When Empires Return: The Diagonal (Australia-France-Canada) as a Necessary Balance

Tomorrow, Australians will gather to mark Australia Day, a moment to reflect on what this nation represents and where it stands in an increasingly turbulent world. The timing couldn't be more fitting. As I write this on the eve of 26 January, the world is witnessing the return of something many believed had been relegated to history books: naked imperialism, conducted without apology or restraint.

Last April, I wrote about a diagonal of new possibilities connecting Canada, France, and Australia. I sketched out the contours of a partnership that could offer democratic nations an alternative to over-reliance on any single market or alliance. That vision, I confess, felt almost romantic at the time, a hopeful reimagining of how nations might collaborate across vast distances to build resilience through shared values.

Nine months later, the world has proven me right, though not in the way I'd hoped. The diagonal I proposed wasn't a pleasant intellectual exercise. It has become an urgent necessity. And Australia, celebrating its national day at this precise historical inflection point, faces a choice about what kind of nation it will be in the age of returning empires.

The Return of Brutalist Imperialism

The first weeks of 2026 have marked a turning point. We are witnessing the reassertion of might as the arbiter of international relations, conducted without pretence or apology.

The United States military operation in Venezuela in early January, capturing President Nicolás Maduro in a raid that killed dozens, was announced with fanfare and framed explicitly around securing access to Venezuelan oil. President Trump stated plainly that the U.S. would "run" Venezuela, a declaration that would have been unthinkable from any American president just a few years ago.

This wasn't isolated. Trump's threats to acquire Greenland "by any means necessary," his willingness to use tariffs as weapons against European allies who resist American territorial expansion, his casual dismissal of Danish sovereignty, these represent something qualitatively different. The Venezuela operation demonstrated that Trump's second administration views force not as a last resort but as a legitimate tool of statecraft.

But America's return to overt imperialism hasn't occurred in isolation. China continues its economic expansion through debt-trap infrastructure projects across Africa and Asia. Russia, emboldened by its ongoing war in Ukraine, has converted grain diplomacy into security partnerships across the Sahel and Horn of Africa. India, under pressure from Trump's tariffs despite its strategic importance, has publicly aligned itself more closely with Beijing and Moscow, signalling the emergence of an alternative bloc.

We are witnessing the death of the liberal international order, not the gradual erosion that academics have debated for years, but its violent dismantling. The cardinal rule that there would be no territorial revision by force has been thoroughly discarded.

Understanding Our Historical Moment

A friend recently introduced me to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, which I hadn't encountered before. Their framework posits that history moves in roughly 80-year cycles, each containing four distinct phases: a High (post-crisis recovery), an Awakening (spiritual rebellion), an Unravelling (institutional decay), and finally a Crisis, the Fourth Turning, when society passes through a transformative gate that destroys the old order and builds a new one.

What struck me immediately was how precisely this describes our current moment. We entered this Crisis phase around 2008 with the financial collapse. What we're witnessing now, the return of imperial behaviour, the collapse of multilateral institutions, the willingness to use military force for territorial acquisition, these aren't random policy shifts. They're symptoms of a social order being destroyed so a new one can be built.

This framework helps explain not just why institutions are collapsing, but why specifically imperial behaviour is returning. Fourth Turnings don't create new patterns, they destroy the structures that suppressed old ones. The liberal international order successfully contained imperial competition for 80 years. As that order dies in this Crisis phase, the imperial instincts it restrained are resurging. The return of empires isn't coincidence, it's the inevitable symptom of being in a Fourth Turning.

The last such cycle ran from the Great Depression through World War II, ending in 1945. It destroyed the old imperial European system and gave birth to the American-led order of multilateral institutions. That system is now dying before our eyes. What replaces it will be determined by the choices we make in the next several years.

The Board of Peace: Replacing the UN with Imperial Patronage

Perhaps no single initiative better illustrates this shift than Trump's "Board of Peace," unveiled at Davos with theatrical fanfare. Ostensibly created to oversee Gaza's reconstruction, the Board represents something far more ambitious: an attempt to replace the United Nations system with a mechanism of pure imperial patronage.

