Geography gave the US unrivaled security. Trump destroys it | Gil Barndollar and Rajan Menon

The secret of American power and priority was best summarized more than a century ago.

America observed Jean Jules Jusserand, France's ambassador in the United States during the First World War, “blessed” among the nations. In the north and south were friendly and militarily weak neighbors; “In the east, fish and the west, fish”. The United States was and are both a continental force and in strategic terms an island – with all the security that the gifts of geography offer. No world power has ever been lucky. This unique physical security is the real American exception.

The Americans take this providential geography for granted: their country's wars are always gone, and their neighbors are trading partners and weekend excursion destinations, not competitors or enemies. The United States' ability to project around the globe depends on technology and logistics, but is ultimately based on the basis of safe limits and friendly neighbors. But that may not be the case much longer. In the threat of war with Canada and Mexico, Donald Trump deletes America's greatest strategic advantage.

In normal times it would be difficult to find a few friendlier nations than the USA and Canada. Canadians and Americans share a common language (apart from the Québécois), sports leagues, USD 683 billion in stores and the longest unfair border in the world, more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km). Americans and Canadians fought side by side both in the world wars as well as in Korea and Afghanistan.

Trump's coveted Canada is easy to mock and released. Since his return in January in January, he has repeatedly said that he made Canada the 51st state and described the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau as “governor Trudeau”. In a satire of the ambitions of some American neo -conservators after September 11, Trump called the border with Canada “an artificial line” that “does not make any sense”.

But Canadian don't laugh. She lives alongside a superpower that has waged several wars in the past 20 years and is now practicing a policy according to the truth, and they are angry and rattles.

Mistress in Canada have drawn alcohol produced by America from their shelves. Singing the star banner during the hockey and basketball games has provoked Boos from the stands. The airline travels from Canada to the USA, with ticket sales have dropped by 70%. Trudeau, who did not know that he was on a hot microphone, told his ministerial colleagues that Trump's territorial avarice was “a real thing” and that they should not dismiss them as a typical Trumpian Spruster. Mark Carney, Trudeau's successor, warned the Canadians that the long -term partnership with the United States “based on the deepening of the integration of our economies and strict security and military cooperation is over”.

At the beginning of this year, Pierre Poilievre, the candidate of the conservative party in the national elections of Canada, had a big lead in the surveys and seemed to be determined to become the next prime minister. But the aversion of the Canadians against Trump helped Carney, a political newcomer and the candidate of the liberal party, apparently helped (despite Trump's criticism of PIOLIEVRE in a FOX News interview, perhaps because PILIEVRE reacted to his falling survey figures and cheated on the criticism of the American president). Carney's survey number climbed, Pioilievres fell, and this week Carney won the choice – but he is not about to lead to Canada's annexation. According to Carney's report, Trump mentioned his vision of Canada as the 51st state of the United States, which Carney immediately released.

The Americans tend to find the idea of ​​a security threat by Canada ridiculous. Some of Trump's antipathy against Canada rests on his poor defense spending, less than 1.5% of GDP, and makes Canada one of NATO's stragglers. However, Canadian skills are crucial for the defense of the American homeland. Canadian long and short-distance radars deliver most of the North Warning System (NWS), which protects on aircraft and rockets over the North Pole. A Canadian withdrawal from the common NWS would reduce the capacity of the United States for strategic defense and deterrence. While such a step through Canada would normally be unthinkable if he fears the invasion of how it now has to do, it can take measures that have so far been going beyond the area of ​​possibilities.

If Trump's actions against Canada confuse the mind, his attitude towards Mexico is more explanable, albeit far more dangerous. Trump came down on this golden escalator in the Trump Tower in June 2015 and announced his first presidential offer with a diatribe against Mexican immigrants. In the decades since then, the Republican party Mexican drug cartels, if not the Mexican state itself, has been considered a great threat to the United States, also as Mexico China to the largest trading partner in the United States.

With Trump again in power, reality is correct to rhetoric. US US troops are now on the southern border and Mexican drug cartels were officially referred to as foreign terrorist groups, which gives the president the legal pretext for US soldiers to enter and destroy Mexican territory. US monitoring drones monitor fentanyllabors in Mexico -by mutual agreement -but the Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has ruled out that they are used to strike of drug cartels, which US officials have reported.

Although Trump granted an executive regulation on the first day of his second term and explained an emergency on the border between the USA and Mexicans, the active troops he used are currently not participating to law enforcement authorities that the US Act prohibits, and only provides logistical support for customs and border protection. But at some point Trump should call the uprising of 1807, which could change and to capture and hold the Mexican migrant military.

Any one -sided US military intervention in Mexico would be ruthless. Since some of the largest cities in the United States are only a few hours away from the border, the cartels would have enough options for retaliation, which in turn would cause American escalation. Civil deaths from military strikes in the United States could previously unleash a flood wave of refugees in Mexico, a country with 130 million people. US geography protected it from most episodes of its catastrophic wars after September 11th in the greater area of ​​the Middle East. But happiness would finally go out if Trump tried to suspend a version of the “war against terror” across the southern border.

Since wars and trumps played with unprecedented tariffs for many US partners and allies in Europe and the Middle East, the consequences of Trump's “America First” policy seem to be primarily in Europe and Asia. But the most free and most serious threats to American security and prosperity are closer to home.

Less than three months after his second term, Donald Trump, perhaps even irrevocably, damaged relationships with the two neighbors and the largest trading partners in his country. Only a few US presidents have committed greater strategic misconduct. Nobody did it with such a speed. If the president wants to identify something that he has achieved that none of his modern predecessors have, this performance would certainly qualify.

• Gil Barndollar is a non -resident fellow at the defense priority foundation. Rajan Menon is an emeritus Spitzer professor for international relationships at the Powell School, the City College of New York, and Senior Research Scholar at the Saltzman Institute of Columbia University.