.
North America
Canada
16.01.2026 Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney today sought bilateral ties with China are adapted to new global realities during his meeting with Chinese President Xi in Beijing. The trip to China signaled Ottawa’s efforts to reduce reliance on the US as its primary trading partner. Carney has said he aims to double non-US exports over the next 10 years. Canada will allow the import of up to 49,000 Chinese electric vehicles, significantly reducing tariffs, which amounted to 100% until before he began his four-day trip on Wednesday. Beijing will reduce tariffs on imports of canola seeds from about 84% to about 15%, he added. Carney said ties with China will help improve the multilateral system - a system that has in recent years come under great strain. The Canadian prime minister's comments come amid US tariffs, as well as the Trump administration's military raid in Venezuela. The Trump administration has also threatened to make Canada the 51st state of the US. Canadian visitors travelling to China will be granted visa-free access, according to Carney. For his part, Xi said that China-Canada relations reached a turning point at their last meeting in South Korea last October. “In the past couple of months, the agencies of our two countries have engaged in deep discussions on resuming and restarting cooperation across the board and producing the positive results. I am heartened by the progress,” Xi told Carney. The meeting came after Carney met with Chinese Premier Li yesterday, where Li expressed an interest in enhancing cooperation with Canada. The two sides committed to advancing a new strategic partnership, while Canada reaffirmed its long-standing commitment to its one-China policy. They reaffirmed their commitment to multilateralism, supporting the central role of the UN in international affairs, to rules-¬based multilateral trading system underpinned by the World Trade Organization, and keeping global industrial and supply chains stable and smooth. They signed memoranda of understanding on the China-Canada economic and trade cooperation roadmap, energy cooperation, combating crimes, modern wood construction, culture, food safety, and animal and plant health cooperation. Carney arrived on Wednesday for a four-day visit. His meetings in China aim to elevate engagement on "trade, energy, agriculture, and international security." The bilateral trade volume stood at $67 billion at the end of 2024. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
Mexico
Jan. 15, 2026 The United States is escalating pressure on the Mexican government to grant the United States a larger role in the battle against drug cartels that produce fentanyl and smuggle it into the United States, to allow the U.S. military forces to conduct joint operations to dismantle fentanyl labs inside the country. The request was renewed after U.S. forces captured President Maduro of Venezuela on Jan. 3. While Washington has focused on Mr. Maduro and Venezuela as a main source of the drugs smuggled into the United States, the South American country in fact plays a minor role in the illicit trade. The majority of drugs smuggled into the United States come through the 2,000-mile border it shares with Mexico. “We’ve knocked out 97 percent of the drugs coming in by water, and we are going to start now hitting land, with regard to the cartels,” specifically those in Mexico, Mr. Trump told Fox News last week. U.S. officials want American forces - either Special Operation troops or C.I.A. officers - to accompany Mexican soldiers in joint operations on raids on suspected fentanyl labs, commanding the mission and making key decisions. U.S. forces would be in support, providing intelligence and advice to frontline Mexican troops. The country’s president, Ms. Sheinbaum, had originally requested the entry of the U.S. troops. She has repeatedly said that the two nations would work together to fight the cartels but that her government rejected the U.S.’s proposal of sending American troops across the border. The proposal for joint operations runs up against recent Mexican laws that restrict foreign troops on Mexican soil, including a constitutional amendment passed last year. The senate is required under the country’s constitution to grant approval for the entry of foreign troops. Ms. Sheinbaum has tapped Mexico’s security chief, Mr. Harfuch to go harder on the cartels since coming to power in late 2024. Since then, Mexico has deployed hundreds of forces to the state of Sinaloa to counter the Sinaloa Cartel, the world’s largest distributor of fentanyl, leading to high-profile arrests and destroying drug labs at nearly four times the rate of the previous government, splintering and weakening of the drug organization. “What we need is information,” Mr. Harfuch said in an interview last month. He said that fewer than several hundred U.S. security personnel are in Mexico, and that all are unarmed and all are approved by Mexican officials. D.E.A. agents in Mexico mostly build cases with Mexican forces, and are barred from participating in antidrug ground operations. If Ms. Sheinbaum accepts Washington’s demands for joint operations with U.S. forces, she could see a revolt within her own political party, a leftist organization that harbors deep suspicion of the United States. This month Mexican officials offered counter proposals, including increased information sharing and for the United States to play a