The structure reveals the design. Trump chairs the Board indefinitely, not just through his presidency, but beyond it. Permanent membership costs one billion dollars. The charter makes no mention of Palestine, Palestinians, or Gaza's actual inhabitants. Instead, Jared Kushner presented gleaming architectural renderings of high-rise towers and "coastal tourism zones" on land where two million people currently struggle to survive.

Trump explicitly positioned it as potentially replacing "some of the functions of the United Nations." The membership roster tells you everything: the United Arab Emirates, Hungary, Pakistan, Bulgaria. Putin was invited. The notable absences are equally revealing: Canada, the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Slovenia, all declined or expressed serious reservations.

What we're witnessing is the construction of an alternative international architecture based not on universal principles or sovereign equality, but on client relationships and transactional loyalty. Pay a billion dollars, accept American leadership, and you gain a seat. Refuse, and face tariffs and threats. The French rejection prompted Trump to threaten 200% tariffs on French wine, revealing how the Board actually functions: as a test of submission to American power.

This is imperialism without the civilisational pretence. The Board doesn't even pretend to serve universal human rights. It's a mechanism for monetising American military supremacy and converting it into direct control over reconstruction contracts and resource extraction.

Davos: Behind the Sunglasses, a Clash of Visions

The contrast could not have been starker than at this January's World Economic Forum in Davos, where the returning spectre of imperialism collided with the fading vision of multilateral cooperation.

Klaus Schwab, the Forum's founder for 55 years, had stepped down the previous April. His successor, former Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, presides over an institution in transition. Schwab had built Davos around a vision of stakeholder capitalism bridging national interests, a borderless world of frictionless commerce and shared prosperity. That vision died in the Swiss Alps this past week.

Emmanuel Macron arrived wearing aviator sunglasses and delivered a scathing speech warning of "a shift toward autocracy against democracy." Without naming Trump directly, he condemned competition "that openly aims to weaken and subordinate Europe" and described tariffs used "as leverage against territorial sovereignty" as fundamentally unacceptable. "We do prefer respect to bullies," Macron declared, "and we do prefer rule of law to brutality."

Trump's response was brutal in its clarity: come make your products in America and receive low taxes, or face punishing tariffs. He mocked Macron's sunglasses, dismissed European concerns about Greenland ("What I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located"), and told NATO members they could accept American expansion "and we'll be very appreciative. Or you can say no, and we will remember." Trump wasn't asking. He was declaring. The post-war order, built on American leadership within a framework of shared rules, was being replaced by the exercise of imperial power constrained only by countervailing force.

Macron's claim the following day that European pressure had forced Trump to back down rang hollow. Trump had merely said he wouldn't use force whilst simultaneously announcing a mysterious "framework for a deal." Macron's declaration that "Europe can make itself be respected" couldn't mask European dependence on American security guarantees and inability to mount coherent responses to coercion.

The tension exposed the fundamental inadequacy of Schwab's framework. Economic interdependence hasn't prevented conflict, it has merely made it more profitable for those willing to use force. Institutional frameworks mean nothing when great powers simply ignore them. Soft power dissolves instantly in the face of military superiority and the willingness to use it.

France's Historical Foundation for the Diagonal Strategy

To understand why France is positioned to anchor this diagonal partnership, we must look beyond Macron's speeches to France's deeper strategic tradition and its often-overlooked global presence.

In the mid-20th century, France pursued a foreign policy of strategic autonomy that has remarkable relevance today. This approach recognised a fundamental truth: genuine sovereignty requires the capability to say no to your allies as well as your adversaries. Dependence, even on benevolent powers, eventually becomes subordination. The strategy rested on several pillars. France withdrew from NATO's integrated military command whilst remaining in the alliance itself. It developed an independent nuclear deterrent. It built relationships across multiple power centres, recognising Communist China before the United States did, engaging with the Soviet Union whilst maintaining Western alignment, championing European integration as a counterweight to both superpowers.

