Mallen Baker: Faultlines

In this news round-up of the week for Friday August 21st 2026: Canada's Mark Carney is head to head with the Trump administration as attempts are made to get a last minute trade deal over the line. But is there more to it than meets the eye? Disney is fighting an apparent punitive censorship push by the Trump-friendly regulator, the FCC. And the US sanctions more top officials from the International Criminal Court - which could become a real test case in how many countries are going to be prepared to stand up to Trump's mafia behaviour.

The war in Iran has been at a standstill for months, with traffic trickling through the Strait of Hormuz, and no real impetus for negotiations. You should expect that, in such a situation, eventually people will change their approach to seek to gain a breakthrough advantage. And over the last week, we've seen this being signalled by President Donald Trump, and also by the Iranian leadership. The nature of the emerging plans is different, and you have to imagine that the chances of success are likewise. Let's discuss.

We've seen the bluster and the bullying of President Donald Trump in the headlines, but there is a quiet daily push going on much more under the surface. It is all the more insidious because it is little noticed, part of the daily friction of life in Trump World, and more to the point - it works. It is legal. It is unaccountable. And it is shaping decisions in all sorts of ways that many simply didn't see coming. Particularly focused on South America, as Trump claims the entire Western Hemisphere as his sphere of influence. Let's discuss.

President Trump has the appearance of a man furious at his lack of options - to the degree where he is thrashing out at whatever is within reach. So he threatened US ally Oman with being bombed if it 'gets in the way'. He slated ally South Korea because it declined to help him in Iran, even though its forces are very much needed on its own front line. However, he praised their enemy, North Korea. And, at times, he has praised as well the Iranian leadership. What is anyone serious to make of it all? Let's discuss.

In this news round-up of the week for Friday August 14th 2026. President Trump is demanding expressions of loyalty from NATO members before deciding where US troops will be withdrawn. Is this the moment where it really gets ugly? 150 thousand Canadians are demanding that the US ambassador to their country Pete Hoekstra be booted out, as Alberta squares up to an independence referendum. The UK's MAGA-lite populist Nigel Farage wins his by-election against a man wearing a bin on his head - and astonishingly that seems not to have solved his problems. And various people are asking - what could every replace Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who is standing down?I have a suggestion. Let's discuss.

We just learned that Trump switched planes to fly out of the Turkey NATO summit, and he did so under the cover of a catering truck. There's one detail to this that nobody is commenting on - and a wider context that is likewise not getting attention, even though it's absolutely key to the dynamic of the Iran war, and why it's going the way it is. Let's discuss.

Various people in the know have said that President Donald Trump has not given up on his ambitions to get Greenland. And so we can see, as an oil company with strong connections to the president has been preparing to drill for oil there without the needed permission from the Greenlandic authorities. It's exactly the sort of pushing the system, asserting American privilege to do whatever they want, that could be part of Trump's battering ram approach. Interestingly, the Gandalv substack today published a very detailed scenario of how a US takeover of Greenland would be likely to proceed - and amongst the surprises contained within it are just how hard the US ultimately finds it to hold onto, and just how crucial a role Canada plays in deciding the outcome. Let's discuss. A link to the Gandalv scenario discussed in this video (paywalled, I'm afraid) https://gandalv.substack.com/p/what-a-us-war-with-europe-and-canada?r=1sy3z&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

There is nothing in the mere fact of having a dominantly powerful country in the world that says that it would be expected to act as an out-and-out bully. Indeed, before President Donald Trump, it was considered to be in the US strategic interest not to do that, for all that the US would certainly flex its muscles in specific instances reasonably often. The fact is that Trump had a completely different frame to any that came before - one based on the power dynamics of the playground and often profound misunderstandings of reality. Now, increasingly countries are reasserting the basic logic of geopolitics-as-usual, and rejecting Trump's frame. It is pushing him to the heights of fury as the techniques he assumed would always work, fail him over and over again. Let's discuss.

In this news round-up of the week for Friday August 7th 2026. Iran and Oman are close to a deal on the Strait of Hormuz that cuts out Donald Trump's America entirely. Not everyone in the media, nor in the Trump administration itself, have entirely absorbed the fact. As the dust settles on the invasion of tens of thousands of people into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, it's worth reflecting on what the incident told us about the coiled spring that is now the far-right populists in Europe and America. And Russian and American disinformation is actively targeting the coming German state elections. And somewhat separate to that, Germany's Chancellor Merz could be about to do a repeat on Keir Starmer's premature ejection from power.