greater role inside command centers. U.S. advisers are already in Mexican military command posts, according to American officials, sharing intelligence to help Mexican forces in their antidrug operations. Some American officials would like to see the U.S. military or C.I.A. conduct drone strikes against suspected drug labs, a violation of Mexican sovereignty that would significantly weaken the government. Fentanyl labs are notoriously difficult to find and destroy. The labs emit less chemical traces than meth labs - which can be detected by drones - and are often cooked in urban areas with the rudimentary tools found in a family kitchen. Washington is still developing tools to trace the most dangerous street drug by far as it is being produced. Last year, the White House designated fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction and several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Under the Biden administration, the C.I.A. began carrying out secret drone flights over Mexico to identify possible locations of fentanyl labs, an operation that has expanded since Mr. Trump took office. The drones are used both to find labs and track precursor chemicals as they arrive in Mexican seaports and then transported to their destinations. That intelligence is currently handed off to Mexican military units, many of which have been trained by American Special Operation forces. Mexican troops then plan and execute the raids to take out the labs. (Source: The New York Times - U.S.)
United States
Jan 18, 2026 13:47 IST White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Trump's aide Miller in an interview with Fox News called Arctic competition the next major arena of national security. Greenland is one-fourth the size of the continental US and Denmark with a tiny economy and a tiny military cannot defend or control it, Miller said. Protests erupted in both Denmark and Greenland yesterday, with demonstrators calling for the territory to determine its own future. European leaders backing Denmark have warned that any US military attempt to seize Greenland could destabilise NATO, the alliance Washington has long led. (Source: India Today)
January 17, 2026 Annexing Greenland is a costly policy built on whim. Instead of suggesting the United States may annex the island, Washington should instead open the door to security cooperation and investment in Greenland. Proponents of annexing Greenland offer three main US interests in the Arctic. First, the Arctic is growing into an important trade and military route. Second, the United States needs a steady supply of rare earth elements and, more generally, critical minerals. Finally, the United States ’needs jobs and investment opportunities’. None of these interests require annexing Greenland. In terms of security, Greenland is important, though not critical, for preventing an adversary from dominating the Arctic. There is growing Chinese and Russian interest (albeit not translated into capability) in dominating Arctic trade routes and building a larger military presence there. To deter that, multiple options are available, including rapidly expanding the capability and operations of the existing US base at Pitufik, and moving American troops out of mainland Europe and basing what is necessary for the Arctic in our own hemisphere in Greenland. During the last era of great-power war in the region, the United States, due to Greenland’s proximity to the US coastline, quickly established a presence in Greenland to counter Nazi Germany. The US Navy currently has an unrivaled presence in the Arctic and the North Sea, and nothing suggests that dynamic will change anytime soon. Chinese sea lines of communication from its existing bases to the Arctic would be indefensible. Should it look likely to change, NATO is already uniquely positioned to defend the North Atlantic, ’practically an American lake’, against any emergent great-power threat. Rare earth elements like terbium, yttrium, and others, and critical minerals like copper, there is almost certainly less to make Greenland look like El Dorado. The rare earth deposits in Greenland are still largely unproven and inordinately expensive to extract from the ground, though with more time and technological advancement, they could be extracted. The chokepoint on rare earths is mostly in processing, not extraction. If the United States is worried about rare earths, it should devote its attention to building or acquiring processing capacity that insulates US consumers, including the US military, from the caprice of Chinese policymakers. Investment and jobs: the market can do a better job of identifying investment prospects and industries than the government can. If the government incentivizes companies to invest in Greenland, that subsidy will spur more investment than the fundamentals alone would. The current US approach toward Greenland is implausible, unsustainable, and counterproductive for three reasons. The prospect of the United States using force to seize Greenland in an imperial fashion would lack both congressional authorization and immediate threat. It would exceed the political and temporal capacity of any administration, and would face domestic opposition and lawsuits. A territorial conflict with a treaty ally would be politically untenable. In an interview with The New York Times last week, President Trump explained his view that annexing Greenland is „what I feel is psychologically needed for