“We’re not just waiting around to see what happens,” said Mich González of the Southeast Dignity Not Detention coalition in New Orleans as they prepare to challenge ICE deportation raids in their communities.
“We’re talking to our brothers and sisters that organized in Los Angeles, that organized in Chicago, that are organizing and continuing to protect each other in North Carolina, and we’re taking all their lessons,” said González
Thousands of miles away, Chief Marilyn Slett of the Haíɫzaqv Nation and secretary-treasurer of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs declares: “We will not stand by while the Carney government and Alberta attempt to bulldoze our rights and disregard the catastrophic risks of a spill in the corporate profit interests of the global fossil fuel industry.”
On both sides of the border, resistance is growing to extreme capitalist agendas most recently articulated in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy 2025 (NSS2025). The US report is causing Canadian elites to howl in protest yet they fail to acknowledge that the Carney agenda for Canada closely aligns with that of Trump.
The emerging lines of struggle offer tremendous opportunities to build on intersectional local and global solidarities that the Palestine support movement has come to represent.
National Security Strategy 2025
U.S. administrations issue National Security Strategies (NSS) from time to time to clarify their foreign policy and military goals. The Trump administration’s 2017 NSS report named China and Russia as the main threats to U.S. national security, as did Biden’s 2022 NSS.
NSS2025, released this month, is a departure from previous reports. It avoids directly naming China and Russia as threats but instead broadcasts an overtly racist and imperial agenda to resuscitate U.S. leadership over global capitalism.
Immigration/Migration
NSS 2025 identifies as a top priority ending what it calls the “era of mass migration.”
It states: “Throughout history, sovereign nations prohibited uncontrolled migration and granted citizenship only rarely to foreigners, who also had to meet demanding criteria. The West’s experience over the past decades vindicates this enduring wisdom. In countries throughout the world, mass migration has strained domestic resources, increased violence and other crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted labor markets, and undermined national security. The era of mass migration must end.”
That vision is behind the ICE raids targeting racialized communities in the U.S. In addition, the U.S. administration has implemented a travel ban and restrictions against peoples of 19 countries including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It has also added restrictions against people from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.
In the wake of the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC, the Trump regime is reviewing all applications for green cards, citizenship, and asylum for peoples of these same countries. Most recently, the Trump administration halted processing of all asylum claims.
NSS2025 also points to how the administration is “rooting out so-called “DEI” and other discriminatory and anti-competitive practices that degrade our institutions and hold us back.”
That the misogynistic Trump has used his power as president to roll back the gains of the feminist and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities comes as no surprise. And though DEI programs have been criticized as a weak substitute for anti-racist programs, most racialized people understand what Trump is up to.
“It’s funny how the Trump administration has taken drastic strides to cut all DEI initiatives but have gone out of their way to provide a ‘better path’ for white South Africans. It’s just a reminder of how people of any color other than white, mean absolutely nothing to this country,” as one Black American respondent put it in an informal Buzzfeed poll.
NSS2025 is a reactionary call to return to the overtly racist and patriarchal era that imposed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, anti-Black “Jim Crow” legislation, and a host of other discriminatory measures. As such it is provoking a major mobilization on the part of racialized communities and many others in the U.S. that Canadian mainstream media largely fails to report.
The Americas: The Monroe Doctrine
NSS 2025 redefines U.S. global priorities with a shocking reassertion of a racist doctrine to dominate the Americas. It states the U.S. will “reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”
The U.S. will deny outside forces the potential to “position forces” or control strategic assets in the hemisphere, it asserts. This will require repositioning the US military and require the use of “lethal force to replace the failed law enforcement-only strategy”. This, the report continues, will assist in securing “critical supply chains,” and reducing ‘non-hemispheric competitors” in the region.
As described by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 has been used “to justify scores of invasions, interventions, and regime changes in the Americas.”
A recent Counterpunch article explains how the Munroe Doctrine justified the U.S. waging war against Spain in 1898 leading to U.S. colonization of Hawai’i and the Philippines, and how the U.S. carved out military bases in Cuba (Guantanamo) and economically occupied the island, leading to the Cuban revolution of 1959 led by Fidel Castro.
In Guatemala, the U.S. sponsored a coup to overthrow the progressive government of Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to ensure that the Boston-based United Fruit Company could continue to dominate the country.
In Chile, when the socialist Salvador Allende won the presidency in 1970, the U.S. government conducted a vicious campaign to undermine the regime. Allende introduced progressive reforms and aimed to reclaim the mining industry dominated by companies such as the Anaconda mines.
The U.S. intervened continuously in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and elsewhere and illegally invaded Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989). Today, it is conducting preparations for a similar invasion of Venezuela, as described in a recent article in Truthout. So what is new we might ask?
The Trump administration is baldly using a 200-year-old expansionist doctrine to justify his actions, even advancing it as a Trump ‘corollary’ that closely resembles that of an earlier U.S. president, Theodore Roosevelt who, in 1904, stated that the U.S. as a “civilized nation” had the right to exercise “international police power” in the region.
