Quotulatiousness

January 5, 2026

International law is more like International “law”

Filed under: Government, History, Law, Media, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Konstantin Kisin points out that calling it “International Law” gives it a semi-mythic quality that it absolutely does not deserve:

All the bleating about “international law” shows just how completely deluded some of our elites have become.

International law was a pleasant fiction that lasted for a few decades. It was never real and now the world has reverted to its default setting: Great Power politics.

This is why, as a strong Ukraine supporter, I have never talked about international law or called Putin’s attack an “illegal invasion”.

Laws are based on submission to an overarching authority backed by force. There is no such international authority and even if you view the UN as one, it does not have the ability to use force against those who violate “international law” other than against small countries with weak militaries.

When the US attacked Iraq, the UN did nothing.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the UN did nothing.
If China invades Taiwan tomorrow, the UN will do nothing.

If you cannot enforce a law, it’s not a law.

I do not support Ukraine because naughty Vlad broke the rules. I support Ukraine because it’s not in OUR interest in the West to have Russia marauding its way through friendly countries on the borders of Europe. It’s in our interest for us to be as strong as possible and for our adversaries to be as weak as possible.

President Trump is a realist and a pragmatist. He sees through the fictions other “leaders” cling to.

A good leader advances the national interests of his country. If more Western leaders did this, our civilisation would be in a much better place.

I commented on another post that,

For a lot of people (Canadian Liberals and American Democrats in particular), the invocation “international law” has a mesmerizing effect on their ability to reason [insert usual disclaimer that if they could foresee the results of their enlightened beliefs, they wouldn’t be progressives]. They seem to have a quasi-religious belief in the UN as if it were some kind of God-given supergovernment that is always right and must always be obeyed. “World opinion” might as well be the hand of God to them, so any time the legacy media can portray the US (and Trump in particular) as going against “world opinion” they want to get out the sackcloth and ashes … or sack a city and turn it into ashes, whichever comes first.

vittorio analyzes the default position of most progressives on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:

most political issues nowadays can be explained by understanding that american leftists dont have positions, they have oppositions.

their entire belief system is defined by negation of whatever the right supports. this is why portland chants “free maduro” while actual venezuelans celebrate in the streets. they’re not pro-venezuelan or pro democracies, or pro tyrant, or pro maduro, they’re simply anti-american-right.

they’ve outsourced their worldview to institutional narratives for so long that genuine self-reflection would require questioning everything. for them it’s much easier to just oppose. the beliefs arent coherent because they were never meant to be coherent. they only need to signal tribal membership, and leftist membership is gained by opposing the right.

trump does X? the left screams and cries because they wanted Y

trump does Y? the left screams and cries and riots because even if they said they wanted Y, what they meant is that X was the way to go

trump cures cancer? they’ll argue that the cancer cells are alive have a right of free determination

trump saves lives? they’ll protest because somehow those lives didn’t matter and should have been ended

no coherent word model. no logic. pure opposition

at some point you just have to stop engaging with it as if it’s a real political position. it’s not. it’s aesthetic opposition wearing the costume of ideology

As Severian at Founding Questions often remarks, progressives’ core belief is The Great Inversion: “whatever is, is wrong”.

Bingo Bobbins makes the case that “International law is fake and gay”:

Was this operation necessary? Was Maduro really a “narcoterrorist”? I admit that I haven’t really been following all the drama with Venezuela recently, but my intuition is that Maduro was probably accepting bribes to look the other way with regards to drug trafficking, rather than being directly involved. And sure, he was a socialist dictator but there’s plenty of those around. The US doesn’t go and topple dictators unless there is a perceived US interest in doing so.

What Maduro was actually doing was cozying up to China. In fact, he had just finished a meeting with some Chinese ambassadors hours before Delta Force snatched him up by the scruff. This was actually a warning to China not to mess around in our hemisphere. The Trump administration is re-establishing the Monroe Doctrine, or, as he recently called in a press conference, “The Donroe Doctrine“. As far as I can see, this is completely in keeping with my preferred Vitalist Foreign Policy.

You can agree or disagree with this show of force, but please don’t whine to me about “International Law”. International Law is fake and gay. I certainly don’t care that the Trump administration “targeted a political leader”. This is the complaint being leveled by many leftists in regard to the operation. Really, this is just because leftists are anti-American third-worldists, and they are filled with butthurt because “their guy” lost. But, let’s examine this “rule” of not being allowed to target a countries rulers, because it’s particularly ridiculous.

If you have a problem with a specific country, who do you really have a problem with? You have a problem with that country’s leaders, since they are the ones making the decisions. Why wouldn’t you target the leaders? The only reason is that all the leaders from all the countries got together and agreed that they wouldn’t target each other. They would rather resolve their differences by throwing cannon fodder at each other, while keeping themselves off the table. And sure, I understand why that is great for them, but not why it would be great for me (or you).

Of course, the CIA has been ignoring this “international law” for decades, but they’ve been doing it in a very effeminate way, skulking about the world, funding Color Revolutions and clandestinely arming insurgent groups in order to subvert existing regimes. The Donroe Doctrine is much better. Imagine if the Trump administration had tried to handle Maduro the way the Obama administration tried to handle Assad. Fund a decades long civil war, accidentally establish a caliphate, fight a war against said caliphate, facilitate the deaths of tens of thousands of Christians, all to have an even worse dictator eventually rise to power.

Update, 6 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

January 4, 2026

Venezuela in the news

Filed under: Americas, Government, Law, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Tim Worstall explains that despite the usual suspects’ claims that “it’s all about the oil!”, it actually isn’t very much about the oil at all:

Trump taking — kidnapping, arresting, to taste — Maduro and his wife simply isn’t about the oil business. Please note, this also isn’t about whether it’s a good idea or not although I’ll admit to thinking that it’s way damn cool — getting in and out of hostile territory without, so far as we know right now, a single American casualty at all? Damn cool in that military sense.

This is about the shrieking we’re getting from the usual suspects — this is all about the oil! See! Ms. Raisin is one I’ve seen online already, there are those quoting that Counterpunch article with the idiot Michael Hudson and so on.

My point is solely and only about access to that oil.

So, travel back 10 to 15 years.

Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt oil is very “heavy”. Technically it is about viscosity but think about it as “thick”. It’s more like treacle than it is like a free flowing liquid. There are also issues with sulphur but leave that alone here. It is, in the technical parlance, “cheap shit”. So bad that it has to be mixed with much lighter (and usually “sweeter”, which means less sulphur) crude oil from different oil fields so you can pump it through a pipeline or get it into a tanker.

Venezuela used to have — still could have — fields of that light and sweet oil but they ran those fields — during and after Chavez — so badly that production fell over. So, they used to actually import US crude oil to then mix with that heavy crude so they could export. They also price petrol — gasoline — so low that they cannot possibly run refineries to make their own gasoline. So, they would import the US crude, mix it, export the blend to the US and then buy back the gasoline from those US Gulf Coast refineries. This was ridiculous, of course, but you know socialists with prices and economies.

