Taking a step back

So now, in this Year of Our Lord 2025, let's look at where are we at.

In Canada, by mid-March, we will have a new federal Liberal leader - I hope it will be Mark Carney - who will immediately need to deal with Trump attempting to crush us with tariffs. The new PM will be implementing tit-for-tat tariffs against America, and likely need to call a new session of Parliament to pass a package of CERB-type support programs for damaged industries across the country. At some time this spring -- later in March, maybe, or in April, or maybe even early June, Carney will call a federal election. And I hope the Liberals will win again, because if they don't Canada will be taking a giant step backwards.

In the United States, they already took their giant step backwards. By mid-March, they will be experiending a profound buyers remorse -- costs for food and gas and home insurance will skyrocket, and the government they took for granted will no longer be able to respond to natural disasters, airplane crashes, hospital closures, epidemics, and all the other things that go wrong for a nation of 300+ million people -- hell, they won't even be able to do ordinary stuff like manage the campgrounds in their National Parks! -- and all the while, Musk and his short-pants boys will gleefully continue to rampage around breaking things they don't understand and causing havoc and misery to public servants who don't deserve it. Not to mention the spreading chaos this summer as crops are unharvested, meat plants unstaffed, facilities uncleaned, restaurants close, and all the other jobs done by undocumented immigrants are abandoned.

In Europe, by mid-March, the Russia-Ukraine war will still be going on, and likewise, in the Middle East, by mid-March, the Hamas-Israel war will still be going on too. While Trump and Rubio and Vance and their ignorant crew of "special advisors" and "special envoys" boast about how they are going to fix everything any minute now, as they continue to diss and insult their friends and allies while they scurry around holding summits with every dictator they can find, the more tin-pot the better. Overall, 2025 is not going to be a productive year, though it may be memorable.

If the world was experiencing an overall "anti-incumbent" spasm in 2024, when so many countries were voting against their existing progressive governments, I expect we can conclude that impulse will definitely be over in 2025 -- the horrors of what I call "Trump 2: The Revenge Tour" will demonstrate to voters around the world why they should never never absolutely never even consider letting their own far-right-wing nut jobs get power.

Tonight's commentary:

Daniel W. Drezner / Drezner’s World

The Economic Consequences of the Trump

Notes from London, February 2025

... The Trump administration seems not only determined to wreck the current global order, but to derive some psychic glee from the process of doing so. The Washington Post’s Natalie Allison and Dan Diamond capture the Trump team’s utter disregard for the turmoil they have unleashed upon the world:

...Trump remains undeterred, his advisers say, by hand-wringing in Washington and critical news coverage of the initiatives, including the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a top target of an Elon Musk-led cost cutting commission, the U.S. DOGE Service. A White House official dismissed concerns about the cuts as a “media narrative.”

“We knew they were going to do this,” said the White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose internal discussions. “They get the one starving kid in Sudan that isn’t going to have a USAID bottle, and they make everything DOGE has done about the starving kid in Sudan.”….

... When you dismiss children dying as a direct result of your actions as a “media narrative,” that is a good sign that you are an undiagnosed sociopath.. ..

Charlie Angus / The Resistance

No Return To Normal

A Message To My Fellow Parliamentarians

...Even now, as Project 2025 shakes America to its core, there are those who say the storm will pass. That Trump only has two years. Then, the Democrats will win back control of the House. The rule of law will be restored. America, the decent will return.

Maybe.

But more and more, I fear that this is just one of those tales we tell ourselves because it is too hard to acknowledge what we know is really happening.

... In Canada, some leaders – the Prime Minister, Premier Fury, and Premier Eby – have been blunt regarding just how deadly and serious the Trump threat is. But despite these unprecedented statements, the political realm keeps dialing itself back to a false normal.

To be fair, there isn't a single political strategist or Comms person with any experience charting our way through these times. Canada hasn't faced a threat this serious since the 1930s. It’s okay to admit that none of us really know what to do now.

... Canada must undergo a massive rethink of our politics, economy, and international relations to meet the challenge in this new and darker world. To forge a new and independent path means breaking out of our partisan boxes and building a new national consensus. There is simply no other way because no one leader or party has the playbook.

For now, can we agree to put aside the well-worn tactics of improving the "message box" while trying to "frame" our opponents to score a slight bump in nightly polling?

Can we put on the table the possibility of a "Canadian parliament" – all parties working together to steer our nation through the coming months?

Naive? Absolutely.

But I have been 21 years in the political trenches in Ottawa and if I go out on something I’d rather it be for having naive hope that our best angels then trusting in gamesmanship.