This wasn't anti-Americanism. It was recognition that American interests and French interests, whilst often aligned, were not identical. That the United States would ultimately prioritise American security and prosperity. That accepting this reality required building independent capabilities whilst maintaining cooperative relationships. But France's ability to pursue this strategy wasn't just based on nuclear weapons or European leadership. It rested on France's position as the world's second-largest maritime empire. This global presence provided concrete capabilities and genuine international reach.

Even today, France maintains territories across every ocean: French Guiana in South America, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off Canada, Guadeloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, Réunion in the Indian Ocean, New Caledonia and French Polynesia in the Pacific... This translates into the world's second-largest exclusive economic zone, 11 million square kilometres of ocean under French jurisdiction. It means French military bases in Djibouti, the UAE, Senegal, Gabon, and Côte d'Ivoire.

This isn't colonial nostalgia but what I consider as a strategic reality. France can anchor a diagonal partnership precisely because it has actual presence in the Indo-Pacific through New Caledonia and French Polynesia, giving it shared regional interests with Australia that don't require American mediation. It can engage with Canada on North Atlantic and Arctic questions through Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.

However, I must add a personal observation that troubles me: France is systematically eroding this extraordinary strategic asset through neglect. New Caledonia's recent turmoil and growing independence movement represent a potential loss of France's primary Pacific presence. French Guiana, despite being integral French territory and home to Europe's spaceport, receives insufficient investment. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon languishes with declining population and uncertain future. This erosion occurs precisely when such presence becomes most valuable. In an age of returning imperial competition, territorial presence across multiple regions provides options and leverage that no amount of diplomatic skill can substitute. If France is to anchor the diagonal partnership, it must first arrest this decline. Strategic autonomy requires actual capabilities, and capabilities require investment in the territories that provide them.

This strategic tradition and global presence, if maintained, provide the perfect foundation for the diagonal partnership. It demonstrates that middle powers can maintain autonomy whilst cooperating with great powers. It shows that values and interests can be balanced without subordination.

Europe's Existential Need: Why the Diagonal Means Survival

For Europe, the diagonal represents more than partnership, it represents survival. Europe's current strategy, wielding economic sanctions and market access against powers willing to use military force, is fighting the last war. The Venezuela operation, the Greenland threats, the Board of Peace, these demonstrate that the world has returned to imperial competition where military capability determines outcomes, not trade leverage.

Europe has no independent military sovereignty. NATO is American-controlled. European nations cannot defend themselves, or their interests, without US permission. This was acceptable when America was a benign hegemon operating within rules-based frameworks. It becomes suicide when America itself embraces imperial expansion and treats European concerns as obstacles to be bulldozed with tariff threats.

The Greenland crisis exposes Europe's impotence perfectly. When Trump threatened to acquire Danish territory, Europe's response was what exactly? Macron sent 15 symbolic soldiers. Germany expressed concern. The EU threatened retaliatory tariffs. None of this matters when facing a power willing to use military force. You cannot sanction your way out of territorial conquest. The diagonal solves this existential problem. France's nuclear deterrent, combined with Canadian Arctic sovereignty and Australian Indo-Pacific presence, creates an alternative security architecture outside US control. It gives Europe what it desperately lacks: the capability to say no to American demands whilst maintaining credible defence capabilities.

Consider the practical application to Greenland. With the diagonal operational, Canada's Arctic presence and territorial claims create legitimate pushback against US Arctic expansion. France's Saint-Pierre and Miquelon presence, just off Canada's coast, provides actual North American foothold. Combined French-Canadian-Australian naval capabilities can patrol Arctic waters. Shared intelligence and surveillance systems monitor US military movements. Most critically, Europe through France has partners who can credibly resist US pressure without depending on US security guarantees.