It also meant that those US Gulf Coast refineries were adapted to use that Venezuela mix. You can change the mix a refinery uses but it’s potentially costly. The more the mix changes the more the cost rises. But the important thing to note is that the only refineries within cheap shipping distance that could use the Venezuela crude efficiently were those US Gulf Coast ones. Sure, they’d be pissed if they lost access to their supplies but they could be altered to work with other crude mixes. The reliance was much more of Venezuela upon the refineries than the refineries upon Venezuela — at least, the cost of adaptation to a change was lower for the refineries.

OK, so that was the old situation.

Over this past decade and a bit the US — under both Trump and Biden — has been saying, well, you know, we don’t think much of the Venezuelan Government. We also know the only money they get is from crude oil sales, so, if we refused to take that for those Gulf Coast refineries then we could screw with Maduro. Which is what happened — sanctions on Venezuelan oil exports which, most obviously, apply to people shipping into the US and so obeying US law.

Other people who do not, or don’t have to, obey US law haven’t, wholly, been abiding by those sanctions. OK. Maybe that’s all a good idea and maybe it isn’t — not my point here at all.

We should also note that the oil fields in Venezuela actually owned/managed by Chevron, a US company, have still been allowed to ship to the US and elsewhere under US law.

One more little fact. The US is now — as a result of fracking — a net oil exporter. This is also something done under Trump I, the lifting of the ban on crude oil exports. It can still be true that maybe buying in some Venezuelan oil — or Mexican, Canadian, whatever — meets either geographic or blend desires. We’d like some really heavy sludge, for example, or maybe Canadian oil works for Wyoming (not real examples, just ideas). But in terms of total oil production and usage the US produces more than it uses now. So any decision to import is about those marginal issues of location and blend, not urgent necessity for simple crude oil. Fracking works, d’ye see?

Shaded relief map of Venezuela, 1993 (via Wikimedia Commons)

On the other hand another bunch of the usual suspects are screaming about this as a violation of international law. ESR comments on the social media site formerly known as Twitter:

Since there’s a lot of screaming about the legality of black-bagging Nicolas Maduro going on, let’s talk about the game theory of international law.

Before I do that, though, I’m going to acknowledge that the Trump administration’s legal posture doesn’t even implicate international law significantly. Their theory is that Maduro stole an election, is not the legitimate head of state of Venezuela, and is a criminal drug-cartel leader; universal jurisdiction applies.

This is why a photograph of Maduro restrained by a soldier wearing a DEA patch was released.

I’m not here to state a position on whether that legal posture is valid; I want to instead outline a game theory of the “rules-based international order”, which people are complaining has been violated because the US black-bagged a head of state.

There are two different ways to establish a framework of governing law. Most people only understand one of them, which is the imposition of law by a ruler or coalition with force dominance. I’ll call this “unitary law”.

The other mechanism is mostly only understood by a handful of libertarians; it is law as a violence-minimizing equilibrium among a number of roughly equal agents playing an iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma game. In such settings, cooperation evolves naturally and doesn’t have to be handed down by a single ruler or coalition. I’ll call this “IPD law”.

“International law” is enforced by an uneasy combination of both mechanisms. This is more difficult to see than it should be because there’s also a lot of air and bullshit around “international law”, bullshit consisting mostly of wordcels trying to cast magic spells on people with guns.

The air and bullshit is why it’s common to say that international law is a mirage, or a fraud that only serves the interests of the strongest powers. This isn’t true: what is true is that if an international norm is not sustained by being a stable strategy in an IPD game, only force majeure by a dominant power or coalition can uphold it.

Here’s an example of a moral good that was established by unitary law of nations: the general abolition of chattel slavery, which happened because a dominant coalition of Western nations said “Fuck your sovereignty, we’re no longer tolerating this anywhere our militaries can reach.”

Here’s an example of a moral good that was accomplished by IPD law of nations: generally humane treatment of prisoners of war in armed conflicts. This didn’t develop because great powers unilaterally said “stop doing that”, it happened because even a great power at war with a minor one is exposed to effective tit-for-tat retaliation if it abuses POWs.

If you want to understand “international law”, you need to be able to disentangle three different things that claim to be international law: unitary law imposed by great powers, IPD law enforced by the threat of pain-inducing defections in an international tit-for-tat game, and wordcel bullshit.

The thing to bear in mind is just because there’s a lot of wordcel bullshit going around in “international law” doesn’t mean there isn’t a reality underneath.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rushes to distance himself from Trump’s action, for fear that someone might possibly mistake him for a vertebrate:

Leave it to the Babylon Bee to find the appropriate framing for a news story:

Update, 6 January: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

December 30, 2025

Tariffs are an economic burden, even when you claim they’re paid by foreigners

Filed under: Business, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

At the Foundation for Economic Education, David Hebert responds to a recent pro-tariff puff piece from financial columnist, Matthew Lynn:

As Lynn acknowledges, “the tariffs are a tax”. Because they are a tax, they are going to be paid by someone in some form. You can’t have money flowing into the Treasury without someone paying that extra money in some way. Broadly speaking, we can divide the potential payors of American-imposed tariffs into three camps: American consumers, American importers, and foreigners.

One of the oft-cited effects of a tariff is to reduce the amount of imports coming into America. This makes sense and is in fact one of the numerous goals administration officials have pointed to. Insofar as American consumers and importers end up paying the tariff, they will buy less of the now-more-expensive foreign products. We’re already seeing this happen in the US, which Lynn alludes to throughout his article.

If foreigners pay the tariff, they’ll sell less of the now-tariffed goods to the US. This will, as President Trump and others have correctly identified, hurt their bottom line. To offset at least some of this, these countries will try to sell more of their products to their domestic consumers or consumers in countries other than the US. This is exactly what we have seen and what we are seeing, as other countries around the world are securing new trade deals with one another and deliberately excluding the United States from said deals.

So, Lynn is correct to point out that foreign corporations have incurred costs because of the Trump tariffs. However, despite his repeated implication to the contrary, this is not money that goes to the US Treasury. Volkswagen, for example, has raised the price of its 2026 models by up to 6.5 percent, largely due to tariffs, and has indicated that this is just the beginning. That’s more money coming out of American consumers’ pockets. At these higher prices, American consumers are purchasing fewer Volkswagens than last year. Volkswagen’s losses from the tariffs include an almost 30 percent decline in profits from auto sales. Importantly, sales that do not happen count toward the reduced profit that Volkswagen reported but generate no tariff revenue for the Treasury to collect. That Lynn, a financial commentator, does not understand this distinction is deeply troubling.

Who Really Pays the Tariff?

Lynn’s central argument rests on a fundamental confusion between what economists refer to as the “legal incidence” and the “economic incidence” of a tax. Legally, because tariffs are a tax on imports, it is the US importers who must write the check to Customs and Border Protection. But this says nothing about who actually pays the tariff.

For example, when landlords’ property taxes go up, who pays? The landlord will obviously write the check to the county assessor, but unless Lynn thinks that landlords are running charities, that cost gets passed on to tenants in the form of higher rent, less frequent maintenance, or fewer included benefits (utilities or access to designated parking, for example). The legal incidence falls on the landlord, but the economic incidence falls disproportionately on renters, i.e., young Americans already besieged by high housing costs.

Tariffs work the same way. US Customs and Border Protection bills the American importer directly, which is the legal incidence of the tariff. But the economic burden gets distributed among American consumers, American importers, and foreign exporters, depending on the particulars of the individual markets.

