Connections North 2026 conference programme

The draft programme for the 2026 Connections North professional (war)gaming conference can be found below. The conference will be held on March 14, in Ottawa. The theme this year is (War)gaming Canadian Security in an Era of Strategic Uncertainty.

Connections North 2026 programmeDownload

Registration for the conference is via Eventbrite.

Information on past conferences can be found here.

Gaming the American challenge after the NSS

Back in March, I wrote a deliberately provocative piece that suggested “wargaming must account for a new and unexpected “Red”: Donald Trump’s new United States of America.” With the recent release of the new US National Security Strategy (NSS), that concern seems validated.

The discussion below highlights my own views on the Trump Administration’s emerging strategic doctrine, the particular implications of that for my own country (Canada), and finally some more brief thoughts on what we need to be (war)gaming if we are to support an effective strategic response.

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The NSS and the “Trump Doctrine”

The 29-page NSS largely ignores the threat posed by a revisionist, militarized Russia, even as it tacitly echoes several of Moscow’s core talking points—so closely, in fact, that it has been openly praised by Russian officials. That shift is especially striking given that Russia continues in its brutal attempts to subjugate neighbouring Ukraine, yet the document prioritizes negotiation and “strategic stability,” blaming European elites for continuation of the war. The NSS frames U.S. security commitments in sharply conditional, transactional terms, signalling a retreat from longstanding American commitments to help defend Europe against aggression. This impression is reinforced by Trump administration policy on Ukraine, which seeks to reward Russian territorial conquest while laying blame for the conflict on Ukraine itself. This represents a profound moral and strategic inversion—transforming the victim of a war of conquest into the supposed problem, while offering the aggressor de-escalation on accommodating terms. The message to Moscow is that U.S. resolve is collapsing; the message to Europe is that even in the face of outright invasion, American security guarantees can no longer be taken for granted.

According to reporting from Defense One, the classified version of the NSS goes even further, calling for the weakening of the EU by pulling key countries away and the establishment of a “C5” to replace the G7, without European participation.

The NSS also recasts democratic Europe not as a community of allies but as a political and civilizational problem, framing it as a space threatened by “civilizational erasure,” cultural decline, and dysfunction—language that closely mirrors far-right narratives. Most strikingly, it signals an intention to “cultivate resistance” within European societies, implicitly endorsing or encouraging ethno-nationalist and right-wing extremist political movements that oppose mainstream liberal democratic governments. Taken together, this amounts to a profound inversion of traditional U.S. strategy: accommodation toward a brutal authoritarian challenger in the East, coupled with ideological and political confrontation with democratic allies in the West. The danger here is not simply that the United States is behaving in illiberal ways, but that it exports and encourages the erosion of democracy and the rule of law—in short, that America’s dysfunction might be contagious.

This strategic challenge to liberal democracy is powerfully amplified in the social-media sphere, where Elon Musk has increasingly used his X platform to frame politics in white nationalist terms, railing about the need to defend “Western civilization” while depicting the European Union—arguably the most successful peace-building and democratizing project in human history—as an authoritarian or even Nazi regime. (The irony of this coming from a man who boosts actual Nazis online and has publicly performed fascist salutes has not gone unnoticed.) This rhetorical ecosystem matters because it normalizes a worldview in which liberal democratic Europe is an enemy of “true” Western identity.

What once would have been treated as hostile foreign influence operations by an adversary now emerges as a real spectre within the alliance itself—one that threatens to weaponize information, destabilize democratic institutions, and fracture the political foundations of the transatlantic order from within.

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The View from Canada

For its part, Canada largely escapes notice in the NSS, generically grouped within the section on the Western Hemisphere. Even here, however, the language of American hegemony is deeply disturbing given everything else that is happening.

US-Canadian bilateral relations had deteriorated dramatically since January, even before the NSS. A key part of this has been the Trump Administration’s trade and tariff policies, which are almost universally seen in Canada as abusive, unfair, and possibly illegal—especially since many of them rely on specious claims about fentanyl smuggling or are in apparent violation of Canada–United States–Mexico free trade agreement. Some $3.6 billion in trade crosses the Canada-US border each day, with exports to the United States accounting for around 2.3 million jobs in Canada and total two-way trade in goods and services is equivalent to two-thirds of Canada’s GDP.