This is why France must stop treating its global territories as colonial embarrassments and recognise them as strategic necessities. New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, these aren't vestiges of empire. They're the foundation for European sovereignty in an age when territorial presence equals power. Lose them through neglect, and France loses the very capabilities that make the diagonal credible. Keep them, invest in them, and Europe gains what it currently lacks: genuine strategic autonomy backed by actual military reach.

The diagonal forces Europe to confront an uncomfortable truth: economic power without military sovereignty is no power at all in a world of returning empires. You can have the largest single market on Earth, but if you cannot defend your borders, protect your allies, or resist coercion, you will become a prize to be divided between powers that can.

Why the Diagonal Matters More Than Ever

In this context of returning imperialism, collapsing multilateral restraints, and a Fourth Turning reshaping the global order, the diagonal partnership becomes not a pleasant option but a strategic necessity.

The Canada-France-Australia alignment doesn't represent a rejection of the United States. It represents recognition that democratic nations cannot afford to remain passive subjects in a world increasingly shaped by imperial competition. When the liberal order collapses, middle powers face a choice: accept subordination to whichever empire can project the most force, or build alternative frameworks that provide strategic autonomy.

The diagonal offers a framework for cooperation among resource-rich democracies spanning hemispheres. Canada's critical minerals, Australia's abundant resources, and France's diplomatic reach and nuclear capabilities create natural opportunities for collaboration that don't require choosing between American and Chinese spheres of influence.

Consider the practical implications. Australia's Indo-Pacific position, coupled with France's territorial presence through New Caledonia and French Polynesia, provides shared interests that don't require American mediation. Canada's experience navigating proximity to the United States whilst maintaining distinct foreign policy offers valuable lessons. France's EU leadership still represents 450 million people's collective economic power.

Fundamentally, the diagonal represents a values-based alternative to raw power politics. All three entities have commitments to democracy, human rights, and rules-based order embedded in domestic institutions and constitutional frameworks. When Trump announces America will "run" Venezuela for oil, or China builds debt dependencies, or Russia converts food aid into military bases, democratic nations have both moral and strategic interest in demonstrating that international cooperation doesn't require subordination.

But What About AUKUS?

Some will argue that AUKUS already provides Australia with the strategic partnership it needs. Why build a diagonal when you have a trilateral security pact with the United States and United Kingdom focused on Indo-Pacific security?

This objection misunderstands both AUKUS and the diagonal's purpose. AUKUS is a military technology agreement focused on nuclear submarines and advanced capabilities. It's valuable, but it's also deeply asymmetric. Australia remains a junior partner dependent on American and British technology transfer, with no genuine autonomy in decision-making. More critically, AUKUS binds Australia closer to American strategic priorities precisely when those priorities are shifting toward overt imperialism.

The diagonal partnership doesn't replace AUKUS, it complements and balances it. Where AUKUS creates dependency, the diagonal creates options. Where AUKUS is militarily focused, the diagonal spans economic, diplomatic, and resource cooperation. Where AUKUS locks Australia into Anglo-American strategies, the diagonal provides European connection and genuine multilateral decision-making.

Most importantly, AUKUS offers no protection against the scenario we're witnessing: an America that uses military force for resource extraction, threatens allies with tariffs, and replaces multilateral institutions with imperial patronage systems. The diagonal provides exactly what AUKUS cannot, the capability to say no to allies when their actions contradict democratic values and Australian interests.

First Steps: Making the Diagonal Real

Strategic partnerships require more than declarations. Here are two concrete, actionable first steps the three nations could take immediately:

First, establish a Trilateral Strategic Resources Council. Canada, France, and Australia should create a ministerial-level body meeting quarterly to coordinate on critical minerals, rare earths, and energy resources. This Council would identify strategic dependencies on China and the United States, develop joint extraction and processing ventures, and create preferential trade arrangements that reduce vulnerability to great power coercion. The first meeting should produce a public inventory of combined resource capabilities and a roadmap for integrated supply chains in batteries, semiconductors, and renewable energy technologies.