Lynn cites the Harvard Pricing Lab finding an approximately 20 percent “pass-through rate,” meaning that American consumers are only paying about one-fifth of the tariff costs. He treats this as a permanent feature of the tariff regime and as proof that foreigners are footing the bill. But the question isn’t who writes the check today, it’s who bears the cost over time. And here, the evidence directly contradicts Lynn’s fables.

As we have seen, pass-through rates are not static, but evolve over time as markets adjust. And every piece of evidence suggests that the pass-through rate has been and is continuing to rise rapidly. Goldman Sachs and the Council on Foreign Relations tracked the evolution over just this administration. Their findings are stunning: In June, US businesses absorbed about 64 percent of the tariff costs, American consumers about 22 percent, and foreign exporters about 14 percent in the form of reduced profits. Just four months later, American businesses absorbed just 27 percent, while American consumers absorbed 55 percent and exporters absorbed 18 percent. Projections for 2026 continue the trend with consumers absorbing 67 percent, exporters 25 percent, and importers just 8 percent.

The logic behind this is simple and has been echoed by President Trump and Scott Bessent themselves. In the initial months following Liberation Day, American importers could not quickly shift to alternative suppliers, giving them little leverage to demand price cuts from existing foreign vendors. Many American importers also believed (or hoped?) that the tariffs were simply a negotiating tool that would be bargained away. Having built up inventories before April, they were able to avoid raising consumer prices, with the belief that the “temporary pains would be worth the long term gains.”

That’s no longer the case. As the BLS notes in its latest import price index report, the price of imports has barely changed. This matters because US importers, not foreign sellers, are legally required to write the tariff check. American buyers pay the foreign company’s price, then pay the tariff on top of it. If foreigners were truly absorbing the tariffs, they’d have to lower their prices to compensate, and we would see a decrease in the import price index. We haven’t. The index is flat, which is evidence that the burden of the tariff is, as economists warned, being paid disproportionately by Americans in one form or another. As the Council on Foreign Relations analysis points out, by October, importers have “had time to seek alternative suppliers, giving them a bit more negotiating leverage.” More importantly, the “trade deals” that the administration has inked have made it clear that substantially higher tariffs are here to stay. All of this gives importers and retailers good reason to continue passing more of the costs along to consumers.

We are already seeing evidence of this happening. The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s survey of small and medium-sized businesses, for example, confirms this dynamic. Firms expecting tariffs to persist for a year or longer plan to pass through three times more of their cost increases to consumers than firms expecting short-lived tariffs. As of August, over 45 percent of affected businesses expected their costs to be impacted for longer than a year.

But how does all of this compare to the pass-through rate felt during the 2018–2019 tariffs? The Harvard Pricing Lab — the same data that Lynn cites — actually undermines his entire argument. After just six months, the 2025 tariff pass-through rate is indeed around 20 percent. But if we compare this to the 2018 tariffs, the difference is night and day. After Trump’s first-term tariffs, the pass-through rate stayed under 5 percent after a full year. This isn’t evidence that these tariffs are working. It’s evidence that these tariffs are hitting consumers harder and faster than the previous round.

December 29, 2025

Will 2026 finally be the year Canada abandons food cartels?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Food, Government, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

For reasons unknown, Canadian politicians both left and right have been willing to sacrifice almost anything in trade negotiations except the cosy protectionist scheme we call “supply management”, which enriches a tiny number of farmers in Ontario and Quebec by keeping grocery prices significantly higher than the free market price. On his Substack, The Food Professor predicts that Prime Minister Carney will be forced to give up this market-rigging, anti-consumer scheme in the coming year:

Image from Agri-Food Analytics Lab, Dalhousie University

As we enter 2026, several forces are converging to reshape Canada’s food economy. Consumer empowerment — amplified by social media — continues to accelerate, while geopolitics, particularly tensions with our southern neighbour, are becoming increasingly disruptive. Together, these dynamics will push food policy issues that once lived in technical silos into the public spotlight.

At the top of that list sits CUSMA and supply management. Prime Minister Carney has signaled firmness on market access, backed by legislation that shields supply management from parliamentary debate. That protection, however, is unlikely to endure. Even if the United States has little genuine interest in exporting more dairy to Canada — and even if Canadian consumers show limited appetite for it — President Trump now understands, far better than during his first term, that supply management is a potent political wedge. The system protects roughly 9,400 dairy farmers who exert disproportionate influence over agricultural policy, while compensation payments continue to flow without any meaningful reduction in production or market share. For a growing number of Canadians, this arrangement increasingly resembles a closed loop rather than a public good. The irony is that global demand for dairy is rising and Canadian milk should be part of that growth story. Instead, the system prioritizes insulation over ambition — a missed opportunity at a time when competitiveness should matter most.

January 1 also marks the formal implementation of new front-of-package nutrition labels. Although these symbols have been appearing on shelves for some time, many consumers either overlook them or misunderstand their purpose. Their real impact has been largely invisible to the public: they have already reshaped how food companies formulate products, invest in research, and redesign portfolios. Whether the labels meaningfully change consumer behaviour remains debatable, but their influence on product development is no longer.

[…]

Finally, 2026 coincides with the United Nations’ International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists — a timely moment to reset the debate around meat consumption and livestock production. Rangelands underpin global meat systems by converting grasslands — often unsuitable for crops — into high-quality protein. In a world where demand for animal protein continues to grow, portraying livestock as inherently incompatible with sustainability ignores nutritional, economic, and ecological realities. Well-managed grazing supports rural livelihoods, strengthens export economies, and can enhance biodiversity and soil health rather than undermine them. If policymakers are serious about food security, climate resilience, and affordability, 2026 should mark a shift away from apologizing for meat production and toward recognizing livestock as a strategic pillar of resilient food systems — not a sector to be regulated out of existence

December 28, 2025

It may seem petty to deny entry to EUrocrats, but it’s all they will understand

Filed under: Europe, Government, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At first, I thought it was just another bout of Trump being deliberately petty over trivial stuff, but on reflection, it’s actually a neat way to bring home the message to the EU bureaucrats personally that they will be held responsible for their actions:

RE: Free Speech & Denying Visas to Euro Autocrats

The very most Orwellian mind game happening in the world today is the way authoritarian globalists are attempting to redefine the concept of “free speech”.

In America, “free speech” has long meant that we are free to say or write virtually anything without fear of government intervention or suppression. It is this ability to express whatever we want that makes it “free”.

The authoritarian globalists, however, have stood this on its head. They have decided that in order for their citizens to be “free”, they must be free of ever hearing or reading any speech that might offend someone or sow doubt as to government policies. To these fascists, “free speech” means GOVERNMENT MODERATED speech which somehow — through its moderation — sets people “free” from ever hearing conflicting views. As I said — straight out of Orwell.

Europe is, of course, the hotbed of this fascist redefinition of what free speech means, but we in America have only narrowly escaped this plague by electing Trump. Remember, Biden and his team were reliant on institutionally stamping out so-called “disinformation” as a means of control over the populace. We must be ever vigilant here in the USA that such thuggish government criminality never again be allowed to prosper.

I think it is very important that every citizen of the USA and the world understand the depths of depravity these people will sink to in order to control ordinary people. This is about mind control, and nothing else.

