Developments

• In Beijing, Canada’s prime minister announces a “new strategic partnership,” calling China more predictable than Washington. In Greenland, seven NATO allies arrive with fighter jets and naval vessels. In Tokyo, the defense minister insists the U.S. alliance remains “completely unshaken.” Three allies, three different bets.
• Seven NATO allies arrive in the Arctic to defend against the alliance’s largest member. The U.S. still isn’t talking to the man they’ve acknowledged as Venezuela’s legitimate president-elect. Iran announces an execution, then claims it was never going to happen.

Features

• How did U.S. immigration enforcement get so radical, so fast? Austin Kocher on Trump’s refitting of a system his predecessors built.
• Why does American civil society look so fragile? Dylan Riley on why so many nonprofits and universities have been folding under pressure from the U.S. administration.

Books

• How has China become so innovative while remaining so authoritarian? Jennifer Lind, Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny.

Music

• What on Earth is drone metal?
• & New tracks from Sunn O))), The Messthetics x James Brandon Lewis, Sault, & Twilight Sad.

+ Weather report

• Arctic air all the way to Florida …

Developments

Options

On Friday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney stood in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People and announced a “new strategic partnership” with China. Canada would slash tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles from 100 percent to 6.1 percent; China would reciprocate on canola. Asked whether Beijing was now a more reliable partner than Washington, Carney didn’t hedge: China is “more predictable, and you see results coming from that.” He called it preparation for “the new world order.”

This is the first visit by a Canadian prime minister to China since 2017—a relationship that froze over Beijing’s detention of two Canadians and allegations of Chinese interference in Canadian elections. Now Ottawa is explicitly breaking with U.S. tariff policy and reopening the door, while President Donald Trump’s tariffs continue to punish Canadian exports, with no deal is in sight, and his off-and-on rhetoric about using “economic force” to absorb their country as a 51st state continues ringing in Canadians’ ears.

But Canada isn’t alone. European NATO members have now deployed military personnel to Greenland—Germany, France, the U.K., Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Netherlands, Estonia—as Trump insists “anything less” than U.S. control of the island is “unacceptable.” Germany has committed €500 billion to defense by 2029, hitting NATO’s 3.5 percent GDP target six years early. France watches nervously as the continent’s power balance shifts.

Japan is moving the other way. Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi met U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday and called the alliance between their countries “completely unshaken.” Tokyo faces direct pressure from Beijing—economic retaliation, rare-earth export bans, territorial claims on Okinawa—after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said a Chinese blockade of Taiwan would constitute an “existential threat” to Japan. For Tokyo, the U.S. alliance isn’t optional.

The U.K., for its part, has quietly suspended intelligence sharing with the U.S. on Caribbean drug-trafficking operations. London doesn’t want its information used for strikes it considers illegal.

Canada hedging toward Beijing. Europe building collective defense. Japan doubling down on Washington. The U.K. drawing lines on intelligence cooperation. Is each ally simply doing its own math?

Bookshop

Music

‘Glory Black’

What would 130 guitar tracks layered into a single piece sound like? You get to find out on the new record from Sunn O))), the amp-worshipping duo of guitarists Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson. Now recording for Sub Pop in Seattle, these stars of drone metal are back—and if you reach the middle movement of this song, you’ll find some spare piano mixed.

Steve Johnson