Key Points – Ottawa can’t decide on the F-35 fighter, but a bigger challenge is brewing. Canada’s formal discussions to join President Trump’s “Golden Dome” continental missile defense initiative, a multi-hundred-billion-dollar project, are strongly criticized as prioritizing political spectacle over sound strategic investment.
-This initiative is seen as an expensive and likely ineffective “illusion of security,” reminiscent of Reagan’s “Star Wars,” that risks diverting Canada’s limited defense resources from crucial areas like Arctic security and NORAD modernization.
-Furthermore, joining could entangle Canada in US domestic political agendas and potentially accelerate adversary arms buildups, ultimately making North America less secure rather than more so. True Canadian security lies in strengthening its own regional capabilities.
Golden Dome: Mistake for Canada?
Canada is now formally in talks to join Donald Trump’s so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense initiative – a multi-hundred-billion-dollar pan-continental shield designed to intercept incoming threats from adversarial states like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s office confirmed this yesterday, with U.S. President Trump proudly declaring that Canada would “pay its fair share.” According to Trump, that share is yet to be determined, but the entire system will cost more than $175 billion and take three years to build.
Let’s not mince words: this is defense theater masquerading as grand strategy. It is seductive, shiny, and politically convenient – but ultimately misguided. It is the illusion of security, not its substance. And it risks draining finite Canadian defense resources away from our real strategic imperatives: the North Atlantic, the Arctic, and the North Pacific.
CMMT Cruise Missile. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
Of course, missile defense has long been a seductive mirage for American politicians – and, increasingly, for their Canadian counterparts. It promises technological mastery over the ancient terror of annihilation. With enough satellites, sensors, interceptors, and hype, we might just erase the vulnerability that has haunted the nuclear age since 1945. Or so the logic goes. But this logic is as flawed today as it was when Reagan unveiled his “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983. The laws of physics, the speed of hypersonic weapons, and the ruthless ingenuity of adversaries do not care about our dreams of invulnerability. And no dome – golden or otherwise – can truly shield us from the tragic nature of international politics.
Still, Canada’s eagerness to join this project is telling. It reflects the Carney government’s broader defense philosophy: optics over outcomes, symbolism over substance. Like Trudeau before him, Carney is addicted to the theater of commitment without the burden of consequence. But unlike Trudeau, Carney has a banker’s flair for sounding serious. The problem is that he now appears willing to mortgage Canada’s entire defense future on a gilded missile shield that may never work as advertised.
Let’s be clear: defending the North American homeland from missile attack is a legitimate concern. No one disputes that. The threat from North Korea is real, and China’s expanding missile arsenal is evolving in dangerous new ways. But the Golden Dome is not a coherent response to those threats. It is a political project aimed more at buying domestic credibility than delivering strategic clarity. Worse, it distracts from the urgent – and much more grounded – work of reinforcing NORAD modernization, Arctic domain awareness, and Canada’s actual territorial defense.
For Canada, joining the Golden Dome carries three major risks.
First, it will siphon money and attention from capabilities we actually need. Canada already struggles to meet its NATO commitment of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense – a target it has failed to hit for decades. Its procurement system is broken, its military is overstretched, and its northern defenses are anemic. So where exactly will the billions for the Golden Dome come from? And what will we sacrifice to pay for it? Submarines? F-35 sustainment? Arctic infrastructure? As I’ve argued in the past, Canada needs to prioritize platforms and postures that reinforce its credibility in its own neighborhood, not moonshots that belong in a brochure.
Second, the Golden Dome risks enmeshing Canada even deeper in the pathologies of U.S. domestic politics. Trump’s missile defense obsession is not strategic – it’s performative. It plays well with his base, offers a veneer of strength, and feeds the fantasy that the U.S. can unilaterally escape the logic of mutual vulnerability. But it’s a fantasy that risks dragging its partners into a false sense of security. If Canada joins this system, we effectively tie ourselves to the political fate of Trump’s national security agenda, which could implode – or mutate – depending on who wins in 2028.
Third, the Golden Dome may actually make North America less secure by accelerating arms races. Missile defense systems – even imperfect ones – tend to provoke rather than deter. China and Russia will respond not by accepting the new status quo, but by building more missiles, deploying decoys, and investing in technologies that render the dome obsolete before it’s operational. This is the classic offense-defense spiral, well known to students of Clausewitz and Thucydides alike. What begins as a defensive measure becomes a destabilizing provocation, leading not to security but to its opposite.
Hypersonic Missiles fired from B-52. Image Credit: Creative Commons.
And here we return to the core of the problem: this is not strategy. It’s anti-strategy.
True grand strategy begins with honest prioritization. For Canada, that means fortifying the Arctic, reinforcing our NATO flank in the North Atlantic, and strengthening our North Pacific presence through credible air and naval capabilities – not buying into billion-dollar fantasies. Canada’s geography is both a blessing and a burden: we are shielded by oceans but exposed in the polar north. We must act accordingly. That means investing in undersea surveillance, domain awareness, sovereign control of our airspace, and credible deterrent forces – not clinging to American dreams of space-age shields.
The irony, of course, is that Canada already has a functional binational defense architecture with the United States: NORAD. What NORAD needs is not a new name or a new dome – it needs funding, modernization, and political seriousness. It needs radar upgrades, new command-and-control systems, and real coordination across Arctic bases. These are not glamorous projects. They don’t lend themselves to golden branding. But they are essential.
Unfortunately, the Carney government seems more interested in burnishing its image than addressing these realities. Joining the Golden Dome will allow Carney to claim that he is “doing something big” on defense. It will allow Trump to say that Canada is “paying its fair share.” And it will allow both leaders to point to a shiny new deliverable ahead of their respective elections. But beneath the gold plating, it is strategic fool’s gold.
This is not to say that Canada should reflexively oppose all U.S. missile defense initiatives. If there are cost-effective, technically feasible components that enhance continental defense – especially radar and command architecture upgrades – then Canada should be at the table. But signing on to a $175 billion boondoggle simply to signal alignment is not serious statecraft. It’s an expensive selfie.
In an age of rising multipolarity, nuclear risk, and global fragmentation, countries like Canada must be ruthlessly clear-eyed about what matters and what doesn’t. Theater systems like Golden Dome may satisfy political impulses, but they will not deter a Chinese submarine in the Arctic, stop a hypersonic glide vehicle over the Beaufort Sea, or impress a Russian admiral prowling the GIUK gap.
What Canada needs is not a shield made of gold. It needs a spine made of steel. And that starts with choosing substance over spectacle – strategy over symbolism – reality over illusion.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. Andrew is now a Contributing Editor to 19FortyFive, where he writes a daily column. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