Ultimately, the value of true free speech is that it embraces the idea that we all have agency over ourselves; that we are free individuals who can and should hear conflicting views, and decide for ourselves what is true and just, and what is untrue and unjust. This is sovereignty over the self, and unfortunately Europe has never let go of the concept of serfdom, so self-sovereignty is a threat that must be stamped out.

The Trump Administration has been prescient, bold and effective in denying visas to the Eurotrash autocrats who would see free speech reduced to whatever speech unelected bureaucrats deem acceptable. I cannot commend Trump enough for the thoughtfulness and importance of that action.

In a world where almost all humans are linked by essentially the same communications platform, only one world leader is truly standing for free speech: Donald Trump. And I thank him for it. We all should — even the TDS sufferers.

For a relevant example, Dries Van Langenhove:

Update, 29 December: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.

December 16, 2025

If your military embraces “Net Zero”, you’ve actually got a civil service in uniform, not a military

Filed under: Britain, Environment, Government, Military, Russia — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Maurice Cousins points out the painful truth (painful that is to policians and career bureaucrats) that no serious military can prepare and carry out their prime duties if they also tout their allegiance to “Net Zero” bullshit:

Two developments explain the shift in tone. The first is the protracted US–Russia peace talks conducted largely over Europe’s head. The second is the publication of Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy, which makes explicit that Europeans must now assume far greater responsibility for their own defence. None of this should surprise anyone who has been paying attention. The Trump administration has been saying the same thing, bluntly and repeatedly, since its inauguration.

Speaking at the NATO Defence Ministers’ meeting in February 2025, the US War Secretary, Pete Hegseth, put it plainly: “To endure for the future, our partners must do far more for Europe’s defence. We must make NATO great again. It begins with defence spending, but must also include reviving the transatlantic defence industrial base, prioritising readiness and lethality, and establishing real deterrence.”

After nearly eighty years of relying on American power to underwrite their security, European leaders are being forced to relearn the fundamentals of hard power and grand strategy. It is difficult to overstate how profound a challenge this represents for both Europe and the UK. It demands a rethink across policy areas that, for decades, have been treated as marginal to national security.

Since the 1990s, Britain’s political and intellectual elite has operated within a fundamentally different paradigm. The “end of history” has become a cliché, but it is worth recalling just how deeply it shaped elite thinking. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse, Anthony Giddens — one of the intellectual architects of New Labour — argued in The Third Way that the West no longer faced “clear-cut enemies”. Cosmopolitanism, he claimed, would be both the “cause and condition” of the disappearance of large-scale war between nation-states. The “strong state”, once defined by preparedness for war, “must mean something different today”. They believed that post-material and post-traditional values, including ecological modernisation, human rights and sexual freedom, would come to dominate politics.

For realists, this utopian worldview was always naïve. In her final book, Statecraft (2003), Margaret Thatcher warned that the post-Cold War world was far more likely to vindicate Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations” than Francis Fukuyama’s progressive vision of an “end of history”, in which liberal democracy emerged as the inevitable global victor.

Clearly, the liberal internationalist illusion should finally have been shattered by Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Alas, it was not. Instead of prompting a fundamental strategic reset, Britain’s governing class doubled down on the same post-material, cosmopolitan assumptions that had shaped the 1990s and 2000s. In 2015, Europe and the UK embraced the Paris Climate Agreement. In 2019 — a year after the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal on British soil with a chemical weapon — ministers enshrined Net Zero in law and banned fracking. Each decision reflected the same belief: that geopolitics could remain subordinate to “climate leadership”, and that the material foundations of security could continue to be dismantled.

That worldview is now colliding with reality.

The US National Security Strategy contains a series of blunt truths about Europe’s condition. British commentary has focused on its remarks about culture, migration and defence spending. But one critical area has been largely overlooked: energy and industry.

The document begins from a hard material premise: that dominance in dense and reliable sources of energy — oil, gas, coal and nuclear — is essential to the ability of the United States, and its allies, to project power. From that foundation it draws a sharper conclusion, rejecting what it describes as the “disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies” that have hollowed out Europe’s industrial base while subsidising its adversaries. The result, it argues, is a defence problem that runs far deeper than military budgets. Alongside cultural weaknesses, myopic energy policy and de-industrialisation — exemplified by Germany’s recent offshoring of its chemical industry to China — are identified as anti-civilisational forces that directly erode Western hard power.

This makes Carns’s most important observation all the more sobering. While armies, navies and air forces respond to crises, he said, it is “societies, industries and economies [that] win wars”. He is unequivocally right.

On his Substack, Niccolo Soldo discusses the contents of the Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy:

Egyptian President Gamel Nassar had some choice lines to describe US foreign policy too:

    The genius of you Americans is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.

    With the Soviet Union, you know where you stand today and where you will stand tomorrow. With the United States, you never know where you will stand tomorrow—and sometimes not even today.

    America is like a beautiful woman who changes her mind every night. You can love her, you can fear her, but you can never be sure what she will do in the morning.

And then there is this recent classic from Russia’s chief diplomat, Sergey Lavrov:

    The USA is agreement non-capable.

The point of sharing these quotes is to highlight the obvious fact that US foreign policy has long been unpredictable. This wouldn’t be too much of an issue if it were a middling power. When a superpower routinely upends the table, it makes life very, very difficult for those countries that have become “states of interest” for the Americans. Creating and pursuing foreign policy strategies require a lot of time and effort, meaning that they are very rarely predicated on short-term trends. When the predictability of foreign actors is removed from the strategic equation, the foundation of any plan becomes very weak.

Earlier this month, the White House issued its 2025 National Security Strategy vision in a 33 page .pdf document available for all to see and read here. This is an action that the US Executive Branch is mandated to do, ever since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. The point of this exercise is to articulate the vision of the President of the United States of America regarding foreign policy, so as to effectively communicate said vision to Congress and the American people. It does not mean that it is an official foreign policy strategy, since this area of governance is the responsibility of both the executive and legislative branches of the US Government.

Because this is the Trump Administration, and because of the fever pitch that has coloured both of his terms in office, a lot of attention is being given to this iteration of this mandatory document. This document is intentionally high-level (meaning that it purposely doesn’t drill down into specifics), keeping within the tradition of previous administrations. However, attention is warranted this time, because the vision outlined by President Trump per this document indicates a significant break in both the USA’s approach to and philosophical arguments regarding how and why it conducts its foreign policy. Despite the obvious Trumpist (think: transactional) touches interspersed throughout this document, what it does represent is a stated desire to break with certain idealist practices of recent administrations in favour of a more realist approach and worldview, one that stresses respect (if we accept the document at face value) for national sovereignty, and an admission that US global hegemony is simply not possible.

So what we are left with is a document that outlines a new vision for US foreign policy, one that has determined that taking on both Russia and China simultaneously is the wrong approach to securing American national interests. This makes it very worthy of closer inspection and analysis (something that I have been thinking about deeply since it was first made available to the public a fortnight ago). Before we begin to dive into it, I am asking you all to temporarily suspend your cynicism and take the strategy outline at face value for the sake of this analysis. I will once again repeat that this is not official policy, and there is a very strong chance that it will never be adopted as that.