Second, launch a Joint Defence Technology Initiative. Building on France's independent defence capabilities and leveraging Canadian and Australian expertise in Arctic and maritime domains, the three nations should establish shared research and development programs in autonomous systems, cyber defence, and space-based surveillance. Unlike AUKUS, this would be genuinely trilateral with equal partnership stakes. The initiative should begin with a concrete project: a jointly-developed satellite constellation for maritime domain awareness across the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans, demonstrating that democratic middle powers can achieve strategic capabilities independent of great power technology transfer.

These aren't distant aspirations. They're achievable within 18 months and would signal that the diagonal partnership is operational, not rhetorical. I focus on these two areas not because they're the only domains requiring cooperation, but because they address the most critical vulnerabilities exposed by recent events. Resources and defence technology represent the two pillars upon which genuine sovereignty rests in an age of imperial competition. Control your critical minerals and you cannot be coerced economically. Control your defence technologies and you cannot be coerced militarily.

Every other form of cooperation, however valuable, ultimately depends on these foundations. The Venezuela operation demonstrated what happens to resource-rich nations without independent military capability. The Greenland crisis showed what happens to nations dependent on a single ally for security. These aren't abstract policy domains, they're the difference between autonomy and subordination.

Why Dreams Must Become Reality

Some will dismiss this vision as idealistic, a French expatriate's romantic notion of how the world should work rather than how it does. They're half right. I am idealistic. I do believe in visions of cooperation that transcend pure self-interest.

Here's what experience has taught me: every meaningful change in human affairs begins as someone's "unrealistic" dream. The European Union was fantasy when first proposed in the rubble of 1945. NATO was implausible when nations still nursing wounds from war decided to bind their security together. The post-war order itself was utopian vision in 1944 at Bretton Woods.

The diagonal partnership follows this pattern. It seems unrealistic because it challenges the assumption that middle powers must accept subordinate roles. It seems romantic because it proposes that shared democratic values can provide foundation for strategic cooperation. It seems impractical because it requires investments and political courage absent from current leadership.

But the Fourth Turnings suggested by Strauss-Howe's theory create space for the previously impossible. Institutions that seemed immovable collapse. Assumptions that seemed eternal evaporate. Actions that would have been unthinkable become necessary.

The choice facing Australia, Canada, and France is not between my vision and some hard-nosed realist alternative. It's between building frameworks that preserve democratic sovereignty, or watching passively as the space for such sovereignty disappears entirely. Between investing in strategic autonomy now, whilst it's still possible, or waking up in five years to discover you're a client state choosing which empire to serve.

I believe in this diagonal partnership because I understand that what seems romantic today becomes pragmatic tomorrow when you've run out of other options. This is why dreams must become reality. Not because dreams are pleasant, but because reality without them becomes unbearable.

A French-Australian Perspective on History's Return

As a Frenchman who has choosen a life spanning France and Australia, I perhaps see this historical moment differently than those whose experience is bounded by a single nation. France has lived through the consequences of imperial competition. We remember what happens when great powers pursue territorial expansion without restraint, when economic interdependence fails to prevent military conflict, when mechanisms of international cooperation collapse.

The period between 1870 and 1945 taught Europe, at catastrophic cost, that unconstrained great power competition leads inevitably to total war. The post-war order was built explicitly to prevent that outcome. For three generations, this framework succeeded, not because it eliminated national interests, but because it channelled those impulses through institutional mechanisms that raised the costs of unilateral military action.

What we are witnessing now is the systematic dismantling of those constraints. The United States under Trump has embraced unilateral military intervention as routine statecraft. China and Russia are following suit in their spheres of influence. India is hedging toward an alternative bloc. The institutional mechanisms that were supposed to prevent this cascade have proven toothless when great powers choose to ignore them. Europeans should recognise this pattern. We have seen this film before.

