the reason that I think it’s important to say, “We do not escalate, but we do not back down,” is to let Americans know that this relationship that you may be taking for granted is being put in peril. It’s being imperiled. And to say to Americans, “Is that what you really want?” And what I have found, and I think surveys show this very, very clearly, is Americans actually don’t want to have a fight with Canada. Americans actually think it’s absurd to have a fight with Europe over Greenland.

And so, if we’re talking about the transatlantic relationship, it’s a relationship with all of America. And my own view, and look, I speak as someone who is openly really fond of the United States. I think you guys are kind of great, and I think that it would be a mistake for us, your neighbors, allies, friends, to write you off. I really like the line attributed to [Winston] Churchill that America always does the right thing, usually after trying everything else.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

We’re in the trying-everything-else phase right now.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Yeah, quite aggressively, creatively. But I think we shouldn’t rule out that you will end up doing the right thing. And part of the reason I think we shouldn’t exclude that possibility and should try to keep the door open for you to take that option is the world will be a hugely better place if America does end up doing the right thing.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

To turn to Ukraine, it’s been a dramatic year trying to follow U.S. policy on Ukraine. It was a little under a year ago when Zelensky was in the Oval Office being berated by JD Vance and President Trump and the rest of the administration. How do you understand U.S. policy toward Ukraine at this point? You’ve interacted with it at various points in your roles with the Canadian government, but it’s been, I think, hard for many observers on the outside to understand what exactly the Trump administration is trying to do in Ukraine right now.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

I think the Trump administration should speak for itself when it comes to what is their policy toward Ukraine. But I do think that it’s maybe worth talking a little bit about what is Ukraine’s policy in a volatile world. And going back to the beginning of our conversation, I think, in some ways, we are all Ukrainians now. What the Ukrainians have realized in a terrible, terrible way is if you want to be a sovereign country, if you want to defend your democracy in an age of rising and aggressive authoritarian regimes, you may have to put your life on the line.

Zelensky, I really liked the speech he gave early on in the war in the British Parliament, and the way Zelensky used “to be or not to be,” the Hamlet line, in the British Parliament was really, really effective. And it was effective because it’s true. Ukrainians kind of had to decide, do we want this? Do we really care? And in some ways, that is the question all countries have to ask themselves. And I think it’s kind of a double question we have to ask, like, do I care about my country’s sovereignty? Am I with Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper? Is it, like, pay any price? And do I care about my democracy? And I hope that all of us will be Ukrainians that way. But what the Ukrainians, what their experience also shows is it’s really, really hard. You pay a huge price in blood and treasure, and they still are.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You lived in Ukraine before the fall of the Soviet Union, if I have the time right?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

That is correct. Yeah. I lived in the Soviet Union.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You speak Ukrainian.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

I speak Russian too.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You have Ukrainian heritage, so you understand their society.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

And I say the Russian part also just because obviously Russia is a big part of this equation, but the other thing that has happened that I think is going to be one of the great historical legacies of this full-scale invasion of Ukraine is [Russian President Vladimir Putin] has done something which no Ukrainian national leader was able to do and many of them even didn’t seek to do it, which is fully turn Ukraine away from the Russian cultural space. That’s a huge legacy.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I’ve been struck in talking to Ukrainians here that there’s a real sense of weariness, that even a year ago you did not detect it in the same way. People who are living in cities that were relatively safe are facing much more frequent and more violent attacks. They don’t have power or heat during a very, very cold winter. Many people here are either on the front lines themselves and have been for years or have family members who are. As you look at both the economic basis of this war and the ability of Ukrainian politics, society, population to sustain it, what’s going to allow this to continue, if in fact the war does continue beyond this into its fifth year, as it certainly seems like it will?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Yeah, people are exhausted, and the attacks on the power grid have really brought the war to the home front. It’s not possible to live a normal bourgeois life in Kyiv and have a sense that you’re not living in a country at war. And I think it is worth also pointing out, these are direct, devastating, vile attacks on a civilian population, and we need to not become cynical, and we need to continue to be outraged by that.

Having said that, I would say a few things that are happening right now that I think are very significant. One is, as President Zelensky really emphasized in his speech, the Ukrainians have come up with a way of fighting the war that is really imposing a huge and horrific cost on Russia, 35,000 casualties a month, Russian casualties. And the Ukrainian casualties are much, much lower. And that is because of this drone warfare that the Ukrainians have really been driving.

And I think it is important to be clear about how much Russia is losing, how hard it will be for Russia, just in terms of people, to sustain this. And it’s really horrible, throwing these Russian soldiers into this meat grinder and really losing so many. There are signs that the Russian economy is weakening. If I think back to the history of Western analysis of this war, from the outset we have thought that Russia was stronger than it has turned out to be, and we have thought that Ukraine is weaker than it has turned out to be. Remember right at the beginning, everybody thought, all the smart people thought, they will be lucky if they can hold Kyiv for three weeks. And they have now held it for four years.

Something that, if you look at the Russian Telegram channels. . . . I’ve been banned from going to Russia since the invasion of Crimea. I was put on a Russian sanctions list, so I haven’t been there, but that’s one way that I can be in touch with what’s happening there. The Russian military bloggers, including the pro-war ones, have made a lot of the fact that January 11th of this year was the day on which this Russian invasion of Ukraine has been going on longer than the Soviet Union’s engagement in World War II, when they joined the Allied side. And the point that is made, and not in a flattering way toward the Kremlin, is, wow, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers in that amount of time got all the way to Berlin. And so far, we haven’t even gotten through the Donbas. That’s significant, right?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Right. Right.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

And [the Center for Strategic and International Studies] did, I thought, a very good study of what’s actually happening on the front. And they showed that the Russian territorial gains are actually less than the Battle of the Somme in World War I. And the Battle of the Somme, it is notorious for having been this stalemate where there was no movement. So think about all that for a minute, right?

