TOI correspondent from Washington: Donald Trump’s MAGA-infused US is rupturing a long-standing Anglophone alliance.
From vice-president JD Vance describing Britain as the world’s first “truly Islamist country” to have nuclear weapons (because of its growing immigrant Muslim population) to Peter Navarro reportedly proposing expulsion of the largely liberal Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, there are growing signs that the Trump govt is ready to dump Washington’s English-speaking allies if they do not embrace MAGA principles of curtailing immigration.
Hours after Trump publicly trolled Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau by referring to him as ‘Governor Trudeau’ in his pursuit of making it the 51st American state, the US’ northern neighbour got another shock Tuesday from news that a top Trump aide has proposed jettisoning Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence network, one of the closest and most successful intel alliance that also includes UK, Australia and New Zealand.
The proposal has reportedly come from Trump advisor Peter Navarro as part of pressure tactics to persuade Canada to merge with the US. Navarro subsequently denied the Financial Times report, calling it “nonsense”, but it is no secret that Washington is on rampage against Canada, accusing it of milking the US for decades.
The US and Canada have been neighbours and allies for more than a century, with the Five Eyes intel group a centrepiece of close ties – so close that the two nations coordinated their moves in cornering India over the alleged trans-continental operations against Sikh radicals in America. The five Anglo powers spy on rest of the world and share intel to such an extent that the CIA-led Pine Gap satellite station in central Australia, which collects intelligence about China, was subject of a fictional Netflix series.
But all is not well with the alliance with the return of Trump to the White House, with his MAGA base increasingly suspicious of the demographic changes in Canada, the UK, and Australia under Liberal/Labour dispensations. Trump and his minions are now openly canvassing for regime change in these countries to bring in more nativist govts aligned with MAGA and its core principles of curtailing immigration.
In one stunning rebuke of Britain, whose capital London is now referred to by some nativists as ‘Londonistan’ for its large Muslim population, JD Vance, shortly before Trump picked him as a running mate, suggested the UK, not Pakistan, deserved the title of being the first Islamist country with nuclear weapons. Trump himself called London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan a ‘stone cold loser’ before a state visit in 2019. Australia too has fallen off the US radar after its Labour Party PM Anthony Albanese disparaged the MAGA supremo, and New Zealand is too far to care for returning Trump govt.