On top of this, there have been the periodic references to making Canada “the 51st state.” While many Americans may simply dismiss these as rhetorical excess not to be taken seriously, in Canada they are seen as far more dark and threatening. In one of his earliest official telephone calls with Canadian leaders, President Trump not only repeated comments about the 51st state but also suggested he did not accept the current demarcation of the Canada-US border. His preoccupation with taking control of neighbouring Greenland from Denmark, another NATO ally, has not gone unnoticed either. While Canada publicly emphasizes potential challenges to its Arctic sovereignty from Russia or China, many analysts (and many northerners) believe that the United States —which asserts that the Northwest Passage is an international strait rather than sovereign Canadian territory—is perhaps the larger threat. As Arctic security scholar Franklyn Griffiths has written:

Canada needs to consider the possibility that U.S. President Donald Trump will soon, and without our permission, send American warships into and through the waterways of the Canadian Arctic archipelago, commonly known as the Northwest Passage.

We owe it to ourselves to imagine what an imminent show of American force (rather than an invasion) would mean. We should also use the prospect to deal with and not write off Mr. Trump’s threats to annex us.

If he were to order weaponry into Arctic Canada, the President would be doing vastly more than creating another Canada-U.S. flareup over the status of the Northwest Passage in international law. His move would mark the start of an attempted annexationist takeover, and eventually an autocratic makeover of Canada as a country and a people….Whether or not the U.S. Navy actually enters the Northwest Passage in the coming days, Mr. Trump’s takeover dream presents us with a real-life threat that commands attention and planning without delay.

Extrajudicial killings of suspected drug traffickers at sea by the US military has deepened Canadian disquiet about the reckless and illegal use of US military power in the region. There is a parallel concern that the US is subverting a rules-based international system and sabotaging international cooperation on issues ranging from climate change to accountability for war crimes.

Finally, the deterioration of the democratic rule of law in the United States, hateful rhetoric against immigrants and minorities, and the official transphobia that today permeates American governmental institutions is seen as incompatible with Canadian values of inclusion and tolerance—concepts that are imperfectly manifest, but which most Canadians still value. For an explicitly and constitutionally multicultural liberal democracy like Canada, the rise of an illiberal, white-nationalist foreign and domestic policy in Washington, and its threats to target noncompliant democracies, represents a fundamental, even existential, threat.

Even before the release of the NSS, a Pew opinion survey earlier this year showed that US had come to eclipse both Russia and China as a perceived source of threat in the minds of many ordinary Canadians.

A more recent Angus Reid poll for the Asia Pacific Institute found a similar perception.

Moreover, many Canadians now see the American threat not simply as an aberration linked to one transitory Administration but reflective of deeper issues, attitudes, changes in US society and dysfunctions in the US political system. Current (Liberal) Prime Minister Mark Carney—a political centrist who is hardly given to overblown rhetoric—has described it as a “rupture,” noting that “the old relationship we had with the U.S. based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military co-operation is over.” Former (Conservative) Prime Minister Stephen Harper has warned that “The reality now that we have not faced as a country in 100 years, of seeing the United States flex its muscles in a way that has nothing to do with values or ideals, that is something we can’t forget, and we cannot make ourselves entirely dependent on that relationship.”

The new NSS only confirms this impression. As Kerry Buck, a former Canadian ambassador to NATO, wrote this week, the Trump Administration has unveiled a strategic vision that is “inherently hostile to Canada and other allies in alarming ways,” creating “a world where the US isn’t just leaving behind its role as friend and protector – it might be turning into an active strategic risk.”

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Can (War)Gaming Help?

While proponents of wargaming are quick to explain that it is not a predictive tool, we do like to think of it as a useful way to think about threats, contingencies, strategic planning, and “what ifs”. To date, however, the serious gaming community has been slow in responding to the challenge of this new security environment.