success”. What type of success the psychology of conquest confers, is left unspecified. A more constructive path would move away from rhetoric regarding territorial acquisition: dollar diplomacy grounding future policy in patience, prudence, and respect for existing sovereignty arrangements. The approach would be regarded as farsighted from the lens of history. The US government could form a bipartisan committee to explore interest among Americans in investing in Greenland, including stakeholders from the corporate sector willing to invest in fishing, hospitality, tourism, and mining. Such a committee should also consider the views of stakeholders on questions of security, critical minerals, and investment, and present its findings publicly. ’The committee could identify potential investments that would dwarf any competing investment from either the EU or China and, in turn, change Greenland’s economic and subsequent political climate’ without risking a single bullet or the life of an American or a Dane. There is little reason to think US security, now or in the future, turns on owning the island. Accordingly, the administration should slow down and anchor its policy in realism, rather than in amorphous desires for territorial expansion. (Source: The National Interest - U.S.)
by Logan, director of defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute; Maitra, the founder of Clio Strategic Consulting and an elected fellow of the Royal Historical Society. His book, The Sources of Russian Aggression, was published in 2024.
17.01.2026 US President Trump said today that Washington will impose new tariffs on goods from eight European countries starting on Feb. 1. World Peace is at stake! China and Russia want Greenland, and there is not a thing that Denmark can do about it, he said. Trump underlined that while the US is open to negotiations with Denmark and the other countries, ’strong measures were necessary to protect global peace and security’. (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
(Saturday), 17/01/2026 - 21:31 In a post on Truth Social, US President Trump said 10 percent tariffs would come into effect on February 1 on Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden - a wave of rising tariffs until the US strikes a deal for the complete and total purchase of Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark. Those tariffs would increase to 25 percent on June 1 and would continue until a deal is reached. Trump's tariffs target European countries that have at Denmark's request deployed troops in recent days to Greenland - the vast, mineral-rich territory at the gateway to the Arctic with a population of 57,000. Tariff threats are unacceptable and have no place in this context. Europeans will respond to them in a united and coordinated manner if they were to be confirmed, France's President Macron said today. We won't let ourselves be intimidated, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson rejected Trump's threat of swingeing tariffs today. I will always defend my country and our allied neighbours, he added. Tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral, EC chief der Leyen and European Council president Costa said in a joint statement. Europe will remain united, coordinated, and committed ’to upholding’ its sovereignty, they added. Trump's threatened purchase of Greenland is roundly rejected by the local population. Ambassadors from the European Union's 27 countries will convene tomorrow for an emergency meeting, set to start at 5pm. (Source: France 24 „with Reuters /United Kingdom/ and AFP’)
17.01.2026 Last week, Trump suggested that the US must ’acquire’ Greenland ’to prevent Russia or China’ from gaining control of the autonomous territory of Denmark. Earlier yesterday, Trump said he is considering using tariffs as leverage against countries that oppose US interests related to Greenland. "I may put a tariff on countries if they don't go along with Greenland, because we need Greenland for national security," he told an event at the White House. ’We're talking to NATO,’ he said. Trump highlighted that the US is actively engaging the alliance on the matter. ’NATO has been dealing with us on Greenland. We need Greenland for national security very badly, President Trump told the reporters yesterday. "If we don't have it, we have a big hole in national security - especially when it comes to what we're doing in terms of the Golden Dome and all of the other things." (Source: Anadolu Agency - Turkey)
Saturday, 01/17/2026 12:21 PM EST Today President Trump called for an end to Ayatollah Khamenei’s 37-year reign. We find the US President guilty due to the casualties, damages and slander he inflicted upon the Iranian nation, Khamenei ’s X account posted. In another post, he said Trump had mischaracterized violent groups as representing the Iranian people, calling it an appalling slander. Trump, after being read a series of hostile X posts from Iran’s supreme leader, said the ayatollah is guilty of the complete destruction of his country. “In order to keep the country functioning - even though that function is a very low level - the leadership should focus on running his country properly, like I do with the United States, and not killing people by the thousands in order to keep control.’ “Leadership is about respect, not fear and death,’ Trump added. It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran, Trump told Politico, as widespread protests calling for an end to the regime appear to have waned. On Tuesday, Trump called on Iranians to keep protesting and take over institutions, saying that “help is on its way.” The next day, the president abruptly changed course, saying he had been informed that the killings had stopped. Khamenei recently made a public address in which he claimed that the Iranian nation ’has defeated America.’ Trump went further in personal terms, denouncing Khamenei and the Iranian system of governance. ’His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.’ (Source: Politico - U.S.)
