On April 2 — just before the U.S. announced sweeping new tariffs on much of the world — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi concluded a three-day visit to Moscow, where he met with his counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The two sides discussed the Russia-Ukraine war and other security flashpoints, including Iran’s nuclear program and the Korean...
United States President Donald Trump is mashing up the global order. I have a theory.Last week, Trump imposed so-called “reciprocal” tariffs on American trading partners. His actions sent markets plunging, investment funds devaluing, and panic rising. There are no rules for the new global economic regime.
A just-released annual report on the global state of democracy makes for depressing reading. But what's even more depressing is what might appear in next year's edition. Or rather, what might not appear in the 2026 volume: an old democracy, by some measures the world's oldest; a superpower that long circled the globe professing to spread freedom. "If it continues...
I have just two words for U.S. President Donald Trump: Tariff off. How bad is his crazed trade war? Just a day after imposing illegal and punishing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, Captain Chaos has had to revisit the issue. In just one day. That’s because his belligerent and unscrupulous policy aimed at America’s biggest trading partners and most faithful...
We’ve all heard it, and for a while, it was tempting to believe. No matter how nutty US President Donald Trump’s statements or actions are, there is a reason. He’s a business guy. He makes deals. He might be rude, crude, a little unhinged, but he has a plan. He’s smart. He knows what he’s doing. Just wait. You’ll see...
Does Donald Trump’s revolutionary start make the grade? On Tuesday, America once again celebrated the great presidential tradition called “marking your own homework,” also known as the Joint Session of Congress address. You didn’t need to sit through all 99 minutes of Trump’s peroration to know that he gave himself an A++ on his first six weeks in office...
When the history of what could be a widening war in Europe is written, it will be interesting to see if it will be recorded how United States Vice-President J.D. Vance led his boss into an explosive, epoch-making verbal clash with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Feb. 28. Engaged in a war for survival against a Russian invasion propelled by...
King Donald and his band of enabling Banana Republicans have hit a new low. With the ceasefire in Gaza hanging by a thread, U.S. President Donald Trump posted a glitzy video on “Truth” Social complete with a catchy song. The AI-generated video depicted the war-torn region after a makeover—a kind of Las Vegas on the Mediterranean. There was even a...
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer rallied his European and NATO counterparts Sunday to shore up their borders and throw their full weight behind Ukraine as he announced outlines of a plan to end Russia's war. "Every nation must contribute to that in the best way that it can, bringing different capabilities and support to the table, but all taking responsibility...
It is usually the other way around, given that America styles itself as the leader of the Free World. Instead, we have a convicted felon and an accused war criminal joining forces against a democracy.
It's obvious that the goal of this tyrannous Trump administration is to break government and democracy. There won’t be any 'going back.' We need to do the best we can to move beyond the frozen horror, and get to doing the work to protect democracy here and abroad with all allies we can find.
LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLEU.S. President Donald Trump is plunging the world into chaos.While a certain amount of turmoil was expected upon his election, the extent and speed at which he is upending geopolitical norms is staggering. And nowhere is anyone feeling the impact of his shocking and disgraceful pivots in American foreign policy more than in Europe.
On Day One of the second term of his presidency Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” He then doubled down on efforts to do exactly the opposite. In the four and a half weeks since that order, Trump and his allies have waged a campaign of what can only be described...
The shocking US pivot to Russia has sent the world through the political looking glass and into the upside-down era of Trumpland. Is the US abandoning its historic allies in NATO, Europe, and Canada in favor of … Russia?
I have attended the Munich Security Conference (MSC) many times, first accompanying participating Canadian ministers during my tenure as ambassador to Germany, and more recently as a full participant. What began as the “Internationale Wehrkunde-Begegnung” (a mouthful even in German) in 1963 as a platform for Germany to engage with the United States and NATO allies in a Cold War...
The world’s wake-up call came at 3 a.m.In the early darkness on Saturday, Feb. 1, USAID was suddenly shut down. “This site can’t be reached,” read its homepage. The end of the great age of American soft power began.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday he isn’t ruling out deploying U.S. troops to support reconstruction of Gaza and he envisions “long-term” U.S. ownership of a redevelopment of the territory. “We’ll do what is necessary,” Trump said about the possibility of deploying troops to fill any security vacuum. “If it’s necessary, we’ll do that.”...
Last week, I explored Donald Trump’s ambition to make America the global leader in AI, along with his troubling comments about annexing Greenland and Canada. Trump’s territorial threats are now so frequent that everyone is asking: What is his endgame? The answer, I think, is closely tied to how AI is reshaping Trump’s vision for America—and the world...
With Donald Trump’s accession to power, a fact-free zone paralyzed by ego and propaganda, the U.S. has entered liar’s heaven and democracy’s hell.
A week into Trump 2.0 and Donald Trump already has Canada in an uproar. Getting out of this mess is going to take effort by all levels of government.It should start with removing our internal trade barriers. With Parliament prorogued and a lame-duck Trudeau government, the premiers are standing up to meet the Trump challenges.