But Australia, protected by geography and by the very American hegemony now dissolving, may not yet grasp the urgency. The United States has been a generally benign hegemon for this nation. The temptation to believe that this arrangement can continue, with minor adjustments for Trump's eccentricities, remains strong.

Here lies dangerous illusion. Trump's Venezuela operation, his Greenland threats, his Board of Peace, his dismissal of allied sovereignty, these aren't aberrations. They represent a fundamental shift in how Washington conceives of its role. And when one great power makes that shift, others follow. We are entering an era where might makes right, where institutional restraints mean nothing, where middle powers lacking capacity for independent action will become subjects rather than partners.

Australia faces this reality on its national day. What does it mean to be Australian in an age of returning empires? Does it mean accepting client status to whichever power offers the best protection deal? Or does it mean asserting the sovereignty and independence this nation has always claimed to value?

The Choice Before Us

The diagonal partnership I proposed in April has become urgent rather than aspirational. What I am describing is not a choice between maintaining existing alliances or building new ones. It is a choice between strategic autonomy and subordination in an age of returning empires.

The clash at Davos wasn't about sunglasses or wine tariffs. It was about whether democratic nations can assert their interests and values in a world no longer governed by shared rules, or whether they will become prizes to be divided among new imperial powers.

Macron's rhetorical defiance means nothing without capability to back it up. Europe's strategic autonomy cannot be achieved through speeches whilst remaining dependent on American military protection. France cannot lead such a project alone, it needs partners who share both its values and its geographic distribution across the globe. This is precisely what the diagonal offers: Canada in North America, France anchoring Europe, Australia positioned in the Indo-Pacific. Together, these nations represent real economic power, substantial military capabilities, and genuine democratic legitimacy.

The alternative is to become spectators in our own subordination. To watch as Venezuela-style interventions become routine. To accept that territorial boundaries are negotiable when great powers desire expansion. To see resource-rich nations held hostage by whichever empire can project the most force. To witness the slow strangulation of democratic governance as economic dependencies are converted into political control.

This is not the world the postwar order was designed to create. But preventing its emergence requires more than defending a dead status quo. It requires building new frameworks for cooperation among democratic nations that can operate independently of great power patronage.

The diagonal I sketched in April now stands revealed not as romantic vision but as strategic necessity. The question is whether leaders in Canberra, Ottawa, Paris, (and Brussels?) have the courage to pursue it before it becomes too late. Before the map has been redrawn entirely. Before democratic nations find themselves choosing not between partnership and autonomy, but between which empire to serve.

The empires have returned. The only question is whether democracy will meet them standing together, or kneeling separately.

Celebrating Sovereignty on Australia Day

Tomorrow, as Australians celebrate their national day, they should reflect on what sovereignty actually means in 2026. It's not about flags and anthems and comfortable myths. It's about whether this nation will chart its own course or accept direction from powers that view Australia as a useful resource depot and strategic position rather than a genuine partner.

The diagonal partnership represents Australia's best chance to maintain genuine sovereignty in an age of empires. It offers concrete pathways for cooperation with democratic allies sharing fundamental values whilst providing alternatives to great power dependence. It recognises that Australia's geography, distant from traditional centres of power, is an asset rather than a liability.

This Australia Day, let's commit to something worthy of the occasion: building a future where Australian sovereignty isn't polite fiction but lived reality. Where this nation's abundant resources serve Australian interests rather than becoming bargaining chips in great power competition. Where democratic values aren't pleasant rhetoric but the foundation for strategic partnerships that preserve the freedom to choose our own path.

The diagonal isn't just good strategy but a statement of what Australia can be: not a client, not a subordinate, but a sovereign democratic nation choosing to stand with others who refuse to kneel to the new empires.

Happy Australia Day! 

May we prove worthy of the independence we celebrate.

This article continues my ongoing exploration of the diagonal partnership between Canada, France, and Australia, first proposed in April's piece. The analysis reflects my perspective as someone who has spent a career bridging French and Australian business environments and who believes that today's visions, however romantic they might seem, shape tomorrow's realities.