14:48, 14 Jan 2026 Immigration from 75 countries will be paused while the State Department reassess immigration processing procedures to prevent the entry of foreign nationals who would take welfare and public benefits. Countries affected by visa crackdown. (Source: The U.S. Sun)
South America
Venezuela
17.01.26, 06:28 PM Trump administration officials had been in discussions with Venezuela's hardline interior minister Cabello months before the US operation to seize President Maduro, and have been in communication with him since then. The officials warned Cabello, 62, against using the security services or militant ruling-party supporters he oversees to target the country's opposition. The security apparatus - the intelligence services, police and the armed forces - remains largely intact after the January 3 US raid. Cabello has publicly pledged unity with Rodriguez, whom Trump has so far praised. While Rodriguez has been seen by the US as the linchpin for US President Trump's strategy for post-Maduro Venezuela, Cabello is widely believed to have the power to keep those plans on track or upend them. Cabello, close aide of late former President Chavez, Maduro's mentor, went on to become a long-time Maduro loyalist, feared as his main enforcer of repression. Rodriguez and Cabello have both operated at the heart of the government, legislature and ruling socialist party for years, but have never been considered close allies of each other. Rodriguez has been working to consolidate her own power, installing loyalists in key positions to protect herself from internal threats while meeting U.S. demands to boost oil production. Cabello has long been under US sanctions for alleged drug trafficking. In 2020, the US issued a $10 million bounty for Cabello and indicted him as a key figure in the "Cartel de los Soles," a group the US has said is a Venezuelan drug-trafficking network led by members of the country's government. Cabello has publicly denied any links to drug trafficking. The US has since raised the award to $25 million. Cabello was listed second in the Department of Justice indictment of Maduro. He denounced American intervention in the country, saying in a speech that Venezuela will not surrender. But media reports of residents being searched at checkpoints have become less frequent in recent days. Both Trump and the Venezuelan government have said many detainees who are considered by the opposition and rights groups to be political prisoners will be released. The government has said that Cabello, in his role as interior minister, is overseeing that effort. Rights groups say the liberations are proceeding extremely slowly and hundreds remain unjustly detained. A former military officer, Cabello has exerted influence over the country's military and civilian counterintelligence agencies, which conduct widespread domestic espionage. He has also been closely associated with pro-government militias, groups of motorcycle-riding armed civilians who have been deployed to attack protesters. Cabello is named in the same US drug-trafficking indictment that the Trump administration used as justification to arrest Maduro. Sanctions the US has imposed on him and the indictment he faces, dates back to the early days of the current Trump administration and continued in the weeks just prior to the US ouster of Maduro. The communications are critical to the Trump administration's efforts to control the situation inside Venezuela. U.S. officials are concerned that Cabello - given his record of repression and a history of rivalry with Rodriguez - could play the spoiler. Cabello is one of a handful of Maduro loyalists Washington has relied on as temporary rulers to maintain stability while it accesses the OPEC nation's oil reserves during an unspecified transition period. If Cabello decides to unleash the forces that he controls, it could foment the kind of chaos that Trump wants to avoid and threaten interim President Rodriguez's grip on power. (Source: The Telegraph – India)
January 16, 2026 / 10:11 AM EST CIA director Ratcliffe meets with Venezuela's interim president Rodríguez in Caracas for two hours yesterday. The meeting came the same day that President Trump met with Venezuela's opposition leader Machado at the White House. Though Mr. Trump has publicly praised Machado, the administration appears to view Rodríguez - who was vice president under Maduro - as more capable of maintaining stability in Venezuela in the near term. That aligns with the findings of a CIA analytic assessment that modeled potential political leadership scenarios in Venezuela if Maduro were no longer president. The analysis, which was closely held and briefed to a limited group of senior administration officials, concluded that existing Maduro-aligned officials - including Rodríguez - would be best positioned to maintain short-term stability. (Source: CBS News - U.S.)
