Marc-William Palen
History Department, University of Exeter

From Trump’s confusing quest to conquer Canada to the Pentagon’s purging of a Native American Iwo Jima flag-raiser, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

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Trump’s quest to conquer Canada is confusing everyone

Allan Smith and Peter Nicholas
NBC

Eight years ago, President Donald Trump spoke about the U.S.-Canada relationship in glowing terms. He hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in February 2017 for one of his first joint appearances alongside a foreign leader. Trump opened by noting the nations “share much more than a border,” highlighting “the special bonds that come when two nations have shed their blood together — which we have. America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbor like Canada,” Trump said. “We have before us the opportunity to build even more bridges, and bridges of cooperation and bridges of commerce.”

Fast-forward to Thursday, weeks after Trump initiated a full-scale trade war with Canada, and it’s clear the president doesn’t believe the U.S. should share a border — or much else — with its Canadian neighbors. [continue reading]

DON’T SHRED ON ME! USAID documents destruction breaks the law, according to National Security Archive

National Security Archive

The acting executive secretary of the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday night ordered the destruction of classified records and personnel files, according to the March 10 email reported by The Guardian, The New York Times, and other outlets. The email from Erica Y. Carr apparently convened remaining AID staff at the Ronald Reagan Building Tuesday morning at 9:30 a.m. to use shredding machines to get rid of classified records and personnel files, directly violating the Federal Records Act and the existing records retention schedules that protect such records.

“Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break,” reads the March 10 email from Carr. On Tuesday afternoon, federal workers unions suing the Trump administration for unlawfully terminating AID employees and programs asked the court to halt the “imminent and ongoing destruction of evidence” relevant to their litigation. Later that evening, parties to that case filed a joint status report in which the government said it would “not destroy additional documents stored in the USAID offices in the Ronald Reagan Building without affording notice to Plaintiffs” and that it would submit “a sworn declaration that will explain which documents were and were not destroyed.” [continue reading]

Does Trump Want America to Look More Like Saudi Arabia?

Quinn Slobodian
New York Times

What kind of oil-drunk capitalist pushes his chips onto ultraprime real estate, tech moonshots and prestige sporting events while covering every surface in gold leaf? The standard comparisons and analogies don’t quite capture President Trump’s particular economic vision. It is not really an extension of the Gilded Age robber barons, nor — despite his critics’ claims — is it akin to the fascist economic models of 1930s Germany and Italy.

There is another way of thinking about his brand of political economy and a potential model for it. We might think of the autocratic, oil-rich states of the Persian Gulf. Specifically, we might think of Mr. Trump’s vision as an attempt to transplant the political economy of Saudi Arabia onto the United States. [continue reading]

Trump’s next target? Canada’s go-to think-tank in Washington

Alexander Panetta
CBC

After Canadian steel, aluminum, potash, energy and possibly cars, U.S. President Donald Trump may have a new target: Canada-related scholarship. A top think-tank that studies Canada-U.S. relations now finds itself under threat in an executive order signed by the president last Friday. Trump ordered a number of institutions gutted — eliminated to the greatest extent possible, reduced to their minimum legal functions.

That list includes the organization that oversees Voice of America, and, of particular relevance to Canada, the Wilson Center, which has institutes focused on Canada, Mexico, China and Russia. [continue reading]

Amid ‘DEI’ purge, Pentagon removes webpage on Native American Iwo Jima flag-raiser

Jon Swaine and Alex Horton
Washington Post

Until recently, a page on the Defense Department’s website celebrated Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six Marines photographed hoisting a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, as an emblem of the “contributions and sacrifices Native Americans have made to the United States, not just in the military, but in all walks of life.”

But the page, along with many others about Native American and other minority service members, has now been erased amid the Trump administration’s wide-ranging crackdown on what it says are “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts in the federal government, a review by The Washington Post found. [continue reading]