i am baffled by the greenland strategy. what chapter of "art of the deal" is this from? increasing the US security presence in exchange for some sort of guarantee to exclude China and Russia makes a lot of sense, and in today's climate i'm sure even the Europeans would agree. but what is accomplished by so petulantly alienating Western allies during a time where Trump is so starved for support both domestically and internationally? i mean FFS canada just kowtowed to emperor Xi last week on EVs thanks to trump's bullying. why is he following that up with a double-down on publicly shaming/bullying the europeans into doing something major that they would obviously despise doing for a soon-to-be lame duck president? somebody makes it make sense.
TLDR: Canada and Europe are "allies" on paper, but they're more like petulant children who bite the hand that feeds.
Trump literally called out the Germans in 2016 for their dependence on Russian gas and oil, to which the German delegation was laughing. That clip aged poorly for the Germans, yet that never stopped German leadership from going full speed ahead with the NordStream pipelines, let alone dismantling their nuclear infrastructure and going all-in on renewables offset by Russian gas and oil. France is hardly any better now that they're the ones in control of the EU; the French will gleefully mock Americans for the shitshow that the 2024 election was while Macron gets shit thrown at him and garbage piles up because of the looming pension crisis and overall decline in French QOL since Macron took power in 2015.
The EU as a bloc is fundamentally incapable of aligning itself on any given matter without a common enemy, beyond vague notions of authoritarianism and censorship. Their defences are directly subsidised by America, obviously Americans are always willing to join Europeans online to mock the dog and pony show that American politics tends to devolve into, but EU leadership gets indignant whenever you mock their institutions instead of focusing on how "bad" American ones are. EU leadership doesn't like getting called out on their hypocrisies, contradictions, and failures to live up to their end of the bargain.
Canada has a huge anti-American reactionary bent in their domestic politics. Even under sympathetic liberal-aligned presidents like Obama and Biden, the big thing that defined Canadian politics was "how can we differentiate ourselves from America?" regardless of how badly they fuck over Canadian citizens on the ground. What Canadian leadership forgets, or often wilfully ignores, is how their decisions for international relations ultimately have a downstream impact on America. NAFTA and the USMCA are theoretically meant to promote frictionless trade between the USA, Canada, and Mexico, but what often happens is that Chinese goods end up on American shores by using Canada and Mexico as springboards for origin washing. Trade enforcement has improved dramatically in Mexico, but not necessarily Canada. Riddle me this: how the hell is puerh or ashwagandha tea a product of Canada when puerh is Chinese, ashwagandha is Indian, and the entire North American continent is
hostile to tea growth?
What's darkly amusing is that "Canada" as we think of it didn't actually exist until 1867 when all the territories were federated by the Crown, and even then, Canada remained a hideously poor rural backwater for centuries post-American Revolution. It wasn't until the post-WW2 period where Canada modernised, gained "independence" (despite still pleading fealty to the Crown), and laid down all its modern infrastructure... explicitly mimicking American paradigms in the process. Canadian history textbooks are more interested in self-flagellating over crimes committed against First Nation peoples and extolling how they're "different" from America, despite that differentiation literally being the reason why Canada stagnated and lived in poverty for a few centuries and their overall QOL increasing dramatically once they started aping on American paradigms.
Canada nowadays is a living example of how oppositional defiance to America at all costs ain't a good thing in the slightest.
- The USA under Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump hates migrants and deports them? Well guess what? We're gonna lower all the barriers for immigration to Canada and allow Han Chinese and ethnic Punjabis to flood Canada regardless of the long-term economic and social consequences to the average Canadian citizen. The real estate crisis in America, for all its faults, is nowhere near as dysfunctional as Canada's because half of Toronto and Vancouver is now owned by either Han Chinese or ethnic Punjabis buying out property and businesses.
- The USA under Trump 45, Biden, and Trump 47 is playing hardball with China? Well guess what? We're gonna butter up General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Chairman of the People's Liberation Army, and President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, and only play ball with America when Washington DC threatens us with economic blowback if we don't fall in line. Yeah, they had the Huawei lady under house arrest, but that didn't stop them from playing nicely with China in other respects while the Chinese held Canadian political prisoners in retaliation under far worse conditions.
- The USA's healthcare system is so fundamentally awful that Canada decided "we're gonna make our healthcare system single payer, but then also incentivise MAID as a means of funnelling poor people who otherwise drain resources into assisted suicide... and still subsidise the healthcare of migrants that we care about more than the average Canadian citizen."
I genuinely could go on and on and on, but it's ultimately self-demonstrating at this point. If Canada and the EU are our "allies," then I dread to imagine what our "enemies" act like.