(Wednesday), Jan. 14, 2026, 1:00 a.m. ET Something bad is brewing on Venezuela’s border. For a quarter of a century, Colombia was one of the United States’ closest allies in Latin America. While Washington provided funds, training and military equipment to help Bogotá counter armed groups, Colombian forces fed back real-time intelligence that proved critical to record-breaking drug seizures, kingpin captures and investigations into trafficking networks that span the globe. For much of the last year, that partnership has been traded for a personal feud, with Mr. Trump and Mr. Petro clashing over U.S. migration policy, the war in Gaza and U.S. attacks on speedboats allegedly carrying drugs. Colombia’s leaders have been bracing for the possible fallout of a U.S. attack against Caracas, fearing it could lead to a violent escalation by armed groups, a humanitarian crisis, or both. Now those fears seem to be materializing. The National Liberation Army, or E.L.N., a Colombian guerrilla group started off mounting a leftist insurgency in the 1960s but has since expanded into criminal enterprises. As many as half of its roughly 6,300 fighters are now based in Venezuela. There they have, at least until this month, enjoyed an alliance of mutual convenience with the government. It appears the Maduro regime gave the group a green light to expand its control of the border. The E.L.N. dominates the area’s illicit economies and uses the frontier as a safe haven. Its grip along the perimeter stretches from the Atlantic coast down to the Amazon jungle. Now the E.L.N. stands emboldened to challenge the authority of the Colombian state - and U.S. ambitions in Venezuela. U.S. intervention in Venezuela has opened a field of opportunities for the E.L.N. to expand, taking advantage of a confused situation in Caracas and widespread anti-imperial sentiments among local populations. An emboldened E.L.N. could seriously complicate U.S. ambitions in Venezuela, especially if the Trump administration’s economic interests extend beyond oil to the mineral wealth the E.L.N. covets and already partly controls. The E.L.N. and other armed groups move seamlessly in the borderlands, often exercise more control than the government. With profits flowing from illegal mining, drug trafficking and human smuggling, both the Colombian guerrillas and complicit members of Venezuela’s security forces have deep interests in maintaining the status quo in Caracas and resisting attempts to bring rule of law to these territories. Since mid-December, the E.L.N. has gone on the offensive in the Colombian region of Catatumbo, displacing thousands of civilians in the process. It has also clashed with a local criminal group known as the 33rd Front, a dissident faction of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. President Petro’s announced deployment of some 30,000 troops to the border has done little to stop the fighting. President Trump turned on Mr. Petro, threatening direct attacks on Colombia the day after Mr. Maduro’s capture on Jan. 3. Although a phone call last Wednesday between the leaders lowered tensions, the détente is fragile. To purge rivals, the E.L.N. has set up checkpoints on main roads in Catatumbo. They forcibly scour travelers’ phones for evidence of links to their foes. The group has deployed drones to bomb not only military bases but also hospitals and neighborhoods that, it alleges, serve as hide-outs for E.L.N.’s criminal adversaries. The group is seeking to consolidate control over larger prize: gold and rare-earth mines in southern Venezuela. Members of the Venezuelan military are likely to play along, aligning with the E.L.N. to ensure a piece of the profits lines their own pockets. As of now, the E.L.N.’s most likely allies in the Venezuelan government, including the ministers of defense and interior affairs, remain in their posts. The E.L.N. has repeatedly said that it stands ready to attack U.S. interests if they threaten the Chavista regime in Venezuela. The Trump administration should take the warnings seriously: The E.L.N.’s ranks are filled with skilled guerrilla