The atmosphere that sustains life in U.S. President Donald Trump’s world is a toxic mix of nativism, bullying and the chaotic rejection of democratic norms. These three elements cause dizziness in those not from the same world, keeping Mr. Trump’s critics and allies off-balance. They also lie at the heart of his government’s new National Security Strategy, which was released last week.
The NSS is being interpreted correctly as a eulogy for the rules-based liberal order that the United States and its democratic allies jointly conceived after the Second World War to preserve peace and to spread prosperity. It takes the U.S. backward more than 100 years, to when it walked away from the Treaty of Versailles after the First World War, refusing to join the League of Nations and choosing a policy of isolation over one of international co-operation.
This is shocking but not surprising. It has been clear since Mr. Trump’s first term in office that the era of global free trade and the alliances of the past 70 years, most notably NATO, were under threat. The strategy document merely puts on paper what everyone sort of knew was coming – a return to the isolationist era of great powers that dominate their regions through economic and military power, and that jockey for control of the globe.
In what was touted as a “Liberation Day” event in April this year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs targeting goods imported to the U.S. from its trade partners. Under the Trump administration, it has become clear the era of global free trade and the alliances of the past 70 years are under threat.
Leah Millis/Reuters; Alex Wong/Getty Images
Where the NSS breaks new ground is its implicit vision of Canada, Mexico and Central and South American countries as vassal states that exist to serve America’s interests. The document invents what it calls “the Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine” – a philosophy that says that any foreign investment in strategic sectors in the Western Hemisphere will be treated by the U.S. as a security threat to be dealt with firmly.
China and Russia are among the obvious targets, and ones that Canada can agree on. It is very much in Canada’s interests that those two countries not be able to secure critical beachheads in any of the Americas.
But the vague language of the strategy leaves it up to the U.S. to decide which “foreign” countries Canada will be able to do business with as it goes about building energy infrastructure, ports, military capacity and other strategic projects in response to Mr. Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexation. Is the European Union on that list? This is not clear.
What is clear that the world that the Trump administration envisions would represent an existential threat to Canadian sovereignty.
In a document that contains the good, the bad and the ugly, this is the biggest take-away for Canada. It serves as a dire warning that this country will likely have to absorb more economic punishment as it tries, on its own terms, to balance its reliance on the U.S. with its need to make its economy more resilient to Mr. Trump’s chaotic economic warfare.
The U.S. National Security Strategy, released in November, outlines a policy of isolation over one of international cooperation.Jon Elswick/The Associated Press
The Good
This will be brief. It could be argued that the era of liberal democracies lecturing less progressive, authoritarian trading partners over their domestic affairs – a favourite pastime of the former Trudeau government – is over. With the U.S. declaring in the NSS that it will do business with Arabian Peninsula monarchies without “hectoring” them, it opens the door for Canada to do the same.
Prime Minister Mark Carney recently said he will not be pursuing his predecessor’s “feminist foreign policy,” as Justin Trudeau called it. In lieu of that, Canada should “applaud reform when and where it emerges organically, without trying to impose it,” as the NSS says the U.S. will do. Canada has long needed to have a less self-important perception of its ability to influence other governments. If this helps, we will take it as a win.
The NSS also reinforces the need for Canada and Europe to invest more in defence. Governments can quickly lose interest in defence spending if it means cutting back on more popular programs. The new American outlook ought to stiffen politicians’ spines on both sides of the Atlantic.
And, as we said, a concerted effort to contain China and Russia is welcome.
The BadOpen this photo in gallery:
The NSS says America will prioritize re-establishing ties with the warmongering Russian President Vladimir Putin.ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images
The bad is that the United States is being utterly hypocritical. The NSS says America will stop badgering Arab dictators who kidnap and mutilate foreign journalists, and that re-establishing ties with the warmongering and murderous Vladimir Putin is a priority. Yet, the U.S. unabashedly intends to meddle in the internal affairs of democratic countries in the Western Hemisphere.
Nothing new there, of course. Over the past 150 years, the U.S. has repeatedly attempted to direct the affairs of Central and South American and Caribbean nations. Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela – name a country and you can find CIA-backed coups, the illegal funding of right-wing militias and dictators, assassination attempts and military occupations designed to further American corporate and security interests.
This time around, Canada, Mexico and the countries of Central and South America, many of which are still suffering the long-term consequences of American meddling, will be expected to do business with the U.S. government and U.S. corporations on Mr. Trump’s terms.
The White House will, according to the NSS, “identify strategic acquisition and investment opportunities for American companies in the region and present these opportunities for assessment by every U.S. government financing program.”