Part of this is inertia—after all, NATO countries have spent decades thinking about a collective, coordinated alliance response to aggression, and (with the partial exception of the French) haven’t given much consideration of US reticence, unreliability, withdrawal, or realignment. Part of it is embedded partnership. The US has been a key part of the team for so long—indeed, the senior leader in the team, with many officers serving alongside Americans in Afghanistan, NORAD, or elsewhere—that many in Western defence establishments just cannot contemplate alternatives. Part of it is political and diplomatic sensitivity, not only within the alliance but even within individual member states. After all, officials in Washington might not be very happy if they knew they were the focus of an allied wargame.

Nevertheless, someone needs to do it—not because the United States is preordained to shift from ally to adversary, but because we can no longer exclude that it might do so in the coming years. Given how long things like trade diversification, defence procurement, and strategic realignment take, work needs to be done now in case it is needed later.

Speaking again from a Canadian perspective, there are several broad areas that gaming might illuminate, with many possible scenarios within each. For example:

1. NATO abandonment. What happens if there is a serious hybrid or kinetic threat to Europe from Russia, and the US declines to get involved? What can Canada contribute? What diplomatic strategies might most effectively encourage continued US engagement? How can NATO function without US capabilities?
2. A challenge to Arctic sovereignty. What might be the Canadian response if there were an unauthorized US effort to traverse the Northwest Passage, whether by a civilian vessel, the US Coast Guard, or even the US Navy? Are there possible passive or less-than-lethal options, akin to Iceland’s effective campaign against the Royal Navy during the Cod Wars? What assets are required to better protect Arctic sovereignty from a US (rather than Russian or Chinese) threat? What are the political and diplomatic dimensions of this?
3. Trade diversification. The loss of US markets (and the vulnerability this underscores) requires a diversification of Canadian trade, but how can this be achieved? What are the obstacles to a closer economic relationship with Europe? How can Canada exploit the potential of Chinese markets without creating new vulnerabilities (either from China or from an angry Washington)?
4. Political interference. How might Canada respond to US influence operations aimed at boosting white nationalist or separatist groups? How might this be complicated by the complicity (or active support) of some social media platforms?
5. Intelligence cooperation. How might strategic tensions play out within the Five Eyes intelligence sharing community? How would Canada respond if it became a target of active or stepped-up collection by US intelligence agencies?
6. Finand, eh? Throughout the Cold War, the government and people of Finland navigated the threat from the USSR by protecting Soviet security from outside threats while developing a “total defence” strategy that bolstered societal resilience and rendered any Soviet invasion or occupation potentially costly. Is this something Canada should consider, and what would it take?

It would be good to see the Canadian government (and, by extension, European governments too) taking on the challenge. But even if they don’t, academics, think-tanks, and others can help illuminate these issues in a way that might support policy development.

It is certainly something we ought to explore at the next Connections North professional (war)gaming conference, to be held in Ottawa on March 14.

(War)gaming Canadian Security in an Era of Strategic Uncertainty

“Triumph through Diversity” memorial, Parliament Hill, Ottawa.

The Connections North 2026 professional (war)gaming conference will be held at the National Capital Region Officers’ Mess, Ottawa on 14 March 2026. The theme this year will be (War)gaming Canadian Security in an Era of Strategic Uncertainty.

Canada’s security environment is being reshaped by an unusually volatile convergence of external and internal strategic pressures. Russia’s sustained aggression in Europe has shattered assumptions about the stability of the post–Cold War order and reintroduced large-scale interstate war as a central feature of the global security landscape, with profound implications for NATO, deterrence, and Canadian defence commitments. At the same time, the continued growth of Chinese economic, technological, and military power is transforming the Indo-Pacific into a core arena of strategic competition, raising the risks of escalation over Taiwan, the South China Sea, and in the cyber and space domains. For the first time in living memory, the United States itself has also emerged as a central source of strategic uncertainty for—and even threat to—Canada. Overall, the global rules-based order on which Canadian prosperity and security depends is rapidly eroding.

This year’s conference will focus on how wargaming (and other serious gaming) might illuminate such challenges, as well as other issues. The latest version of the programme can be found here.

We also intend to provide an opportunity for live demonstrations of games over an extended lunch break. If you have a game, or a poster, that you would like to include in the demonstration session then please let us know.

Conference registration (via Eventbrite) is $85 (regular and $30 (student), and includes lunch, coffee, and refreshments. An updated programme will be available in early February.

Information on earlier Connections North conferences can be found here.