fighters with deep expertise in improvised explosives, terrorist-style bombings, drones and infiltrating protests. They could turn those tools on what they consider to be Western targets in both Colombia and Venezuela. Should the government in Caracas split into factions or collapse altogether, or already sky-high inflation sets off another humanitarian disaster, violence and instability would very likely spread from the border region deeper into Colombia. The country already hosts the largest Venezuelan diaspora in the world, numbering some 2.8 million people. Many new arrivals might not be able to receive legal protections or work permits. The real solution to the rising insecurity in Colombia isn’t a show of force; it’s the grinding, vital work of diplomacy, intelligence sharing, judicial investigations and humanitarian aid. The White House should continue to walk back its bluster with its longtime ally and face up to the real regional security risks that its Venezuelan intervention has already unleashed. (Source: The New York Times - U.S.)
by Ms. Dickinson, an expert on armed groups and organized crime in Latin America. She wrote from Bogotá, Colombia.
Global
January 18, 2026 09:41 CET The EU sanction taking effect on January 21 has banned imports of products made from Russian crude oil into the European Union to cut revenues for Moscow’s war in Ukraine. Will have an impact this measure and will reduce Russia's export revenues? It especially hits refineries in Turkey and India which import Russian crude, turn it into products like jet fuel, diesel, or blending components, and ship them on to EU markets. Taken together with US sanctions on Russian oil majors last fall, a US blockade of Venezuelan supplies, and uncertainty over possible US military strikes on Iran, the EU measures feed into growing volatility in international oil supplies. The broader context is a global oil glut that has been widely predicted for 2026, due to high production that saw oil prices fall steeply in 2025. This has already cut Russian oil revenues to their lowest levels since 2022, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Analysts warn of loopholes allowing refineries to hide crude origins or reexport via exempt countries, with calls for tighter enforcement. Major Indian refineries had already self-sanctioned by announcing they would buy no more Russian crude. India’s Russian crude imports fell 29 percent in December 2025 to their lowest level since a G7 price cap was imposed three years earlier. A big part of this would also have been a result of the US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's largest oil producers. Critics have suggested that exemptions for countries, including Britain or Serbia, create an opportunity for oil products refined from Russian crude to be reexported to the EU. The same tactic could be used within individual countries, since the ban relates to ports and refineries importing Russian crude. Georgian Kulevi refinery on the Black Sea buys Russian crude oil, refines it into products and it looks to be sending those refined products from a different port. Some observers have suggested that China could absorb part of the excess Russian oil supplies being abandoned by India, Turkey, or others. A 23 percent spike is shown in China’s seaborne crude imports from Russia in December. Several tankers with Urals grade oil apparently shunned by India were reported that month, idling in waters off Chinese ports in the Yellow Sea. China’s small independent “teapot” refineries may buy some of the oil rejected by others, but cannot absorb all surplus supplies. These account for some 20 percent of Chinese refining capacity. Last year, Washington slapped sanctions on three teapots for dealing in sanctioned Iranian oil. But while China’s big national oil companies were cautious around sanctions, teapots were less concerned, because a lot of them don’t have exposure to the US dollar financial system. They’re much more willing to deal in sanctioned crudes. (Source: RFE/RL - U.S.)
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