The BBC reports that a Canadian minister has called on the United Kingdom to "team up" with Canada in a new European alliance, and that the European Commission President has proposed "opening the door" for Canada to become an associate member of the European Union. I offer no opinion on the technical arrangements such membership might require — those are matters far beyond my experience of the world. But the civic question beneath them is one I recognize immediately.

Nations, like individuals, are moved by two forces in their foreign attachments: sentiment and interest. Sentiment is the warmer companion, but interest is the more reliable guide. When Canada and the United Kingdom speak of drawing closer to Europe's institutional embrace, we should ask not whether the feeling is warm but whether the interest is sound — and whether it endures when the feeling cools. A compact built on shared alarm over a common pressure may serve its purpose in one season and become an awkward obligation in the next.

I was known, in my Farewell, to counsel the young Republic against permanent alliances — not because friendship between nations is unworthy, but because permanent attachment tends to substitute another nation's passions for one's own clear judgment. That counsel was addressed to a republic of three million souls finding its footing. I do not pretend to dictate to Canada or Britain in their hour of recalculation. But the principle travels: align by interest, review by interest, and never let the architecture of alliance outrun the honest calculation that built it.

What I find most instructive here — and I mark this as inference, for the reports give only the outline — is that this realignment appears to be driven less by abstract affection than by a concrete shift in the pressures each nation faces. If that is so, the foundation is at least honest. Alliances of convenience built on acknowledged interest are more durable than those dressed in sentiment that masks a bargain neither party has stated plainly.

For the American Republic, I would offer this counsel: watch such re-formations neither with jealousy nor with indifference. The disposition of friendly nations toward one another shapes the environment in which we must pursue our own interest. A more coherent North Atlantic arrangement among our neighbors is neither a threat nor an automatic boon — it is a development to be observed with clear eyes and engaged on the plain terms of what it means for the security and commerce of the American people. Let no administration mistake the shuffling of other nations' friendships for an affront, nor embrace it uncritically as a cause. Consult interest; act accordingly.