With the UK adrift post-Brexit and its EU–U.S. trade deals largely symbolic, Canada’s economic orbit is already 90% American. The question is no longer if the US shapes Canadian outcomes. Only how long Canadians will pretend otherwise.
💡 “Silent annexation” is already happening: via capital flows, media convergence, elite migration, and total defense reliance.
🧩 The Dominoes Fall
1. 🇺🇸 America Digests Canada: The Ultimate Autarky
Overnight, Toronto ($480B GDP), Calgary ($120B), and Vancouver ($110B) vanish from the Commonwealth ledger.
🛢️ Resource Supremacy:
U.S. ($45 trillion) + Canada ($33 trillion) ranked #2 & #4 in the world in natural resource asset value = unmatched energy dominance in oil, gas, uranium, gold, timber, lithium, and freshwater.
🧊 Geographic Insulation:
Atlantic and Pacific moats, Arctic control, and a contiguous landmass that rivals empires.
⚠️ The “Anglosphere Core” (UK–CAN–AUS–NZ) fractures. Irreparably. America retreats to rebuild its frontier. And with it, the age of empire yields to a multipolar dawn.
Across the Pacific the reverberations are instant
1. 🇳🇨 New Caledonia: Breaks the Chain
After years of contested referendums, Nouméa declares independence, ending French colonial oversight.
🗳️ “France is 17,000 km away. China is next door.” — Kanak independence leader
The message echoes across the Pacific: 🇫🇷 Paris cannot protect what it cannot reach.
2. 🇵🇬 Papua New Guinea: Bougainville Declares Independence
As Bougainville breaks away, China’s Belt and Road Initiative becomes the new blueprint.
🛰️ “The BRI is our future.” — Bougainvillean official
3. 🇫🇯 Fiji: Canoes and Credibility
When ex. 🇦🇺 Defence Minister David Johnston said he wouldn’t trust the Australian Shipbuilding Corp to build a canoe to paddle up the proverbial “shit creek”, Fijians responded:
🛶 “At least in Fiji, we still know how to build canoes.”
4. 🇳🇿 New Zealand: “Kei te ngana te katoa ki te pupuri i tō rātou ake waka kia kore e totohu.”
🛶 “Everyone is just trying to keep their own waka afloat.” Auckland Māori sovereignty activist
📣 Indigenous Māori and post-colonial movements gain traction.
Why pledge fealty to a distant Crown and an abandoned Commonwealth?
5. 🇸🇬 Singapore: Cold Calculation
The city-state ($420B GDP) survives by knowing when to lean. And when to hedge.
⚓️ Ports speak their own dialect. What locals call “Singlish meets Chinglish.”
In this calculus, legacy means little and neutrality is national policy. Trade is king. So is ambiguity.
6. 🇦🇺 Australia: Surrender or Starve
Isolated and militarily negligible, Australia faces existential pressure:
🤝 Bow to Beijing. Trade iron ore. Accept yuan hegemony.
💥 Resist. Risk Chinese embargoes. American indifference.
⚰️ Epilogue: Requiem for Relics
The Commonwealth survives as a heritage NGO. Hosting black-tie galas beneath oil portraits of the royal family, while history moves on. 💎 London’s skyline sparkles but geopolitically, the city is marooned. Trading memory for relevance. Brokering deals between empires it no longer rules.
“We few, we resource-poor few, we band of nostalgists.” — Adapted from Shakespeare’s Henry V