The terms of any agreements, “especially with those countries that depend on us most and therefore over which we have the most leverage, must be sole-source contracts for our companies,” the NSS says. At the same time, the U.S. “should make every effort to push out foreign companies that build infrastructure in the region.”
This is an obvious nonstarter for Canada and any other sovereign country, and an attack on their right to decide with whom they will do business.
But the U.S. does not intend to give them much of a choice. The NSS says the U.S. will “enlist” its hemispheric partners but it sounds more like press-ganging. America will “prioritize commercial diplomacy” – a mix of carrot (trade deals) and stick (tariffs) – to persuade countries to play ball. It will also “reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy,” which sounds distinctly like foreign interference that could foment anti-immigration and illiberal sentiment in Canada and elsewhere.
Which leads us to…
U.S. President Trump delivers remarks about his administration’s economic agenda in Pennsylvania on Dec. 9. The NSS is an unapologetic call for a coldhearted ‘America First’ foreign policy, with the explicit goal to dominate the Western Hemisphere.Alex Wong/Getty Images
The Ugly
The NSS is an unapologetic call for a coldhearted America First foreign policy. Its stated goals are the domination of the Western Hemisphere, the end of mass migration, the preservation of freedom of navigation in the Indo-Pacific region through military power, the prevention of a hostile country dominating the Middle East, the promotion of U.S. technology to “drive the world forward,” the reset of strategic relations with Russia through a quick cessation of the war in Ukraine, and the restoration of “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity.”
Ensuring that millions of people do not feel compelled to flee their homes would be a worthy goal. But the NSS does not have the interests of migrants in mind, to say the least.
U.S. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, right, attends a NATO Ministers of Defence Summit in Brussels in October. The NSS calls for ‘ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.’NICOLAS TUCAT/AFP/Getty Images
When it comes to Europe, the NSS is blunt. “Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European,” it says. “As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.”
That blood-and-soil call to save white European culture from mass migration is as shocking as it is overt. But it is delighting the leaders of right-wing and extremist parties in Germany, France, the Netherlands and other European countries – nativist parties the NSS describes as “patriotic.”
Coupled with the strategy’s call for “ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance,” the package has also lifted spirits in Moscow.
“The adjustments that we see correspond in many ways to our vision,” a Kremlin spokesman said of the new American strategy.
This attack on mass migration, an issue Canada is dealing with, makes no mention of the forces that propel people in Latin American countries, or from war-torn places across the planet, to try to make a better life in Europe, Canada and the United States. It is simply a blanket demonization of the world’s most vulnerable people done for political gain.
Members of European Parliament participate in a series of votes on a major revamp of the EU’s migration laws in April, 2024. The NSS critiques America’s European allies as being weak for their migration and free speech policies, and it endorses the extremist view that immigrants are corrosive to society.Geert Vanden Wijngaert/The Associated Press
In short, the NSS is a manifesto for the darker forces in the world. It endorses the extremist view that immigrants are corrosive to society, and that Western countries need to protect their cultures against what Mr. Trump has falsely portrayed as an “invasion” that must be repelled by military force and mass detentions in American cities.
Preserving Western culture, or Mr. Trump’s version of it, is a mission that the NSS says “cannot be accomplished without growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children” – the same message that Mr. Putin regularly pushes on his own people.
Under Mr. Trump, the Western world is being torn away from a U.S.-led global mission of pursuing peace and greater prosperity for all through free trade, foreign aid and efforts to spread democratic values, and is being pushed backward to a time when might made right, great powers set the rules for their neighbours and the only goal of trade was self-enrichment and increased power.
If Mr. Putin and right-wing parties in Europe and elsewhere were looking for vindication of their worldviews, now they have it.
Much of the language and stated aims in the NSS vindicate the worldview and political aims of Mr. Putin and right-wing parties in Europe.SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images
The response from Canada and from Europe must be a show of united strength and a firm rejection of the values espoused by Mr. Trump’s National Security Strategy. America’s hemispheric partners are just that – partners. They cannot allow themselves to be captives to geography and fated to become satellites of a United States that is veering away from democratic values. They do not have to stay silent.
Mr. Carney needs to continue his effort to strengthen Canada through new trade partnerships of his government’s choosing. He also needs to point out to Mr. Trump that Canada is exactly the partner it needs when it comes to the defence of the Arctic, the creation of reliable supply chains in North America and the battle against the international drug trade.
But all Canadians must reject the notion that the U.S. has the manifest right, granted by its size and strength, to use this and other countries in the Western Hemisphere as puppets in its own game.
These are not the actions of a friend. On the contrary, they are the actions of a domineering – if not hostile – superpower.