Why did U.S. President Donald Trump wipe diversity, equity, and inclusion off the American government’s map? MAGA doesn’t want to talk about the accurate history of their country, they only want to talk about how great it is. Talking about their history of slavery, genocide against Indigenous Peoples—you know, the truth—gets in the way of feeling great and exceptional. Talking...
It happened in the blink of an eye.Seemingly overnight, the rules of the game — how decisions are reached at the heart of the American government — changed.
For those who were carefully listening, Nigel Farage had an interesting message in his speech at the “Stars and Stripes Union Jack” party three days before the inauguration. He told an audience of leading right-wing Brits, a GB News film crew and a plethora of Donald Trump supporters – including members of the incoming president’s trusted circle – that he...
U.S. President Donald Trump says Canadians would have “much better” health coverage if Canada became the 51st state.He made the remarks during a briefing in North Carolina.
On Tuesday, his first full day as President of the United States, Donald Trump took in a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral. It’s the traditional inauguration finale: a show of virtue, a nod to God. Trump sat there like a bored child, as if waiting to hear his name. He did. The Rev. Mariann Budde, Episcopal bishop of...
U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday the United States will be asking all member countries of NATO — which includes Canada — to increase military spending to 5 per cent of annual economic output. Such a requirement of members of the western military alliance would require a steep increase in budgetary expenditures for Canada. Canada is still a laggard in...
Danish politician Anders Vistisen did not hold back when he issued a public message to U.S. President Donald Trump this week over his pitch to make Greenland part of the United States. “Dear President Trump, listen very carefully,” Vistisen said on Tuesday in European Parliament. “Greenland has been part of the Danish kingdom for 800 years. It’s an integrated part...
President Donald Trump delivered two inaugural addresses on Monday; the formal one in the Capitol Rotunda, and the compensatory “real” one to loyalists afterward in Emancipation Hall — laced with falsehoods, boasts, and nationalist bravado. Both set out his second-term intentions. That Trump’s inauguration unfolded in the crime scene where, on January 6, 2021, a violent insurrection he was impeached...
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump threatened Tuesday to use "economic force" to make Canada the 51st state and doubled down on his tariff threats as he criticized Canada's military spending and trade with the United States. "You get rid of that artificially drawn line and you take a look at what that looks like, and it would also be much better...
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday continued to threaten significant tariffs and said he would be willing to use "economic force," rather than military force, to join Canada and the United States together.Trump made the remarks at a news conference in Florida.
“Syria is not our problem.” So declared the world’s biggest problem, Donald Trump, seven years ago. “This is not our fight,” he reiterated last week, after Syria’s fourteen-year civil war had changed the course of world history. On Sunday, a Syrian dynasty’s half-century murderous rule ended when the latest, and hopefully last, Assad dictator fled to Russia. Bashar al-Assad’s new...
Let’s do a quick detour on that just to get some sense of proportionality: How much is $400 billion? It’s bigger than the nominal GDP of Musk’s birth country, South Africa, as well as countries like Belgium, Portugal, New Zealand, and Qatar (net worth and nominal GDP, of course, are not directly comparable measures but are used here to illustrated...
South Korea entered a sudden political crisis on December 3 when President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law — an unprecedented move for the mature liberal democracy. Although Yoon retracted martial law six hours later, following a unanimous rejection of the order by 190 members of the country’s National Assembly, the shockwaves continue to reverberate.
Joe Biden pardoned two turkeys in advance of Thanksgiving: good for “Peach” and “Blossom.” The president went from pardoning turkeys to pardoning his son, ahead of his sentencing on gun and tax convictions. This is bad for Hunter Biden, toxic to the rule of law in the United States, and catastrophic for the president in the dying days of his...
At last, an event the world’s humanists might celebrate. Finally, one of the world’s entrenched authoritarians has been defeated by a suppressed people. In 2011, when Bashar al-Assad crushed the peaceful democratic protests inspired by the Arab Spring, he did so ruthlessly, with extreme force. Dictators across the world, the military junta in Myanmar, Lukashenko in Belarus, the Chinese state...
As the world processes the end of the Assad regime and the departure of its brutal dynastic scion, Bashar al-Assad, for Moscow, Syrians in Syria and elsewhere, including Canada, are euphoric. Or, as Syrian exile and Oxford research fellow Ammar Azzouz writes in the Financial Times, capturing the theme of the day, Now Syria can Dream of a Future Again...
I must confess: my admiration for Donald Trump’s political skills grows with each passing day. Don’t confuse this with admiration for the man himself, his character or his policies. He’s had years to reveal himself as a vile manipulator willing to indulge in racism, authoritarianism, all those things, to serve his ends. He’s a threat to his own country and...
It will forever be a weird fact of American history that Joe Biden and the Democrats, having successfully defeated Donald Trump in an election, then treated him with a deference and respect that he never once granted them. They were cautious and careful about investigating his many alleged crimes, acting with near reluctance to acknowledge Trump’s flagrant disregard for the...
The long-term security of Canada and its allies hinges not only on the outcome of the war in Ukraine but also on the eventual democratization and decentralization of Russia. Vladimir Putin has made no secret of his ambitions for conquest, brazenly seeking to revive a Russian empire through the relentless conflicts he has inflicted upon his own nation. His neo-imperialist...