In resurrecting and publicly making this doctrine his own, the Trump administration is in effect declaring a brazen and aggressive imperial agenda that, as in the past, largely targets the Indigenous population of the Americas. Underpinning this racist agenda is the main goal of securing the critical minerals and resources of the region for American capital.
Europe
According to NSS2025, Europe has not only seen a declining share in global GDP but “this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” Over-regulation, migration, censorship, ‘cratering birthrates,’ have led to the “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” states the report. This has translated into an inability to deal properly with Russia and the war in Ukraine. The report projects that “within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”
Such baldly racist concerns reflect historic nostalgia on the part of white, settler colonial America that, states the plan, is “understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent—and, of course, to Britain and Ireland.” They are “strategically and culturally vital to the United States, and U.S. diplomacy should stand up for “unapologetic celebrations of European nations’ individual character and history.” The “growing influence of patriotic European parties” is cause for great optimism,” it concludes.
Trump’s main gripe with Europe is the fact that the European Union’s example of cross-border cooperation undermines his static view of the single nation-state being the standard in the world. Furthermore, his racist assertion that certain European states might become ‘non-European’ because of migration is basically a call for a ‘white Europe forever.’ That is largely why he wants to end the Russia-Ukraine war, and promotes nationalist, authoritarian regimes that will welcome American capital.
The Middle East
In the Middle East, NSS2025 suggests that this region will recede in importance because the U.S. will no longer be dependent on imported oil. Trump’s “successful revitalization of our alliances in the Gulf, with other Arab partners, and with Israel” will be the basis for its ongoing intervention in that region, states the report. The plan projects the expansion of the Abraham Accords while aspiring for the region to become a “source and destination” of international investment and industrialization including nuclear energy, AI, and defense technologies.
“America will always have core interests in ensuring that Gulf energy supplies do not fall into the hands of an outright enemy, that the Strait of Hormuz remain open, that the Red Sea remain navigable, that the region not be an incubator or exporter of terror against American interests or the American homeland, and that Israel remain secure,” concludes the report.
Trump’s aspirations for stable conditions to allow the U.S., rich Gulf States, and Israel to collaborate in capitalist expansion are anchored in the assumption that Palestinian resistance can be suppressed. Indeed, the continuing repression against Palestinians and their allies globally is part of the Trump agenda. The erasure of Palestine is a delusion rooted in anti-Palestinian/anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism that has long characterized the Trump regimes, past and present. Palestinian resistance will continue and the global solidarity movement will persist until Palestine realizes its right to self-determination.
Africa
Having resisted imperialism for over five centuries, Africa and its peoples are essentially reduced to an afterthought in NSS2025.
“The United States should transition from an aid-focused relationship with Africa to a trade- and investment-focused relationship, favoring partnerships with capable, reliable states committed to opening their markets to U.S. goods and services,” the report reads.
The plan again focuses on capitalist expansion, targeting energy and critical mineral development as priorities.
What is in effect an erasure of Africa is related to Trump’s racist view of the world.
In Pennsylvania recently, Trump recalled what he told senators in a closed-door session: “And I say: Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden – just a few – let us have a few. From Denmark – do you mind sending us a few people? Send us some nice people, do you mind? But we always take people from Somalia. Places that are a disaster, right? Filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.”
The Trump administration has not only cut the U.S. Agency for International Development, it also refused to attend the G-20 meeting chaired by South Africa in November.
South Africa has incurred the wrath of the U.S. administration because of it successfully brought the accusation that Israel was committing genocide in Palestine to the International Court of Justice. Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state, criticized the theme for the G-20, “Solidarity, equality, sustainability” declaring they meant “DEI and climate change” and were anti-American. As revealed in this news clip, Rubio has vowed to ban South Africa from the G-20 summit that will take place in the U.S. next year.
To summarize, NSS2025 is remarkably transparent and helps understand the Trump administration’s evolving strategy:
1) Resuscitate U.S. economic power and leadership over global capitalism.
2) Invoke racist ideology to appeal to his base, to justify his agenda, and to divide and rule.
3) Resort to unilateral economic, political, and military measures (including illegal use of lethal force) to whip other states into line. In the end, this strategy is geared towards taking on China and its emerging influence in the world.
The China paradox
NSS2025 qualifies the Indo-Pacific as the second priority region after the Americas and the section is titled, “Asia: Win the Economic Future, Prevent Military Confrontation.”
The plan largely eliminates most of Asia and, to summarize, defines Trump goals to:
1) “Rebalance America’s economic relationship with China, prioritizing reciprocity and fairness to restore American economic independence.”
2) “Harden and strengthen our military presence in the Western Pacific.”
3) Have allies increase their military spending and provide the U.S. military greater access to ports and facilities in the region.
Unlike previous NSS reports, NSS2025 does not directly describe China as a threat to U.S. national security though it does outline a host of measures including “predatory, state-directed subsidies and industrial strategies,” intellectual property theft, cultural subversion, etc., while not ascribing them to China specifically.
At the same time, the report defines China economically as a “near-peer” and even offers this: “China’s state-led and state-backed companies excel in building physical and digital infrastructure, and China has recycled perhaps $1.3 trillion of its trade surpluses into loans to its trading partners.”