December 9, 2025

The age of Trump – “America has ‘walked away’ from its allies”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Line, Matt Gurney talks about last month’s annual Halifax International Security Forum, where the biggest change from previous events was the official absence of US government representation:

Late last month, attending the Halifax International Security Forum, I was having the damndest feeling. Can you have déja vu for something that you only experienced via fiction? Because it was kind of like that.

The fiction in question was a novel by an Australian, published during the Second Iraq War. Anti-American sentiment was running rampant all over the world. The premise of the novel is out there in the realm of sci-fi — America disappears. Specifically, Americans disappear — some mysterious wave of energy scours most of North America clean of life. Virtually all of the U.S. is wiped out; most of Canada and Mexico, too. Somewhat to the surprise of the anti-Americans, this does not result in an improvement in life on Planet Earth.

Standing around at the forum, eating the delicious snacks and drinking the good coffee and chatting with friends old and new, that was what I kept thinking about. Where are the Americans? And what the hell are we going to do without them?

And, in case you’re wondering what’s up with that headline, here’s another question — what will we do if they one day try and come back?

The forum is an annual gathering of senior military officers, defence and intelligence officials from across the free world, and representatives from the media, think tanks, large companies and civil society organizations whose work relates to defence and security issues or in some way seeks to promote and preserve a healthy democratic world. Funded by NATO, the Canadian government and private-sector sponsors, the event is a major part of Canada’s “soft power” offering to our allies — we host the big party and show everybody a good time. The actual schedule is split between on-the-record panel talks or presentations, off-the-record sessions, and informal time for mingling and schmoozing. I am grateful to have been invited to participate again this year.

Especially this year. I’ve been going to the forum for years, and the event always had a strongly American flavour.

Not anymore! Yankee went home.

Like, literally. He was ordered to go home, or stay there. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the Pentagon to avoid a series of high-profile annual defence summits. That includes Halifax, and others in places like Munich and Singapore, and even inside the United States itself. The reason, according to the Pentagon’s press apparatus, was that, and I swear to God this is the actual quote, such events promote “the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country and hatred for the president of the United States”.

Oh. Well, then.

That’s what made the forum so fascinating this year. As I told my colleague Jen Gerson while I was in Halifax, the entire event felt a little bit like the first Thanksgiving after a divorce. It’s great to see everyone, but there’re some notable absences, is the thing.

December 3, 2025

Like him or loathe him, Trump’s response to the DC shootings was “spot on”

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Conservative Woman, Richard North makes the case that US President Donald Trump is the only western political leader who can stop the migration crisis:

Like him or loathe him, question his inconsistencies and his many other flaws, but in my view Donald Trump’s response to the shooting of two members of the West Virginia National Guard in Washington DC by an Afghan migrant was spot on.

There was none of the pussyfooting “my thoughts are with …” etc. Without equivocation, he immediately branded the shooting “an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror”, adding: “It was a crime against our entire nation”.

Shortly thereafter, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted a tweet declaring: “President Trump’s State Department has paused visa issuance for ALL individuals travelling on Afghan passports. The United States has no higher priority than protecting our nation and our people.”

Attached was an official tweet from the Department of State making it clear that the ban was of immediate effect, with the Department “taking all necessary steps to protect US national security and public safety”.

This added to the ban in June when Trump imposed restrictions on citizens from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, but that ban did not revoke visas previously issued, and holders of Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) were exempt.

Now Trump has gone further. In a Thanksgiving message posted on X, he offered a salutation which, in Trumpian style, didn’t mince words. It started with: “A very Happy Thanksgiving salutation to all of our Great American Citizens and Patriots who have been so nice in allowing our country to be divided, disrupted, carved up, murdered, beaten, mugged, and laughed at, along with certain other foolish countries throughout the world, for being ‘politically correct’, and just plain STUPID, when it comes to immigration …”

That was only the start of a very long and quite extraordinary tweet which, if nothing else, can be criticised for a complete absence of paragraphs and sentences which rivalled in length those in a Dickens novel.

With his opening out of the way, Trump asserted that the official United States foreign population stands at 53million, most of whom, he averred, “are on welfare, from failed nations, or from prisons, mental institutions, gangs, or drug cartels”.

“They and their children,” Trump continued, “are supported through massive payments from patriotic American citizens who, because of their beautiful hearts, do not want to openly complain or cause trouble in any way, shape or form”.

Warming to his theme, he declared: “They put up with what has happened to our country, but it’s eating them alive to do so! A migrant earning $30,000 [£27,000] with a green card will get roughly $50,000 [£38,000] in yearly benefits for their family. The real migrant population is much higher.”

Pressing his point, he stated what none of Starmer’s motley crew will admit.

“This refugee burden is the leading cause of social dysfunction in America, something that did not exist after World War II (failed schools, high crime, urban decay, overcrowded hospitals, housing shortages, and large deficits, etc)”, the Donald wrote.

In a passage which might have got him arrested had he posted in the UK, with refreshing candour, the President gave the example of “hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia” who were “completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota”.

Somali gangs, he said, “are roving the streets looking for ‘prey’ as our wonderful people stay locked in their apartments and houses hoping against hope that they will be left alone”.

No matter which country they end up in, Somalis tend to be bad news. There are multiple reports stretching back to 2007 of a plague of criminal gangs among the 32,000 Somalis who have settled in Minnesota.

Recently the Minnesota gangs have been associated with a series of massive welfare fraud schemes, the proceeds of which may have been funnelled to the Somalia-based terror group al-Shabab.

The largest fraud scandal involving Somalis was the “Feeding Our Future” scheme. Prosecutors racked up 56 criminal convictions in what they alleged was a plot to steal $300million (£270million) from a federally funded programme meant to feed children during the covid event.

November 27, 2025

Carney – “Who cares?”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Economics, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Melanie in Saskatchewan reacts to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s shrugging-off the economic concerns of ordinary Canadians with a casual “Who cares?”

Dear @MarkJCarney

“Who cares?”

That’s what you actually said when asked when you last bothered talking to Trump about the tariffs that are currently body-slamming Canadian jobs.

“Who cares? … It’s a detail.”

Really Mark? Let’s meet some of those “details”, Prime Minister.

The single mom juggling three gig jobs because the factory that used to pay her mortgage “paused investment” and then paused her entire livelihood: she’s just a detail.

The Windsor autoworker whose night shift got cancelled forever while you were busy perfecting your thoughtful squint for the cameras: tiny detail.

The steelworker in Hamilton burning through EI while the mill runs skeleton crews and you call the carnage a “temporary adjustment”: just a little detail.

The small-shop owner deciding which of her three employees to fire this month because 25% tariffs turned her cross-border contracts into suicide notes: who cares, right? Detail.

The rail worker staring at empty tracks where trains full of Canadian auto parts and steel used to roll: super minor detail.

The Saskatchewan electrician watching Nutrien build its next billion-dollar terminal in Washington State instead of BC because at least the Americans aren’t at war with their own economy: I guess that’s barely worth mentioning.

The welders and millwrights being told the next big plants are going up in Ohio and Texas, not Ontario or Alberta, because Canada’s too busy arguing about jurisdiction to actually fight for work: pfft, details.