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Right.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Russia, with it’s huge resources, it’s huge military, they didn’t get to Berlin. They’re at the Battle of the Somme. So we should remember that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Fair. Yeah.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

And then the second thing that I think is a conclusion I would draw from this Munich conversation is, that has gotten through very much to the Europeans. And the other thing that the Europeans are now really not just observing but, I would say, deeply internalizing is a sense of Ukrainian strength. And the Ukrainian strength that they see, and I’ve heard this now from several European heads of government, is they are seeing Ukraine as Europe’s shield and they’re seeing Ukraine as Europe’s arsenal. And you heard that from Zelensky. He said, “We have the strongest army in Europe.” The Europeans get that now.

And it is not disconnected from, I like Merz’s term, the rift in the transatlantic relationship. If at a time when your traditional ally is not so sure, and you’re therefore not so sure, and you need to get stronger, guess what? It turns out there is a country that turns out to be really, really good at fighting and wants to fight with you. And that is what Zelenskyy was saying. There have been a number of European leaders here who have actually been saying, “We need the Ukrainian military.” And many of them have been saying, “We need the Ukrainian military in NATO because if we need to defend ourselves, guess who is the best at doing it?” So that’s the shield part.

But then the other element, which I think is becoming more and more apparent to people, is the extent to which the shape of war is being redefined on the battlefields in Ukraine. And the historical pattern is real transformations in how war works happen not in peacetime, they happen in war. And this is the biggest war right now. At the beginning, it seemed like it was back to World War I and tanks and trenches, and now it is sort of a techno-futuristic drone world. And the Ukrainians not only are good at fighting that war, but they are good at inventing that war and manufacturing the drones and developing the technology for that war. And something that the Europeans are doing with huge alacrity is working with the Ukrainians, trying to get from the Ukrainians production in European countries of those drones. So I would say they’re starting to see Ukraine as their shield, as their arsenal, and that’s a very different way of thinking about Ukraine.

When the war started, it was very much supporting Ukraine as a philanthropic issue, as a moral issue, Ukraine as the virtuous, innocent victim. And that is true. Ukraine is entirely innocent, and I think there was a moral imperative to support Ukraine. But even setting that aside, I think the Europeans are saying, “Wow, we need these guys. They’re really good at fighting, and we’re going to need someone who knows how to fight. And they’re really good at inventing the stuff that we’re going to need.”

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And that’s more important now than it seemed a year and a half ago in some ways, before Trump came back into office.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Hugely, hugely. And for two reasons, because the Europeans see a potential threat from Putin. I had a great conversation with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former Danish prime minister, former NATO secretary-general, and he said to me, he believes there will be a credible Russian threat against a Baltic state, he thinks it’s going to be Lithuania, within the next couple of years. Ukrainians have said to me that in the negotiations, Russians have said to them, “We actually regret starting with Ukraine. That was a mistake. We should have started in a weaker spot.” Now, if you’re a European, if you are a NATO country, you should take that very seriously. And that all of a sudden flips how you think about Ukraine because you think, wait a minute, maybe these guys are going to be able to help defend us and help us make this stuff we need. I was at a meeting with President Zelensky and some business leaders, and I don’t think he’ll mind my saying this, where he showed them the personal technology he uses, that he has at his fingertips, to monitor not the battlefield, the whole country. And they were dazzled. They couldn’t believe what he has just at the touch of a fingertip.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

If we’re sitting here in Munich in a year, which I hope we will be, what’s the most optimistic, plausible scenario for where Ukraine is and where the war is?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Okay, I’m going to be a wild dreamer.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Great. We can close on optimism.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Okay. Wild dream. I really hope the war is over, and I think all Ukrainians hope the war will be over by then. And I hope the war is over on terms that leave Ukraine strategically viable, strategically viable from a military perspective and strategically viable from an economic perspective. And I hope that that includes EU membership for Ukraine. I hope that includes very strong security guarantees. My own view is NATO membership for Ukraine would be the best path for Ukraine and for NATO, and I thought President Zelensky made an excellent point in reminding Europeans and NATO allies—

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It seems unlikely in the near term, I would say.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Yeah, but I think President Zelensky’s point was, don’t let Putin define the terms. And if you want a strong security guarantee, so far the only security guarantee that we know for sure works is NATO. And I do think we shouldn’t leave out justice in the settlement. The reason I say that is, what I thought was a very powerful point of the Zelensky speech was, we are in Munich after all, referring to 1938. And it’s something that I’ve said to some American friends. I’ve said, “Be careful. You don’t want to do something that feels good in the moment, but that history will regard in the way it regards Munich.”

And when we think about what is the right settlement for Ukraine, what Ukrainians are very mindful of is they don’t want to do a deal that means four years from now Russia launches its third invasion of Ukraine. All of us should be thinking about that too. First of all, Europeans, it is first and foremost in their interest that there is no deal done that leaves them open to another invasion. But Americans should care about that too. History will not judge kindly anyone who is party to an agreement on Ukraine which future historians liken to the Sudetenland.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It’s a powerful note to end on. Chrystia, thank you so much. Really appreciate the conversation.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND

Great to talk.