The United States has released the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy. Normally, a new administration releases its program about a year into its term, and as Janice Gross Stein explained on The Hub this week, it’s a detailed, highly collaborative document prepared over months by experts in global affairs, diplomacy, security, and defense. 

This one, she said, reads like about five people wrote it up in a week. 

It is true, one generally feels dread when settling in to read a new National Security Strategy. So many technical terms and complex, layered considerations, balancing multi-lateral trade and security portfolios, issues of pressing global concern, such as climate change, and the interests and involvements of other countries. 

But not this one. It is clarifying. And simplifying. Climate change, for example, is not a thing. “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.” And the only interests that matter are American ones. The “strategy” part is “America First.”

There is lots to interest any reader in this document — the dismissal of “elites” — except oligarchical ones — the complaints about Europe’s losing its (white) “civilization,” the strange emptiness of its idea of a new “golden age” for America, and the way a contradictory economic strategy is on full display — tariffs, to give just one example, are not ushering in prosperity now and they never will. 

But my concern here is in the document’s treatment of Canada.

The Strategy divides the world into three great powers, or Hemispheres. We no longer live in North America, we live in the Western Hemisphere, which is owned by America. Russia owns the Northern Hemisphere. And China, last but not least, gets the Asian Hemisphere. 

Russia and China get to do whatever they want in their Hemispheres if America gets to run the Western Hemisphere. 

Capiche?

The policy announces that the United States is leaving behind the rules-based international order established in the wake of WWII: “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.”

Instead, it prefers the nineteenth century. The one that ended in WWI. 

“After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the [1823] Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere, and to protect our homeland and our access to key geographies throughout the region. We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere. This “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine is a common-sense and potent restoration of American power and priorities, consistent with American security interests.”

In the Western Hemisphere, Canada and the South American countries are vassal states, there to serve American interests. The consequences are ominous. 

First, Canada will be “enlisted.” This means drafted; readers should at this point be thinking in military terms.

“Our goals for the Western Hemisphere can be summarized as ‘Enlist and Expand’. We will enlist established friends in the Hemisphere to control migration, stop drug flows, and strengthen stability and security on land and sea.”

Canada has already done a great job pretending it is the source of the fentanyl crisis and strengthening an already secure border. Now it must beef up its military forces and increase the military presence in the Arctic. Not to serve its own interests, but to serve America’s.

“We must re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life. This will require expanding American access to critical minerals and materials while countering predatory economic practices.”

We’ve all heard about our predatory trade imbalance and dairy subsidies. Now the United States will use trade “negotiations” to gain access to Canada’s natural resources — the minerals critical for American AI chips. It calls this “commercial diplomacy.” 

It will assert control over the Northwest Passage the way it has the Panama Canal. There are threats should Canada think it can turn to other trading partners, and about mandatory defense procurements. 

“We want other nations to see us as their partner of first choice, and we will (through various means) discourage their collaboration with others.” Yes, it really says this.

One stark paragraph stands out: 

“The United States must be preeminent in the Western Hemisphere as a condition of our security and prosperity—a condition that allows us to assert ourselves confidently where and when we need to in the region. The terms of our alliances, and the terms upon which we provide any kind of aid, must be contingent on winding down adversarial outside influence—from control of military installations, ports, and key infrastructure to the purchase of strategic assets broadly defined.”

Meanwhile, I do not think it is a coincidence that Canada’s Department of National Defence is developing plans for a Citizens’ Army of 300,000 reservists. 

Last week, the CBC reported a “massive new mobilization by Canada’s military” of hundreds of thousands of lightly trained “citizen soldiers.” Defense reporter Murray Brewster explained that Canada has not had a mobilization plan since the end of the Cold War and “is starting from square one” in terms of drawing up plans for readiness in case of “a major emergency or a major catastrophe.” Uniforms, weapons, and equipment all need to be secured.

Right now, the military consists of 68,000 soldiers and 30,000 reservists. It wants to boost its regular ranks to 85,000 and its reserves to 100,000. The Citizens’ Army would offer a supplemental military force to be mobilized in case of disaster. At the moment, this is being politely imagined as forest fires.