This moment demands courage, unity and action, not complacency. Canadians are already leading the way. Their politicians need to be there with them.

And I think it was notable that Jaswant Singh was NOT one of the politicians listed by Angus as speaking up about Trump's threat to Canada. Angus doesn't sound like he is champing at the bit to vote down the Liberals and force an election that Poilievre might win, does he.

Black Cloud Six: Unscripted

The New World Disorder

Trump’s War on Allies and the Fight for Democracy

...There are signs that maybe, just maybe, the world is waking up. The Vance speech was met with a very strong reaction in Germany. France has seized the moment and become the obvious leader of Europe—at least for now. The UK has re-engaged, promising troops to guarantee Ukraine’s security. Pledges of defence support to Ukraine have continued unabated. The U.S. was sent a very clear message regarding its so-called peace talks with Putin.

Yet in the face of all this, Trump’s threats to Canada—arguably as serious as those facing Europe—have fallen off the radar. Europe and the UK are completely focused on their own security and appear to have little time to bring Canada into the fold. We may need to force our way in. This means making unambiguous statements in support of Ukraine and Europe as this crisis unfolds. It means ensuring that Europe knows we are interested in a closer defence and economic relationship—perhaps in a NATO without the United States. It means demanding a seat at the table when the fate of democracy is being discussed, especially as Canada is a founding NATO member and a staunch supporter of Ukraine.

In this environment, everything needs to move faster. Goals set for five years from now are so far in the future as to be irrelevant. We need to be direct and decisive, shedding some trappings of traditional Canadian “quiet” diplomacy. We should be finalizing a free trade agreement with the EU and UK. We should pursue mutual defence agreements with as many like-minded nations as possible. And we should be preparing for a NATO without the United States—one in which Canada is a full participant. Further, Canada should align itself with European statements regarding Ukraine....

The world has changed in the past three weeks—a change driven by a newly fascist, bullying United States led by a completely irrational and egocentric president. Yet we still have politicians across the democratic West who believe this is merely a disagreement over economics or that Trump can be reasoned with. Hopefully, the past few days have dispelled such Pollyanna thinking. The danger is real—perhaps acute—and the time to stand up and be counted is now. The security and well-being of millions of people, from the steppes of Ukraine to Vancouver Island, depend on it.

Wesley Wark’s National Security and Intelligence Newsletter

Now its Kellogg’s turn

No, not the breakfast cereal, but still soggy

Retired US General, Keith Kellogg, who was born just before D-Day, is Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine. Don’t be fooled by the vanished stars on his long-ago uniform. If you are looking for a professional military strategist, what you get is a Trump loyalist and an America First believer, through and through.... He took part in a [Munich security conference] roundtable discussion on “Peace through Strength: A Plan for Ukraine.”

At every turn he dodged direct questions from the moderator. Instead of saying whether or not Europe would be at the peace table for talks on Ukraine, he instead suggested Europe would have “input” in a three-way conversation between the warring parties and Donald Trump as mediator—god help us. Then he took up some air time explaining how Putin was afraid of Trump

...I think any objective observer of this roundtable would come to the conclusion that ex-General Kellogg was, by far, the least impressive person with a mic. That’s deeply worrying, given his role. The others on the Roundtable were the Minister for Foreign Affairs for Ukraine, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Poland, the Foreign Secretary from the UK, and the Minister of National Defence of Lithuania. All took a tougher line against Putin, all had a stronger message of support for Ukraine. The Lithuanian Defence Minister, Dovile Sakaliene, was stronger on the need for military “muscle” to confront Putin and his imperial ambitions than was Kellogg. The UK Foreign Secretary, David Lammy reminded the audience that it would be important to continue to advance Ukraine’s membership in NATO.

Towards the end of the audience Q and A, retired general Kellogg managed to dodge a question from a Romanian delegate about America’s support for far-right parties in Europe. He said it was Europe’s problem.

As for the sub-title of the roundtable, “A Plan for Ukraine,” well, there doesn’t seem to be one. As David Lammy said, “we are talking about talks about negotiations.” Kellogg reminded everyone that decisions on peace negotiations would be made by Trump. He’s just a Trump whisperer.

That’s reassuring. Not.

Phillips P. O'Brien / Phillips’s Newsletter

Weekend Update #120: The US Changes Sides?

Is this the week the post-1945 world ended?

...we are perilously close to the worse case scenario on Trump and Ukraine. It seems that those who were saying for a long time that Trump was a brilliant negotiator, that he would want to put Putin in his place, that he would get a good deal for Ukraine—all of it is being revealed as nonsense. Indeed, this was the week that Trump reached out to give Putin much of what the Russian dictator craved—asking nothing in return and before any formal negotiations started.