The strategy outlined suggests the U.S. hopes to reinforce its military capacities in the region by obliging Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and others to provide greater military and financial assistance in order to assure US military superiority in the region with the focus on the South China Sea, a major sea lane, and Taiwan. The report asserts the U.S. “does not support any
unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait,” with its military superiority “deterring a conflict over Taiwan.”
For the moment, the Trump administration seems intent on increasing its military profile in the region to leverage a favourable economic trade and investment deal with China. As the report itself titles one subsection, “Economics: The Ultimate Stakes.” In other words, Trump views the future as one in which: “American deterrence opens up space for more disciplined economic action, while more disciplined economic action leads to greater American resources to sustain deterrence in the long term.”
The Trump agenda as articulated in NSS2025 is extremely dangerous. Its goal is to strengthen extractive capitalism globally by resorting to a strong-arm, patriarchal military model to assure U.S. control. Intrinsically exploitative, misogynistic, and racist, it can only bring the world closer to the brink, exacerbating an already accelerating global arms race as well as deepening the environmental catastrophe already upon us. However, the agenda is already eliciting mass resistance in the United States and could prove Trump’s future undoing.
Canada and the Trump agenda
NSS2025 is confusing and disturbing to Canada’s elites.
The Globe and Mail issued a special Sunday editorial in which it mourns the fact that the: “Western world is being torn away from a U.S.-led global mission of pursing peace and greater prosperity for all through free trade, foreign aid and efforts to spread democratic values…,” and suggests that the U.S. is making a turn towards “isolationism over one of international co-operation.”
A recent commentary in the Hill Times in response to the report suggests that Mark Carney’s Liberal government is trying to walk ‘a middle-ground’ – fighting climate change while avoiding stepping on Trump’s toes.
Neither capture what NSS2025 actually represents, nor do they demonstrate how Canada’s longstanding continental affinity with the U.S. persists as Mark Carney adopts a business agenda and sidles up to Trump. Carney may talk about ‘elbows up’ but he is making choices that largely fit within and enhance Trump’s global and hemispheric agendas to reinforce global capital at the expense of working people.
Carney’s economic centre-piece has been the creation of a Major Projects Office to fast-track energy and mineral extraction projects and make Canada an ‘energy superpower.’ While couched as a response to Donald Trump, the strategy dovetails with Trump’s plans to promote US capitalist expansion at the expense of the environment.
Take, for example, Carney’s latest pet project, the Ksi Lisims LNG plant to be built on the north coast of B.C. As described recently, the project was initially touted as an Indigenous-owned enterprise, but the project is in fact wholly-owned by an American transnational corporation, Western LNG. Behind Western LNG is the huge energy transnational Blackstone, run by Stephen Schwarzman, who provided close to $40 million for Trump’s election campaign, and is a major supporter of Israel’s genocidal war against Palestine.
In addition, Carney recently signed an Memorandum of Understanding with Alberta. As explained by one commentator, the deal will see Ottawa relax federal environmental regulations and support a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific in return for some limited carbon pricing by Alberta.
Carney’s initiatives have provoked widespread resistance which includes many First Nations, environmental organizations such the Suzuki Foundation and Dogwood B.C., and the Green Party of B.C.. It has also obliged Steven Guilbeault, a Quebec lieutenant for Carney and well-known environmentalist to resign from the Carney cabinet.
Carney’s agenda reflects the interests of groups such as the Business Council of Canada (BCC) whose plans for “North American Energy Security” align closely with the NSS2025 and perpetuates Canada’s continental integration with the U.S. This has been the Liberal agenda since the era of Lester Pearson.
Carney recently decided to have Mark Wiseman replace Kirsten Hillman as ambassador in Washington and head up trade talks with the Trump administration.
Wiseman is a major player in the world of finance capital – former chair of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, CEO of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and one a major figure at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. His appointment reflects Carney’s determination to work with Trump to reinforce finance capital globally, repudiate the need for drastic environmental action, while attacking working people through cuts in the public service.
In addition, Carney has already agreed to provide billions to the Canadian military to meet Trump’s five per cent NATO dictum, a position also promoted by the BCC. Despite recent debates about diversifying military equipment purchasing, Canada’s military is wholly integrated with the U.S. through NORAD and NATO. Furthermore, Canada’s military posture in the Asia-Pacific is currently completely aligned with that of the U.S.
Finally, Canada is severely restricting immigration, dramatically limiting foreign students’ access to Canadian educational institutions, and putting asylum seekers and migrants at risk. Bills C-2 and C-12, currently before parliament, represent major concessions to Trump’s agenda, and have come under fire from a range of critics ranging from Harsha Walia, the Canadian Council for Refugees, and Amnesty International.
Though cloaked in Canadian garb, Carney’s statement this fall is eerily close to Trump’s own MAGA pronouncements: “The world is increasingly dangerous and divided, and as Canadians, we must look out for ourselves. That is why Canada’s new government is relentlessly focused on protecting our border, our country, and our way of life. We’re securing our sovereignty, combatting crime, and building safer communities. Together, we are building Canada strong.”
