Canada’s Arctic Turn: How Trump’s Hemispheric Doctrine Reshaped a Middle Power’s Defense Strategy

By late 2025, the Arctic had quietly become one of the most politically charged regions on the planet. Melting ice was opening new shipping lanes, exposing vast reserves of minerals and hydrocarbons, and collapsing the distance between North America, Europe, and Asia. Yet the most consequential shift was not environmental or commercial. It was strategic.

In December 2025, President Donald Trump released a new National Security Strategy that placed renewed emphasis on American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The document contained no standalone Arctic chapter. But analysts, commentators, and defense officials quickly noticed what it did include: a sweeping assertion of U.S. authority across the hemisphere, language that implicitly encompassed the North American Arctic.

That framing, amplified by Mr. Trump’s public musings about annexing Greenland and his repeated references to Canada as “the 51st state,” landed in Ottawa as something more than rhetorical provocation. For Canada, a country with the longest coastline in the world and vast Arctic territory sparsely populated and lightly defended, the message was unmistakable. Sovereignty would no longer be assumed. It would have to be demonstrated.

Within weeks, Prime Minister Mark Carney stood before Parliament to announce what would become the largest naval procurement in Canadian history: the planned purchase of 12 conventionally powered submarines, valued at up to 24 billion Canadian dollars. Including training, maintenance, and operations over a projected 30- to 40-year service life, the total cost could ultimately exceed 40 billion.

The decision marked a sharp departure from Canada’s traditional defense posture. For decades, Canadian governments of all stripes emphasized peacekeeping, multilateral diplomacy, and reliance on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, particularly the United States, for continental defense. Heavy investments in high-end military capabilities were politically sensitive and often delayed or scaled back.

This time, the resistance never materialized.

Two companies emerged as finalists in the submarine competition: ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems of Germany and Hanwha Ocean of South Korea. Both offered advanced diesel-electric submarines designed for prolonged operations beneath Arctic ice, with air-independent propulsion systems allowing weeks of submerged patrols and ranges exceeding 3,500 nautical miles.

Mr. Carney personally visited shipyards in Kiel and South Korea in 2025, underscoring the political weight of the program. Hanwha proposed an accelerated delivery schedule, pledging to deliver the first four submarines by 2035 if a contract were signed in 2026. ThyssenKrupp emphasized NATO interoperability, European supply chains, and long-term alignment with allied navies.

But the decisive factor was not speed or sophistication. Canadian procurement documents reveal that fully half of the evaluation weight is assigned to sustainment and maintenance. Only 20 percent is allocated to the technical platform itself.

The reasoning reflects a painful lesson from the past. Canada’s current Victoria-class submarines, purchased from Britain in the late 1990s, have been plagued by maintenance issues, cost overruns, and chronic unavailability. At times, only one of the four boats has been operational. Spare parts are scarce. Skilled technicians are difficult to retain. The fleet is expected to retire by the mid-2030s.

Ottawa’s conclusion is stark: sovereignty cannot be defended with equipment that cannot be maintained. Whichever company wins the contract will be expected to transfer technology, train Canadian engineers, and build domestic maintenance capacity for decades.

Submarines, however, are only part of the story.

In July 2025, amid widespread coverage of U.S.-Canada trade tensions, Ottawa quietly announced a technology cooperation agreement with Australia. At its core is an over-the-horizon radar system capable of detecting targets up to 3,000 kilometers away by bouncing radio waves off the ionosphere. Similar systems already operate in Australia, where they monitor vast maritime approaches with minimal manpower.

Construction on Canada’s version begins this winter at two sites in Ontario, with additional stations planned in later phases. When complete in the early 2030s, the network will allow Canada to monitor activity across its Arctic territory without relying on U.S. satellites or intelligence feeds. The price tag: more than 6 billion Canadian dollars.

Taken together, the submarine program and the radar network represent a commitment of over 30 billion dollars. Add to that the 38.6 billion earmarked for modernizing the North American Aerospace Defense Command over 20 years, and Canada’s defense trajectory becomes unmistakable.

What makes this shift remarkable is not merely its scale, but its political reception. For decades, increased defense spending faced skepticism from Canadian voters, who prioritized healthcare, education, and social programs. That calculus changed almost overnight.

Polling and commentary across major American and Canadian social media platforms in late 2025 reflected a rare consensus. Trump’s language about annexation and hemispheric dominance was widely interpreted, even by critics of Mr. Carney, as a direct challenge to Canadian sovereignty. Opposition parties softened their resistance. Defense spending ceased to be a partisan wedge.

In December, Canada took another symbolic step by joining the European Union’s SAFE program, a 150-billion-euro rearmament initiative launched in response to the war in Ukraine. Canada became the first non-EU country invited to participate. Officials framed the move not as a rejection of NATO, but as diversification.

The pattern is consistent. Radar cooperation with Australia. Submarine negotiations with Germany and South Korea. Participation in European defense industrial programs. Canada is deliberately broadening its strategic relationships beyond Washington.

This is not isolationism. It is hedging.

Defense analysts note that the infrastructure being built is physical and permanent. Naval bases, radar stations, ports, airfields, and satellite systems do not disappear when governments change or alliances shift. Once constructed, they anchor strategic autonomy for generations.

The timelines reflect that ambition. Initial radar capability by 2029. First submarines entering service by the mid-2030s. A full fleet operational by the early 2040s. This is a generational project, not a reactionary one.

The implications extend beyond Canada. Other middle powers are watching closely. Poland has deepened defense cooperation with South Korea and Germany. Australia, while central to the AUKUS pact, is also pursuing independent technology partnerships. Nordic countries are reassessing long-term security assumptions.

Canada’s bet is that cooperation among middle powers, anchored in shared interests rather than dominance, can substitute for absolute reliance on a superpower. Whether that model succeeds remains an open question. The costs are high. The logistical challenges immense. And the United States remains Canada’s closest ally by geography, trade, and history.

But one conclusion is already clear. The Trump administration’s attempt to reassert hemispheric primacy has produced an unintended consequence. Instead of tightening dependence, it has accelerated diversification.

By the time Canada’s twelfth submarine slips beneath Arctic ice in the 2040s, the strategic landscape will look very different from today’s. Sovereignty, once assumed, will be actively enforced. And the Arctic, long treated as a peripheral frontier, will stand at the center of a new era in middle-power defense.

Pressure, history suggests, often yields paradoxes. In seeking to remind allies of American power, Washington may have helped them rediscover their own.