The family parked on gurneys in an ER hallway at 3 a.m. because we never trained enough doctors and now the ones we have are bolting: honestly, who has time for that detail?

All those kids with degrees doing DoorDash because private-sector job growth is wheezing and every company is frozen waiting for the next Trump tweet or Trudeau shrug: whatever, details.

You flew around the world taking heroic photos, sold us “Team Canada”, bragged you were the adult who could handle Trump, and the second a reporter asks when you last actually picked up the damn phone to fight for Canadian jobs, you smirk and say “Who cares?”

Message received, loud and clear.

Those people I mentioned above? They care.

Every single one of them cares when the shift vanishes, the mortgage renews, the mill goes quiet, the doctor quits, the plant gets built south of the border, and their kids ask why Mom’s crying at the kitchen table again.

But you don’t care.

And the worst part? You didn’t even bother to lie about it.

You lied to every single Canadian to get elected, yet you don’t care.

Well Mark … we sure as hell do care.

And you WILL care.

When your greasy grifting ass is voted to the curb and we undo all the harm you’ve caused Canadians to fatten your coffers. You cant stand living in Canada and can’t wait to move back to the UK … remember?

We sure will.

Just watch us.

Sincerely,
One of the millions of Canadians tired of being your rounding error.

Melanie in Saskatchewan

Also published on her Substack.

Apparently even the most detached of politicians can occasionally be persuaded to acknowledge an unforced error:

November 26, 2025

The RCAF needs either F-35s or Gripens … not both

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, Government, Military, USA, Weapons — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Although the Trump provocations are a unique situation for the Royal Canadian Air Force to find itself dealing with, the long-delayed decision on what the replacement for our current CF-18 fleet can’t be realistically put off for much longer. The government has committed to paying for the first 16 aircraft of an 88-plane order, but many pundits are crying out for the government to cancel the remaining portion of the order and instead purchase different aircraft … the leading contender being the Swedish Gripen. This might be the worst of all worlds for the RCAF, in needing to support two different airframes with zero parts compatibility. This two-fleet “solution” would make life much more difficult for RCAF training and logistics, but it’d be a performative eLbOwS uP to Trump, so there’s a strong chance it’ll happen despite military and economic reality. Bryan Moir makes the argument for the Gripen on his Substack:

Mark Carney loves the big phrases. “Build Canada strong.” “Rewire the economy.” “Generational investments.”

It’s good branding. But slogans don’t build nations — decisions do. And right now, one decision matters more than the rest:

Will Canada assemble the Saab Gripen fighter on Canadian soil — or will we lock ourselves into permanent military dependence through the F-35?

Let’s start with the truth no one in Ottawa wants to say out loud.

The F-35 is a 56% aircraft in a 100% environment.

The F-35 fleet’s mission-capable rate sits at 55–56%. That means a country buying 16 aircraft can expect maybe eight airborne on a good day. Eight jets to defend the Northwest Passage, the Arctic archipelago, and a coastline longer than Russia’s.

This isn’t speculation; it’s physics, logistics, and accounting.

Meanwhile, the United States fields 54 F-35s at Eielson AFB in Alaska — backed by billions in supporting infrastructure: software hubs, spares depots, rapid part cycling, and multiple layers of maintenance and training.

They can sustain the F-35 in the Arctic.

Canada cannot.

And pretending that we can — or worse, pretending that it doesn’t matter — is not national defence. It’s denial.

Gripen was designed for the world Canada actually lives in.

Gripen’s core design features are the ones Canada pretends the F-35 also has:

  • Cold-weather resilience
  • Short runway and road-base operations
  • Minimal crew requirements
  • Quick turnarounds
  • Low maintenance footprint
  • Sovereign sustainment

Gripen isn’t just compatible with Canada.

It was built for countries whose geography forces them to be independent.

November 19, 2025

US Democrats issue clarion call to the military: “You must refuse illegal orders”

Filed under: Government, Law, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Well, thank goodness that someone remembers Nuremberg! Apparently President Trump has been issuing illegal orders to the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, and these brave legislators are putting their careers — and even their lives — on the line to defend democracy. I’m unaware of what these specific orders may be, but as Chris Bray points out, he’s the Bad Orange Man so pretty much anything he orders must be illegal:

Note what they don’t say. They say that the American military is being “pitted against” their own countrymen, and they say to servicemembers that “you can refuse illegal orders …”

… they don’t say, even once, even in a pretty clear hint, precisely what illegal orders Trump has issued. He’s being vaguely bad, so you don’t have to obey him. The serious version would look like this: On [date here], the President of the United States ordered [unit name] to enter [place name] for the purpose of [specific action], and that order violated [explicit citation of US Code]. They mushmouth around a set of feelings-signals about Mean Orange Something, but they never quite manage to spit it out. What’s the illegal order anyone is supposed to disobey, and what makes it illegal? News reports suggest that they mean to refer to the boat strikes, but click on that link if you want to see more vagueness and weak hinting.

This is exactly what the Catholic bishops just did in their own stupid virtue performance, the precise mark of an absence of seriousness in a coven of drama queens, as they declared that they’re very concerned about questions that have arisen regarding certain situations involving immigrants. More mush from the wimps. Donald Trump is very bad, because mumble mumble mumble. Be precise and clear, or be silent.

This is an age of unseriousness, and here’s another heaping plate of it. Soldiers, you don’t have to obey the orders of your military superiors if you feel that they, that they, uh, oh hey look at the time anyway I have to go. It’s passive-aggressive bad girlfriendspeak as politics. I guess if you feel like you have to obey, that’s fine. No, it’s fine! I’m not mad! Let’s just go to dinner!

We want to speak directly to members of the military, but we don’t actually have anything to say. Just, you know, disobey the president. Small thought, not a big deal.

High school drama club president Elissa Slotkin has been banging on this drum in an especially insistent way, as she holds town hall meetings with veterans who mumble their own vague slogans about Trump bein’ against the Constitution real hard and stuff.

But all of their descriptions are stupid. Sending a few hundred National Guard troops to a city of hundreds of thousands of people with narrow orders about protecting federal facilities and personnel or patrolling to deter violence isn’t military conquest of the population or the militarization of all law enforcement. The hyperbole renders the argument insane. Related, the veterans in Slotkin’s video talk about the “systematic removal” of military leaders, and the “purge of the generals”. The US military has over 800 flag officers; the Trump administration has removed about 15. There’s a desperate stupidity to all of this panic-mongering that just renders it deeply tiring.

Actual servicemembers will be familiar with the rhetorical style of the shithouse lawyer, the idiot in the barracks who tells you that akshully they can’t order you to do that, it’s totally illegal.

You should just tell your drill sergeant that you refuse! He can’t even do nothin’ about it! He’ll just back right down!

November 17, 2025

The US Supreme Court considers whether Trump’s tariffs are legal

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Thanks to the staggering incompetence (and/or deliberate provocation for domestic political advantage) of the Carney government’s dealings with President Donald Trump, the current case before the Supreme Court is of significant interest to those of us on the north side of the US-Canadian border. On his Substack, David Friedman discusses the issues before the court:

There are three things wrong with Trump’s tariffs. The first is that they cannot be expected to provide the benefits claimed, can be expected to make both the US and its trading partners poorer; the arguments offered for them depend on not understanding the economics of trade. For an explanation of why that is true, see an earlier post.

