How Canada, allies can stand up to Trump and other great-power bullies

Fen Osler Hampson and Tim Sargent: Canada, along with other advanced democracies such as Britain, Norway, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of the European Union, should look beyond traditional diplomacy. They should seek to establish a 21st-century version of the Hanseatic League: an informal alliance of hundreds of cities and merchant guilds along the North and Baltic coasts in medieval times. This group, which grew out of German towns, successfully formed a commercial and defensive network to stave off the predations of neighbouring states such as Denmark, England and Russia.

The power of such an alliance today would come not from military strength, but from the sophisticated market-power leverage these countries exercise over global finance and trade…