Breathe
By Amy Glover Drake
In geopolitical terms, this year has gone by like 5 minutes...underwater, quickly and with much angst. The regime change implied by the arrival of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States means that everything we once understood about our neighbor's institutions, its democracy and the alliances forged at the end of World War II no longer apply. We turn the page, but to what exactly?
During the campaign Trump denied on several occasions that upon being elected his path forward would be the Project 2025, (an agenda prepared by the Heritage Foundation, a far-right think tank ). Now it is more than clear that it is Trump's playbook.
Today it is Make America Great Again (MAGA), the movement akin to Trump as leader, and not the Republican Party as such, that holds the reins in Washington, DC. And what is MAGA? A reactionary movement that has its eyes on the past; it longs for the post-war 1950s when the US had no global competition, when white people had no internal competition and African-Americans were second-class citizens (there was legal segregation between the races in the south of the US) and when sexual preferences were ignored.
In the last month we have observed that Trump, far from being merely a protectionist, views all U.S. foreign policy as a zero-sum game. "I threaten you, you do what I demand so that at the end of the day I win and you lose." In his mind there are no allies, only opponents.
This obviously implies a major challenge for both Mexico and Canada, both neighbors of the U.S. that have a history of trade integration also important under the treaty re-negotiated during Trump's first presidency. We currently live under the continuous threat of the U.S. applying tariffs to our exports. Living with the sword of Damocles in the back of our heads is not cool, but at least in this round, we are in good company: the rest of the world! Trump has attacked his best friends with singular glee, as long as he maintains his "bromance" with "Vlad"(ímir Putin). It's hard to understand the logic.
After scolding the European Union at home, Vice President J.D. Vance made it clear that the Europeans cannot count on the U.S. for shared security. As we say in my hometown, "you're on your own. That we don't have to wait to see if Trump is going to pull out of NATO (as he did in the case of the WHO, the Paris Agreements and the UN Human Rights Council); the purpose of this treaty - mutual and coordinated military protection among all signatories - has already been eviscerated.