The fact that the tariffs make us poorer may be the most important thing wrong with them but it is irrelevant to the Supreme Court; nothing in the Constitution requires the president to do his job well. The questions relevant to the Court are whether what Trump is doing was authorized by past Congressional legislation and whether it was constitutional for Congress to authorize it.

What Counts As An Emergency?

Tariffs are under the authority of Congress, not the president.1 Trump’s justification for setting them himself is congressional legislation, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

    (a) Any authority granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may be exercised to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.

    (b) The authorities granted to the President by section 1702 of this title may only be exercised to deal with an unusual and extraordinary threat with respect to which a national emergency has been declared for purposes of this chapter and may not be exercised for any other purpose. (IEEPA, 50 U.S. Code § 1701, emphasis mine)

Trump declared that his Worldwide Reciprocal Tariffs were intended to deal with the US trade deficit.2 Whether the deficit is a threat and whether tariffs are a good way to deal with it are questions for economists3 but whether it is unusual is relevant to judges, since if it is not the IEEPA does not apply.

[…]

The Court on Trial

Delegating to the president the power to impose tariffs, a power explicitly given to Congress in the Constitution, is a major question. Under doctrine proclaimed by this court that means that the legislation claimed to delegate that power must be read narrowly. On a narrow reading, on anything but a very broad reading, the legislation fails to apply to President Trump’s tariffs for two independent reasons:

    It only grants power in an emergency, which under the language of the Act neither the trade deficit nor the illegal drug problem is; the deficit has existed since 1970, the War on Drugs was proclaimed in 1971.

    The powers granted to the president in the Act do not include the power to impose tariffs.

If the six conservative justices believe in the principles they claim, the administration will lose the case 9-0.

  1. The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises … To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations … (U.S Constitution, Article I, Section 8).
  2. “I found that conditions reflected in large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States that has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States. I declared a national emergency with respect to that threat, and to deal with that threat, I imposed additional ad valorem duties that I deemed necessary and appropriate.” (Executive Order July 31, 2025).
  3. The answers are no and no.

November 1, 2025

MAGA is not a monolith, thank goodness

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Line, Alex Muir looks at Canada-US relations (such as they are currently) and why MAGA not being a monolith is something Canadian politicians need to understand to stand any chance of successfully navigating our dealings with President Trump and his administration:

If there’s one thing that we’ve seen in recent days, as Donald Trump plays an endless game of “deal or no deal” with countries around the world, it’s that the current administration is volatile.

Why? One answer to that question is factionalism — to an extent that has enshrined unpredictability as a core operating principle of the second Trump term.

Canadians are particularly exposed to this. From north of the 49th, it looks like American policy is oscillating between nationalist populism, business pragmatism, tech conservatism, and social traditionalism. That is, however, a misreading. Administration policy is remarkably consistent if you focus on the current rather than the waves. First and foremost, the president and his team obsess over visible status, a game you can play through flattery or strength and symbolic gesture — there are winning examples of both.

In concrete policy terms, the Trump administration expects us to help them on missile defence, border control, and maritime security. They expect access to our resource and energy assets, on their terms. And they want our manufacturing sector to relocate to America. They also expect Canada to know its place as a loyal American ally.

Zoom out to the bigger picture and all the daily clutter can be understood as moves to advance, or at least attempt to advance, those broad goals. And that understanding, in turn, can help inform a successful Canadian response to U.S. actions.

[…]

You cannot understand what is happening today if you do not understand what factions hold sway within this new structure. I recommend thinking of the United States as a monarchy wearing a representative democracy’s clothes. Decisions do not rest in the administrative state, or even in a political party (like Hungary), they rest in the attention of a restless and aging president and those known to have his ear, and his trust. How close to the president a decision-maker is, and who else has a voice on any given topic, goes a long way toward explaining outcomes.

The various MAGA factions colonizing D.C. share several important background beliefs on Canada. First, and arguably most important, they don’t notice it much, and care even less. Second, they assume all foreigners want to be Americans, or are somehow defective if they do not. Third, Canadians look and sound so much like Americans that the latter assumption is magnified.

Fourth, there is a wide streak of Manichaeism in several of the factions that make up the administration, and the MAGA movement more generally. This means resistance, or even evasion, is quite likely to be taken as evidence of ill intent — or even outright evil intent — as opposed to the furtherance of legitimate competing interests. All of these are wrapped up in a fairly magnificent degree of self-involvement. America is so big, so rich, and so strong, that all administrations overwhelmingly focus on domestic issues and domestic politics since nothing that happens outside their borders is generally seen as existential. (Whereas American elections and culture wars absolutely are.)

For Canada, this has meant many things, none of them positive. We’ve seen the rapid (and apparently random) escalation of tariffs (so far mostly on specific goods, or things not explicitly covered by USMCA), plus the endlessly repeated threats of higher duties in response to perceived Canadian provocations. There have been threats and intermittent moves to sideline Canada from vital security relationships, including the Five Eyes and NORAD. Canada has committed to some initiatives in order to satisfy American demands, like intensified border enforcement initiatives and committing new resources to national security priorities. It is difficult, however, to get out in front of a rapidly moving target in terms of the administration’s desired outcome.

And that’s the crux of the matter — what do the factions of the administration see when they look at Canada, and what do they want? Answering that question involves understanding what the factions are. The following summary of the factions within MAGA has been condensed from my other work, and should help Canadians understand the complexity of what we must face.

October 27, 2025

Trump versus Carney (and Ford, his court jester)

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Another week, another set of bleak headlines about the trade relationship (or lack thereof) between Canada and the United States. For some, this is the story of how Trump Derangement Syndrome has consumed all levels of Canadian leadership, while for others it’s proof that you can’t deal with Trump as a rational adult and instead need to consider him an overgrown toddler with a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. Or perhaps it’s a little from column A and a bit from column B:

At the risk of overstating my own influence, it’s like the President of the United States read my piece saying he was acting like a toddler and decided, “oh yeah? I’ll show what ‘acting like a toddler’ means!” and did this, presumably once Bluey was over:

    U.S. President Donald Trump says he is raising tariffs on Canadian goods by 10 per cent, after accusing Canada of airing what he called a “fraudulent” advertisement that misrepresented former president Ronald Reagan’s stance on tariffs.

    In a post published on Truth Social at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Trump wrote, “I am increasing the Tariff on Canada by 10% over and above what they are paying now.”

    Trump’s post cited his frustration over an advertisement produced by the Ontario government that used clips of Reagan warning about the dangers of protectionism and praising free trade.

    “Canada was caught, red handed, putting up a fraudulent advertisement on Ronald Reagan’s Speech on Tariffs,” he wrote.

    Earlier this week, Trump had cut off trade negotiations with Ottawa, explaining it was due to the “hostile” nature of the ad campaign.

    “Their Advertisement was to be taken down, IMMEDIATELY, but they let it run last night during the World Series, knowing that it was a FRAUD,” Trump further said in the Truth social post.

The good news is, at least Trump is coming right out and admitting that his “national security” tariffs are really about nothing more than his fragile ego, just in time for the Supreme Court to hear arguments about this very issue.

The bad news is, I think it’s exceptionally naive to think SCOTUS is going to save us from this madness.

Not because I think they’ll rule that what he’s doing is legal. That might be a bridge too far for even Justices Thomas and Alito.

But because this proposition rests on the assumption that Trump considers himself bound by Supreme Court rulings and that anyone else is going to exercise their power to ensure these rulings are followed.

Or, if you think Canadian leaders are deep in a TDS binge:

How The New Republic saw Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign.

Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is a widespread and serious issue. When one is afflicted by it, their capacity to sense-make becomes compromised. Emotions are a difficult thing for humans to control, and TDS-sufferers seem for the most part unaware of how much their negative, emotional feelings concerning Trump have hijacked their reason.

TDS types reveal themselves in so many ways. One specifically, which often goes unnoticed, is a general uncharitableness when it comes to interpreting the words and actions of Trump, or a general unwillingness to look beyond words – either Trump’s words or anyone else’s which have been inserted into Trump discourse. A prime example of this is the anti-tariff ad campaign involving a 1987 speech by former president Ronald Reagan which the Ford government paid $75 million to have broadcast to American audiences – key Republican areas – for the purpose of undermining President Trump’s economic policy.

Firstly, the uncharitable analysis does not allow that Trump has any right, or any good argument, or reason to be upset about Canada’s trade practices, such as supply management. The uncharitable analysis sees Canada as an innocent victim and Trump as a bully who is trying to destroy us and/or take us over.

[…]

Returning to reason and reality. Trump has justification for being upset with Canada over both our trade practices and in the under-handed and unfriendly tactics of Doug Ford and other Canadian leaders. The ad was an insult to Trump. His reaction or over-reaction to the ad, does not change the fact that what Ford did was antagonistic and not in the best interests of productive trade negotiations. The charitable analysis understands this, and does not lose sight of it, no matter how outlandish the things Trump does may be.

On the other side of the uncharitable Trump analysis concerning Ford’s Reagan ad blunder, is circulating the idea that Reagan was anti-tariff. Why is this idea believed? Because of Reagan’s rhetoric. You can find hundreds of clips of Reagan speaking about the dangers of high tariffs, or advocating for free trade. But the uncharitable analysis refuses to go beyond words. They ignore words that don’t support their argument, and act as if the words that do support their argument were the only ones spoken. Further, they act like words are the be all and end all, by not bothering to investigate the actions of those who speak the words, they pretend that word-speakers always do and intend exactly what they say. Reagan’s oratory contained lots of anti-tariff rhetoric, but his actions included lots of pro-tariff policy in an effort to deal with unfair trading partners.

None of this is difficult once you mea culpa from TDS. If you remain under the spell of TDS, you will not be rational or reasonable, and I for one, will not take you seriously. You will look increasingly foolish as time goes on and Trump’s policies turn out not to be the disasters you hysterical twits dreamed they would be. And the group of people like me, who shake their heads and roll their eyes at you, will grow and grow, under the weight of inevitable mass mea culpa. But you will remain shrouded from truth as you descend further into darkness and gloom and hate. It doesn’t have to be this way … just mea culpa FFS!

October 25, 2025

International FAFO – Ontario pokes Trump, Trump withdraws from trade talks

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Canadian politicans seem unable to comprehend that Donald Trump is not a typical American leader — for both good and bad — and Ontario Premier Doug Ford seems to be the last one to figure it out. The Ontario government paid for ads featuring Ronald Reagan making anti-tariff comments to run in the US media and Trump reacted, strongly:

The Ontario government’s anti-U.S. tariff ad will run multiple times during the U.S. broadcast of baseball’s World Series game Friday, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump “terminated” trade talks with Canada over the commercial.

In an email, Ontario Premier Doug Ford spokesperson Hannah Jensen confirmed information first reported by National Post that the ads will run throughout the World Series.

That means the ads, taken out by Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s government, will be playing to a primetime U.S. audience less than a day after Trump cited them as the reason he was ending trade talks with Canada.

The Toronto Blue Jays are vying for the World Series championship for the first time in over three decades.

The move suggests Ford is not ready to back down on his public campaign against U.S. tariffs on key Ontarian industries including auto manufacturing despite Trump’s ire.

Late Thursday evening, Trump took aim at Ontario’s ads which quote a 1987 speech by Ronald Reagan to fight against U.S. tariffs.

“The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs. The ad was for $75,000,” Trump wrote on social media.

“They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts. TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT.”

On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada stands ready to resume trade talks with the Trump administration. But he stopped short of opining on if Ontario should cease running the ads.

If there’s a wrong way to deal with Donald Trump, you can be sure that some Canadian politician — often, but not always, Doug Ford — will find it:

Outside of the light conservatism found in the AM Talk radio circuit throughout the GTA, Ontarians didn’t really seem all that fired up when it was discovered that Premier Doug Ford spent $75 million on anti-tariff ads, the most contentious involving an audio clip of former Republican president Ronald Reagan, to be played in American cities targeting Republican audiences. They, for the most part, are also unlikely to appreciate the insult, and the damage it caused, by going directly to Trump’s base with a message that undermines the premise of his economic plan. In Canada, leaders like Ford and Carney, are permitted and even encouraged to talk tough on Trump, because it is well understood that Trump Derangement Syndrome is the leading cause of anxiety amongst Canadian leftists, and sadly, even many so-called conservatives. However, it has always been hollow, toothless, and pointless.

Carney’s elbow’s up nonsense is easily the most embarrassing thing produced by Canada in the last four decades (maybe longer). And Doug Ford is such a clueless dummy, conservative in name only, with NDP levels of TDS, and an incredibly irresponsible propensity to go off half-cocked, with such a careless abundance of volatility. No serious province can survive a leader like this. Ford is what Leftists think Trump is: a dangerous blundering idiot who can’t get anything right. But this thing with the Reagan ad is maybe the worst example in a long list of Ford blundering. Maybe Trump’s anger will blow over, maybe we will somehow come out of this episode embarrassed, yet again, but for the most part, unscathed. We will have to wait and see.

As much as I wish Canada was a force to be reckoned with, as it once was, the best I can muster is that some day in the distant future other countries might stop laughing at us. The sad reality is that generations of abysmal Laurentian elite leadership has destroyed the strength and respectability of Canada. We are a weak insignificant joke of a nation made that way by a grossly feminized ultra-weak leftist leadership class. Ford and Carney with their ineffective provocations directed at Trump in order to appease and win points with the TDS numbskull segment of the Canadian population, does little more than show the nation, and the world, the opportunism and lack of self-awareness indicative of all weak and clueless men of the social justice paradigm in the great feminized north.

To make matters worse, as if the largest and most rapidly expanding national debt in the history of Canada, the general complacency concerning government spending, or the massive affordability crises were not enough, it appears that Ford’s ad team manipulated the content of the Ronald Reagan speech they used in order to make it appear as if Reagan were anti-tariff. The ad stitches together non-consecutive segments of a five minute speech he gave in 1987. Again, the ad in question was part of a $75 million marketing campaign, paid for by Ontario tax-payers, which targeted American audiences.

The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute stated that “The ad misrepresents the presidential radio address, and the Government of Ontario did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks”.

Nice work, Doug. You can stop any time now …

Update: Fixed broken URL.

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress