Front Burner - Trump's vision for a new world order

Episode Date: December 12, 2025

Every U.S. president releases a national security strategy document about a year into their term, but few have made as big a splash as Donald Trump's, earlier this month.The document formally spells out much of what we've come to expect from Trump's approach to foreign policy in his second term: political relationships are transactional, and American interests take priority above all else. The document also takes particular aim at Europe, and pledges explicit support for right-wing movements abroad.Bob Rae was, until recently, Canada's ambassador to the UN, following decades of political office including premier of Ontario. He reads between the document's lines and explains what it means for Canada — and asks how much of it is actually worth taking seriously.

Hey Canada. It's me, Gavin Crawford, host of Because News. Each week, I put comedians on the spot with a pop quiz about the headlines. This week, we're talking about the monster of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith's own making, Wayne Gretzky's incredible pronunciation skills, and the one kind of Christmas toy experts are all calling dangerous. Miguel Revis, Emma Hunter, and Gene Yune are here, so laugh along as we try to make sense of the headlines. Follow Because News on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts for free. This is a CBC podcast. Hi, everyone. I'm Jamie Poisson. So late last week, the White House release its national security strategy. This is something presidents usually do once a term, and the point of it is generally to signal America's global priorities. In many ways, the 33-page document codifies and puts in one place what we have all witnessed during Trump to.

It lays at a world in which America dominates the Western Hemisphere. Global alliances and human rights take a backseat. The language goes easy on Russia and China and hard on Europe. Allies and alliances are transactional. Climate is silent. However, all of this doesn't quite capture just how tectonic the she is. shift is. Experts, diplomats, and world leaders have said that it is the biggest rupture in American global posture in decades. And for Canada, honestly, reading it, I kept wondering whether

the strategy effectively casts us as a kind of vassal state. So this is what I'd like to talk about today with Bob Ray. He was until very recently the Canadian ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Ray, thank you so much for coming on to Front Burner. It's a real pleasure to have you. Thank you very much. It would be good to be with you. It's a pleasure. I'd be curious to hear if there was anything in this strategy that actually surprised you, or did it just confirm what we already know from this administration? I think it's much more of a confirmation than a surprise. I really think that anybody who's surprised by what they read in this document,

has not been paying attention over the last six months, eight months. The fact is that we've been living in unprecedented times, and I think for a lot of people, that's been very hard to admit. But this document, I think, represents a confirmation of a desired direction. I mean, let's not forget that lots of people can have strategies, whether those strategies actually play out depends on what everybody else does. So I think to some extent we would make a mistake if we say, oh, no, this is the state of the world where, you know, we're done for. I don't read it that. I don't read it that way at all. It's as much of a wish list as that is a strategy, which is what makes it so weird.

because it's a document that doesn't take anybody else's point of view into account. And actually, if you're presenting a document that reflects a kind of balanced thinking about how things should work out, this isn't it. This is more, like I said, it's more, this is what we'd really like to see in the world. And you say, well, yeah, but that's not the way it's going to be. So I don't think people should lose hope as a result of this document. But I think it certainly is. the direction that the Trump administration and the president himself based on his opening letter, what he would like to do.

And I want to get into some of that with you today, you know, how the world might and could respond here, particularly Canada. But first, the strategy really does recast the Western hemisphere as this place where the U.S. must dominate and outside powers must be pushed out, right? It claims to be the Trump corollary of the Monroe Doctrine, which was the policy playbook that aimed to keep Europe out of the Western Hemisphere and then later a tool for U.S. intervention in Latin America. And do you see this as a Monroe Doctrine 2.0 type of document? Well, let's remember the Monroe Doctrine was declared over 200 years ago. So a lot has happened in the last 200 years. And I think it's important to stress that.

I mean, countries like Brazil, Mexico, mean, all of Latin America, the Caribbean have become independent and have become self-governing nations since the Monroe Doctrine was perpetrated. And the Monroe Doctrine was basically directed in Europe, particularly at Spain, saying, you know, time for you to go home. We're living in a very different world. And it isn't possible for the United States to tell every other country in the hemisphere what it's going to do. If you read the document literally, it basically means nobody from any other sphere of influence, whether it's Europe or Asia or wherever, can come and play a role in the economies of the countries of the Western Hemisphere. And the only show on the block should be the United States. Well, as I said before, that's an expression of disembarrassion. desire, let's pretend that the last 200 years have not happened and that the United States

is the only game in town right across the Americas. But the reality of life is that's not true. That's not the case. And saying it doesn't make it, wishing it doesn't make it. And so that's where I think we have to constantly be doing a reality check about what these aspirations really mean. So I would sort of just say to the document, I'd say, well, get with the program here. What exactly are you saying? But I mean, we are seeing these tangible concrete moves, right? We're seeing this administration ramp up military presence in the Caribbean. They're labeling the president of Venezuela on narco terrorists. They seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. We've just seized a tanker, a large tanker, very large.

largest one ever seized, actually, and other things are happening. The tanker was identified as a Venezuelan ship sanctioned by the U.S. for Iranian oil trading and, as the U.S. puts it, supporting foreign terrorist organizations. It was seized for a very good reason. How does that fit into this strategy that they put on paper here, where they see themselves as, you know, the only shop in town in the Western Hemisphere? Well, I mean, yes, you're describing what American policy is at the present time, under the Trump administration, in the first few months of the administration, as a long-term strategy, we'll see how that goes in terms of how tenable it is. Having said that, I do think that one of the things about the document that actually makes sense is that it's important to pay attention to the areas and the regions that are closest to us and to figure out what we're going to do to stabilize the region. And that doesn't lead me to say that the things that they're doing are necessarily going to produce that result.

And the other thing, I think many people have commented on it. The other thing that's really remarkable about the document, not in a good way, is that words like democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and in particular international law, ever appear in the document. So this is a document whose sort of intellectual foundations take us back to the 19, probably before the First World War. I mean, this is an administration that's full of impulse in every way. And it's important to distinguish between what's impulsive and what's consequential.

It's very well to say, I really want to do this or I really want to get at that problem right away. I want it to happen now. Those are all kind of impulsive statements. If you don't get out of my backyard, I'm going to hit you. But at some point, you then have to say, well, what are the consequences of that? How does that get sustained over time? I mean, this is the other part of it that I think is problematic is, if everything is a transaction, then nothing is about relationships. And that, I think, is a weakness in the document and a weakness in the whole strategy is that not everything in life is a deal.

Not everything is a transaction. Family life isn't just a transaction. I mean, lots of aspects of what we think about. but our moral are not about transactions. They're about relationships. Add a little curiosity into your routine with TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday. In less than 15 minutes a day,

you'll go beyond the headlines and learn about the big ideas shaping your future. Coming up, how AI will change. the way we communicate, how to be a better leader, and more. Listen to Ted Talks Daily, wherever you get your podcast. Let's talk about Canada specifically here. So, you know, it was hard for me not to come away with the sense that this document paints Canada as nothing more than like a vassal state, a country subject to the needs and whims of a more powerful country, not a partner in this Western hemisphere that they're dominating a country expected to fall in line and just like am i am i off base

there i don't think you're off base well i think you're a little off base but i don't think you're going to get picked off too quickly to use a baseball analogy since we've been watching so much baseball the last few months uh no i i think it's overstating things a bit this is a broad document that covers you know it it covers a whole range of ideas and and geographical areas and is it's highly simplistic. It doesn't take into account the realities of other countries and what they want. And from that point of view, it's very problematic. Is Canada part of that problem?

Yes, definitely. But we're not the only ones who have this problem. And I know that, you know, many people say Canada's alone. I don't actually think Canada's alone. I think Canada is together with a number of other countries expressing its disagreement. However, diplomatically, with the kind of the worldview that's being presented, not total disagreement, but just saying, wait a minute, you know, when you come to looking at Europe, what's in this document is just a confirmation of J.D. Vance's approach. Europe is at risk, I think, of creating, of engaging in civilizational suicide. They are unable to or unwilling too many countries to control their borders. They're not doing a good job, Europe, is not.

not doing a good job in many ways. They're not doing a good job. I want to ask you about that. I'm sure Canadians would have liked it if there'd been much more about us. But on the other hand, frankly, the fact that there wasn't that much about us is not necessarily a bad thing. I know we're in the middle of a tough negotiation and you don't necessarily want to do that in public. Fair. I mean, certainly who you didn't want to be in this document, I think, is Europe, which I want to get into a little bit.

more with you in a minute, but just like on the Canada front, the one example where we are specifically named, right? It's like illustrative because we're named as a country in a list of other countries that are just like expected to help curb China's trade surpluses with the West. But like at the same time, we're in this trade war with the United States. And Ottawa is saying that we need to go diversify our economic partners and find new ones, including in Asia, like China, for example. But the strategy from the U.S. is essentially saying, don't do that. We need to get China out of the Western Hemisphere. And so how boxed in does this leave Canada economically and diplomatically? Well, I mean, if we were to succumb to the document and succumb to

whatever desire somebody in the administration has on any given hour of the day, yeah, it would be bad. But we're not doing that. I mean, that's not. That's not how we conduct ourselves. The U.S. trade deficit with China right now is over a trillion dollars. So you sort of say to them, yeah, you've got a big problem. And what are you going to do to fix it? And how do you think you can do that without completely disrupting the global economy? But I think what Canada is saying is we are going to continue to pursue our national interest.

and we will, of course, take into account your own approaches, but it is part of a complicated discussion and negotiation. So the idea that you would just immediately succumbed, I mean, if you took seriously and literally the document as a whole, you'd say apart from two or three other countries like Russia and like China and a few others, everybody else is just a vassal state. And I think there would be disagreement with that among all those other states.

I know you've been kind of pulling on this stride throughout this conversation, but like just directly, why not take this document more literally? Because what this administration has taught us in the last year is that we should generally believe what they say, you know, and the vibe of this document and what we hear from these guys often is like if you don't fall in line, there will be consequences, right? And they are the much bigger player here. Yeah. I mean, I think I've said it's a confirmation of what America would like to have happen. And they've been saying all these things for the last several months. And that doesn't mean that

everybody else just automatically falls in line. And that includes Canada. Do you worry about consequences, though? We all worry about consequences. We're in a very difficult moment in the life of the world because we have a number of countries that are becoming less democratic, more autocratic. We have Russia and China try to flex their muscles. Russia very aggressively and brutally in Ukraine. We have lots of violence taking place in Africa. We have serious problems with displacement.

with people being forced to move out of where they are. We have lots of issues in the world that are very, very difficult and dangerous. And you could either say the United States is less predictable, or you could say the policies that they have set out are really hard to align with where we have been collectively together, for a very, very long time. And the fact that, you know, the one government that has issued a really positive statement about this document is Russia should make everybody think a little bit about, well, what does

that say about the document? Okay, tell me now why Russia is so happy with this document. Because basically it's a signal to Russia that, you know, we're not condemning your aggression and we're not going to do more to stop it. The strategy said the administration would be cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations. As Donald Trump seeks an end to the Ukraine war that would likely favor Russia gaining territory, the strategy accused Europeans of weakness and said Washington should focus on ending the perception and preventing the reality of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.

But that, I think, is very clear from what the president has been doing, over the last several months, and particularly in the last several weeks. So again, I don't think it should be a, oh, this is a shocking statement. You say, well, every day you see this, we, you know, if Ukraine is going to survive, it's gonna take an immense effort from Europe,

from Canada, and even more than we're doing now. It's gonna take more. And we're not gonna get the same assistance from the US that we've had before. You mentioned before, how the document talks about Europe and how it's like a continuation of this speech that Vice President J.D. Vansky back in the spring where instead of focusing on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he talked about how Europe's greatest threat comes from within.

The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America. From free speech restrictions and immigration, for example. The strategy talks about Europe's civilizational decline. I wonder if you could just talk to me a little bit more about why this focus and rebuke of Europe.

Well, I'm going to be a little bit provocative and say, I have to say that I think race has something to do with it. Because what Vance has said in his speech in Munich was, this so-called civilizational decline and the parties that they're supporting, the AFD and the parties in France and the UK, these are parties that are opposed to migration into their own countries and that are very uncomfortable with the level of multiculturalism and multiracialism that now exists in their countries. And the United States is the last country in the world that should be complaining about that. The United States is like Canada,

is a very racially diverse, multilingual, multicultural place. It might not like to admit that it is to the extent that we do, but, I mean, it is. So if somebody says this is about European civilization, what exactly you're talking about? Are you talking about the fact that, you know, it was mainly made up of white people before? Is that what you're talking about? And if you say that out loud, I mean, but if you look at American policy on South Africa, on this phony refugee thing on Afrikaners, the whole thing is nuts. I mean, it's the thing that I think should trouble anyone is the statement that's made

that, you know, the United States will not only support those governments that take the same position that we do, but we will also support those political parties and those, quote, popular movements that do the same thing. Well, and then they say it, but of course, we believe in non-intervention. And you say, well, not exactly because you're now going to be sending across the airwaves and through banks and everything else, I suppose, support for those political parties that actually oppose the governments that you pretend you're friends of. And that is very problematic. By the way, it's problematic for Canada as well. I think everybody needs to be concerned about that.

I wanted to get your thoughts on China. So they framed China not as like an ideological rival, which is how I think past administrations really framed China, but more as an economic one or primarily as an economic one. And I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that. Well, I think it is a change. I think the traditional, if you like, the approach that we've taken to China, if we've taken others have taken, is that the problem is not that China's economy is doing better. The problem is that a lot of their ideas are very authoritarian, and that's not a good model. I don't believe, and speak for myself, I don't think that's a model that we should admire.

But at the same time, we all recognize that China is an extraordinary story of economic transformation that's taken place since about 1980. And it's impossible to deny that China is now one of the great economic powers in the world. From an economic point of view, we are certainly living in a multipolar world. That's definitely true. and I think in many other ways we are as well. I do think that there's an ambiguity in the document about, you know, what is the United States really going to do? And if you look at the document, they basically don't say the United States will,

they say we won't accept a change in the status quo, but they won't say, well, what happens if there is a change in the status quo with respect to Taiwan? I mean, I would imagine if I was Beijing, I'd be pretty pleased about the Taiwan stuff, But I was also wondering, you know, if I'm Beijing, I see some openings in this strategy. So I don't know if I'm right about this. But for example, if the United States is going to try and throw its weight around Latin America and try to get China out of Latin America, maybe those Latin American countries are so annoyed by that that they become closer to China.

Well, that's what I'm saying. When I go back to the Latin American situation, the thing that we need to wake up to in the world is that China is a major economic and financial power. And it has expressed that economic and financial power partly through trade, but a lot through investment. And they have invested significantly in countries around the world, in Africa and in Latin America. And the Americans are going to have a very hard time convincing Latin American and Caribbean countries that they have to shut down any relationship that they have with China and make, you know, establish an exclusive relationship with the United States. And one of the arguments that the Americans make

in the document is to say, well, but the reason they should do it is because we have a much more transparent and clear way of carrying out our economic investments and other countries do know it. And I would say with the greatest of respect, the United States is moving dangerously close to becoming a kleptocratic economy and not a transparent one. And that the problem and issue of corruption and the lack of transparency in the way in which many of these so-called business deals and trade deals are being negotiated is deeply troublesome to anybody who believes in the international rule of law and who believes that all enterprises

are being treated fairly when it comes to how you treat investment. Given everything that we've talked about today, given how this kind of strategy is now outlined in this document, Do you think that Mark Carney should be doing anything differently than what he's doing right now, just to return to Canada? Actually, I think he's just going in the right direction. I think the positions that Canada has taken have been very constructive. And the ways he's been conducting himself, I think, is very good.

The challenge is that, you know, we as a country, we're going to have to spend a lot of time really figuring out how to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have a lot of domestic challenges, and we have a lot of challenges on the global front. And I think the prime minister has recognized that, but I think we're going to have to talk much more as a country about how challenging that is for us. And the one lesson I've learned in communication is you have to say things more than once, and you have to say them many times in order to convince yourself and everybody else that this is a direction. We need to go, and this is how we need to get there. And the execution of those things is always challenging. It's not just describing the vision, but it's how do you execute the vision, which is the challenge of leadership. But like most Canadians, based on the polling that everyone has seen, I think most Canadians have confidence in Mr. Carney's ability to lead us in this difficult.

moment. Okay. Mr. Ray, thank you very much for this. Well, thank you. It's good talking with you. Our YouTube producer is John Lee. Our music is by Joseph Shabbison. Our senior producer is Elaine Chow. Our executive producer is Nick McKay Blokos, and I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening.