Trump Is Copying Putin’s Losing Playbook With Canada

The Trump administration’s worldview can sometimes resemble a simplified version of Vladimir Putin’s foreign-policy doctrine, the article argues, borrowing its assumptions while ignoring the results of the strategies it imitates.

That dynamic appeared in the recent collapse of trade talks with Canada. Rather than treating the meetings as negotiations between two partners, the White House approached them as an effort to extract tribute from a subordinate, according to the article.

Trump presented his decision to alter terms that the two countries had already agreed on as an attempt to correct past wrongs. But the article says the trade dispute reflects something broader than a disagreement over tariffs or conditions. It describes a U.S. effort to secure economic interests and physical security across the Western Hemisphere through pressure, rather than through alliances and soft power.

The approach rests on an ideology that assumes the United States has a natural right to correct what Trump and his supporters see as deviations from the proper course of geopolitical history. The article points to Greenland as another expression of that belief, arguing that Washington’s claims of regional entitlement form part of a wider strategy rather than an isolated policy position.