Everything is connected
Geopolitical strategies, capabilities, and interactions focusing on how these dynamics influence security, relations, and Canadian interests.
Kaja Kallas is the European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission. Kaja Kallas was the first female prime minister of Estonia.
US Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra describes the current defence relationship between the two countries as “awesome,” but stressed military interventions by the US military into Canadian airspace would increase if Canada does not increase its purchase of Lockheed Martin F-35s beyond the 16 currently on order.
The North American Air Defence Command (NORAD) is a decades-old partnership between Canada and the US which tracks inbound threats and scrambles armed jets to intercept where appropriate.
In any age of economic stagnation and extremes of inequality, popular trust in democratic institutions corrodes. It has been corroding not just in the US but across the Western world for decades now. As such Trump may be a symptom, not a cause, of Carney’s “rupture” with the post-World War Two order.
Watching those old men making their way through the Normandy cemeteries was a graphic and poignant reminder that democracy, the rule of law, accountable government are not naturally occurring phenomena. They are not even, historically speaking, normal. They have to be fought for, built, sustained, defended.
And that is the challenge from here facing what Mark Carney called “the middle powers”.
Source:
Allan Little, BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99kkerr93ko
Lucas believes “NATO is dying,” comparing it to a “marriage where you have one of the partners in the marriage using threats of violence and mocking the other partner for being trusting and idealistic.”
Source: Deutsche Welle (DW)
Canada and the US have exchanged military personnel for decades. Beyond joint task-forces, intelligence sharing, and organizations like NATO and NORAD, Canada’s DND also regularly sends members of the CAF on exchange programs with US military units, sometimes for years.
Canadian Brigadier-General Robert McBride is the deputy commanding general of operations for the US 11th Airborne Division in Alaska. His role in a division waiting to support US ICE is a pointed example of how Canadian military personnel are caught awkwardly between Trump’s orders, Canada’s military mandate, Canadian law, and public opinion.
Continue reading “Some Canadian military personnel are subject to Trump’s orders [Updated]”
Former NATO boss and former Danish Prime Minister Anders Rasmussen said on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, that Trump’s insistence that Greenland should become part of the US represented the biggest challenge to NATO since its establishment in 1949.
“It’s really the future of NATO that is at stake,” said Rasmussen, who offers a unique perspective on the crisis as a former leader of both Denmark – from 2001 to 2009 – and NATO, where he served as secretary general from 2009 to 2014.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Mark Carney urged middle powers to unite against coercion from aggressive superpowers, warning “compliance will not buy safety” in a world where the rules-based international order has collapsed.
According to a survey by public opinion pollster Research Co., released Monday January 19, 2026, few Americans share Trump’s expansionist aspirations.
Two thirds of Americans (66%) want Canada to remain an independent nation, while 10% would “prefer” Canada become a US territory and 7% would declare it the 51st State.
The results are similar when Americans ponder Mexico, with just over two thirds (67%) maintaining the status quo of Mexico as an independent nation and fewer opting for the country to become a US territory (10%) or an American state (5%).
EU officials and leaders are getting behind the idea, while lawmakers are drafting legal options.
“We lack a proper united leadership platform to discuss the most important European defense issues,” EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius said last week. “It’s now an urgent task to turn this idea into reality.”
Sergey Lagodinsky, a German European Parliament lawmaker and vice president of the Greens group, is proposing a council gathering the leaders of Europe’s big six — Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and the U.K. — alongside two rotating seats for smaller countries and the European Parliament president.
Continue reading “Europe is again considering setting up the equivalent of a UN Security Council”
Trump’s text message on Sunday, January 18, 2026, to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, stating he no longer feels “an obligation to think purely of peace” after he failed to win Norway’s Nobel Peace Prize, was confirmed by Prime Minister Støre.
Trump questioned Denmark’s claim to Greenland and said he would put American interests first. “The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland,” Trump wrote.