American Foreign Policy Laid Bare
Quietly and without fanfare this week, the White House released a policy paper: “National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” It is a blueprint for ending NATO, MAGAfying Europe, competing with China, exploiting Africa, and aligning with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. There is nothing subtle about the 29-page document.
When we talk about abandoning the American F-35, it is for the same reason as Canada is not about to buy Sukhoi and Mikoyan fighter planes — we cannot rely on the hardware of our potential adversaries.
This past week has seen King Trump rename the United States Institute for Peace in his own name while claiming the comically absurd first “FIFA Peace Prize,” in yet another transparent bribe to a President whose receipt of foreign gifts for favours has no end, no shame, no legality, and apparently no consequences, in spite of a specific constitutional clause banning the practice.
We learned that the American military, under the direction of Fox News anchor turned Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, apparently murdered two survivors of the first boat they sank off Venezuela in September . If we buy the American story that they are waging a hot war on drug smugglers, then it would be a war crime. If we don’t, it is a mere extrajudicial killing. That at the same time Trump pardoned and released Juan Orlando Hernández, the former president of Honduras convicted in the United States of smuggling drugs and sentenced to 45 years in prison, would suggest that fighting drug smugglers is not the objective.
This week also saw American immigration officials remove people from citizenship oath-taking ceremonies for being from the wrong countries. Stories are circulating widely that officers have been asking each person arriving to make their pledge of allegiance and complete the final step in becoming American citizens what country they are from, and removing them from line and cancelling their ceremony — and therefore citizenship — if they give the wrong answer.
That wrong answer is apparently any of the 19 countries that the American government declared “high risk” back in June. The countries listed in that document are Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela. It isn’t clear to me how Togo or Haiti pose a more significant risk to the United States than Russia or North Korea; maybe there simply was not enough room for a 20th country on the White House spreadsheet.
Which brings us back to the national security strategy for which there is no need to rehash the analysis of so many historians, experts, and observers. Here is a sampling:
2025 is not 1984: Bob Rae Notes on President Trump’s “National Security Strategy”
There is a lot more, of course. The gist of it is clear: the United States is shifting away from everything we think we know about their values and laying bare their new foreign policy. It is not pretty, and it is an existential danger to Canada and many other allies.
When people say it’s time to “Just buy the damned F-35 jets” or other statements suggesting that is a cosmetic blip in America’s timeline, it shows a profound lack of understanding of how dire the situation within the United States truly is.
Trump is not an aberration. He is a reflection on a country who sees him and his team in themselves enough to make him their leader when they had other options.
Canada, as a whole, needs to come to grips with this reality.
I wish more Canadians were taking this more seriously, rather than thinking this is about a small group of individuals within one US political party as opposed to something that has been forming and predicted for a long time.
I do like that more people are recognizing that Ninteen-Eighty Four wasn't about "somewhere else" or "someone else", but about the direction the Anglosphere has been heading for a very long time.
A future for Canada? What I see as the worst case scenario
https://r.flora.ca/p/worst-future-canada
For more on where this all came from, read this article from the NY Review"s November 6 issue
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/11/06/storm-warnings-when-the-clock-broke-furious-minds/?utm_source=nybooks&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email-share
It describes the multi-generational project of the right that has led us to this point.