For the last year and a half, President Donald Trump and his self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have been pretty much in lockstep. But as the Iran war sours on Trump and he is confronted with the reality of weapons depletion, he has started lashing out at those he holds responsible - and the most obvious figure is indeed Hegseth himself. And so it has been reported that they had an angry confrontation last week. We discuss why Hegseth is unqualified for the job, as identified by a fifty year old book on military incompetence. And what happens if he gets booted out of Trump's cabinet. Let's discuss.

President Trump is displaying one of the most distinctive traits of the irrational dictator, as seen throughout history. And it's very bad news for Americans, given how it tends to play out as one step follows another. But it's trouble as well for the rest of the world, because the US is demonstrating that what it aims to do domestically, it is keen to export to the rest of the world. And it all starts with the fact that Trump is pushing the old red scare into high gear. Oh, and about that reflecting pool ... even that stupidity is a symptom. Let's discuss.

When President Trump threatens thunder and fury, and then announces that negotiations are under way - he rather expects to be taken seriously. And he's used to the illusion of that, because world leaders won't mock in public, and the media often report his words as though they represent more than the reality. But as he increases the exact same dance, the sheer absurdity of the presentation becomes harder and harder to ignore. And now the Iranians are gleefully mocking his latest turn, surely aware that - in so doing - they are merely voicing what the whole world is thinking. Let's discuss.

In this news round-up of the week for Friday July 31st 2026 President Donald Trump announces that his Board of Peace has emerged triumphant with a breakthrough in Gaza. As you would expect, it's a bit more complicated than he would have you believe. Brazil denies visas to US state department officials because Trump's America is seeking to interfere in the forthcoming elections there - one of the most direct acts of defiance from a South American country. And we get a sense of the challenge for Trump in the coming mid-term elections, as the media machine of MAGA influencers, such a driving force in the last two years, seems to be struggling to hold its audience.

Many countries across the world have held inquiries into what worked and what didn't during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have been better than others, but none of them looked like the complete sham accountability exercise that saw Anthony Fauci required to testify to Rand Paul's committee. So what should we have been talking about, and why has the United States decided uniquely that it is determined to be the least-well prepared for any future similar crisis? Let's discuss.

Following Trump's reportedly successful meeting with Ukraine's President Zelensky, many reporters are talking about how various factors are 'turning' Trump, or 'warming him' towards Ukraine and against Putin's Russia. At this stage in the Trump presidency, with all that has happened in the last year and a half - such commentary is baffling at best. Only possible by those who have a problem understanding just how much the game has changed. Let's discuss.

President Trump was in talks to discuss all his options in massively escalating the war against Iran over the weekend. It turns out, they were a lot more limited than he had imagined. Now, confronted as he has finally been, with the enfeeblement he has brought upon the US military, he must surely understand how few options he really has, and how bad all of them are. So suddenly diplomacy is back in vogue, and the US has to find a way to spin an obvious defeat into a victory. Let's discuss.

In this news round-up of the week on Friday July 24th 2026. President Trump is furious about the rapid leaks about all the mis-steps and u-turns he's making over the Iran war. But they are many, and serious, and reveal that his push for military escalation is based on a delusion. The Saudis are furious about Trump agreeing a nuclear deal with them and then AFTER it was publicly announced, tacked on a condition that they find impossible to stomach. South East Asian countries are furious about Trump landing massive costs and consequences on them without apparently caring. And Trump has delivered the latest version of his global tariffs operation - and done so by slandering everyone for being just peachy with the idea of modern slavery.

President Trump's biggest triumph, according to some, was to get Israel and Hamas to agree to his Gaza peace deal. And then, to follow that up with the creation of the Board of Peace to oversee an astonishingly ambitious transformation of the territory from wartime disaster to thriving economic centre. Since then, it seems that the driving energy behind the plan has pretty much disappeared, leaving Gaza in as bad a position as ever before. Let's discuss.

As Trump's attacks on Iran resume, and his rhetoric escalates, reports are emerging that officials in the Pentagon are just not telling the White House, and Pete Hegseth, the truth about how depleted the US arsenal actually has become. Why? Largely because Hegseth's purges of senior figures have trained everyone to understand that the bearers of bad news, or even just cold reality as it exists outside of Donald Trump's wishful thinking, generally get fired. So it could well be that this escalation is the biggest mistake of the war so far. Let's discuss.

Canada is having a wildfire problem - a huge wildfire problem right now. In the past, it has collaborated with its southern neighbour over such moments - a reciprocal arrangement that has had lots of activation in recent years. But this time it's different. This time President Trump is seeing the large amount of unpleasant smoke making its way across the border and afflicting US cities, and using that to renew his economic threats and to mutter once again about the '51st State'. Obviously, it's not really about air pollution. Let's discuss.