The European reaction seemed stunned—which is just as worrying. Look, this was a reasonably high percentage event and Europe should have been preparing some kind of response for over a year. However, European leaderships seems to have wilfully stuck their heads in the sand, and been living on hopes and dreams that Trump would be what he was not....

In the last 24 hours, there are signs that no matter how much they tried to create a Trump that didnt exist, and base their future security on such a non-existent figure, European leaders are waking up the fact that not only is the US abandoning Ukraine, but that the US represents a threat to the future of democracy and freedom in Europe.

I mean—its not hard to miss. What have European leaders seen in the last 72 hours?

-US policy makers saying Europeans will be excluded from talks about ending the most important war in Europe since World War II

-US policy makers saying a democratic European state (Ukraine) should cede territory to a dictatorial aggressive one (Russia) and at the same time get no security guarantees worthy of the name.

-US policy makers saying that European democracy as a while should become more alt-right.

-US policy makers reaching out to far-right political parties to support their efforts in vital elections.

-US policy makers saying that they are going to reduce US commitment to the security of Europe through NATO.

Taken together these constant blows seem to have led to at least a partial understanding that Europe might need, for the survival of its very freedoms....

...This is arguably the most important week in European history since 1991 or even 1945. It is conceivable that the NATO alliance is breaking down in front of our eyes. The US no longer sees itself as needing or wanting to exert much force to defend Europe and moreover, the US seems more eager to work with Putin than its traditional allies.

Its hard to say how this will work itself out. I have been thinking for a while now that the end of NATO might be a good thing for Europe, allowing Europeans to rebuild their own defenses, invest in their own high-tech defense industries, and defend their own democracies without being subverted by the USA. It wont be easy and it will require a great deal of investment—but it might be for the best.

...If the US is no longer interested in defending freedom and democracy, Europeans will have to do so—at least for themselves. I will mourn the end of the US-European alliance, as I think it was an excellent vehicle for security and prosperity on both sides of the Atlantic.

However, if it needs to go, so be it.

Dan Gardner / PastPresentFuture

"Union Now"

Why the international system was created and the madness of destroying it

... When Trump said Greenland was important for American national security so Denmark would have to hand it over, and he wouldn’t rule out taking Greenland by military force, he did something much worse than threaten an old friend and ally. He violated the system of laws and norms America had created precisely to stop such bullying behaviour. Instead, he behave no differently than Prussia in 1864, when it attacked Denmark to strip it of lands Prussia coveted.

Many other actions of Trump’s confirm this was no aberration. He clearly sees a future in which great powers possess zones of control within which they can act with impunity. If a power wishes to invade and strip its weaker neighbours of territory, it can and it will. There is no law. There is no international community. There is only power. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Donald Trump is tearing up the whole rules-based international system created after 1945, he is ignoring the catastrophic experience that inspired that system, and he is returning the world to the 19th century.

It’s impossible to overstate how foolish and dangerous that is.

Donald Trump is returning us to the era of great powers flexing muscles and taking land and jockeying for position with other great powers by forming alliances that create interlocking tensions. He is returning us to the era that exploded in August, 1914. Now, Trump is an incompetent man. Such a grand project would seem to be beyond him. But remember, this change does not require him to build, only destroy. And he’s shown he’s quite capable of that.

That said, if Trump has his way, there will still be a few differences between now and the world before the First World War. For one thing, the world is vastly more interconnected and interdependent today than it was. In 1914, it would take a week for an army to sail from New York to London but today even a 1970s-era intercontinental ballistic missile can fly from Moscow to New York in about 30 minutes, while new hypersonic missiles are a hell of a lot faster. And of course we have lots of nuclear warheads capable of incinerating cities in a blinding flash. In 1914, the world careened from assassination to catastrophe at what then felt like dizzying speed, but the tempo today is orders of magnitude faster. Judgements will have to be made in a snap. And the world could race from spark to conflagration — from Gavrilo Princip squeezing the trigger to Germans entering Belgium — in hours. Maybe minutes.

When annihilation takes only the turn of a key, there is no time to think.

Imagine a 19th century contest between great powers who feel themselves unconstrained by law or norms or institutions — who do not even fear becoming pariahs within the international community — except this contest is happening in the tightly interconnected, interdependent, digital-and-light-speed 21st century. How can that not end in a catastrophe that dwarfs the Second World War? Maybe sooner. Maybe later. But how can it not eventually produce a horror beyond imagining?

I don’t have an answer to that question. And that terrifies me....

 

We are nearing a precipice.

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— George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) February 15, 2025 at 7:36 PM