Shorter America this week: Trust is rust; It’s the white supremacy, stupid; Five Eyes goes cross-eyed

It isn’t always easy to keep up with what’s happening in the US. “Shorter America” is a series where Dr Emma Shortis loops you in on what’s going on in America and shares news and analysis that you can trust.

By Emma Shortis

Sat 24 Jan 2026 01.00

International Affairs

Shorter America this week: Trust is rust; It’s the white supremacy, stupid; Five Eyes goes cross-eyed

Photo: The White House/Flickr

So, another fun week for the world! All eyes have been on Davos, Switzerland, as the world’s most powerful leaders convened for the World Economic Forum. While it might feel like we’ve gotten a reprieve as tensions over Greenland appear to simmer down, Canadian PM Mark Carney was right – we’re living through a “rupture”.

This week:

Trust is rust
It’s the white supremacy, stupid
Five Eyes goes cross-eyed

Trust is rust

On the stage in Davos this week, Donald Trump said “I won’t use force” in Greenland. That’s certainly a relief, but likely only a temporary one. As I wrote in The Conversation, Trump’s America has shattered all trust.

It’s not clear how NATO – or any of America’s alliances – can survive that. Which was really Carney’s point. What was so striking about his speech (and if you haven’talready, it’s worth watching it in full) was not just that he laid out so clearly that the old order is dead.

It’s that he articulated a vision of what could come next. The fate of our world doesn’thave to be left up to Trump’s America. The rest of us have agency, and most of us don’t want to live in the world that Donald Trump and cronies like Stephen Miller are trying to create.

It’s the white supremacy, stupid

One hundred years ago, in the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s advisor James Carville said that when it comes to elections, “it’s the economy, stupid”. That’s become such a common saying it’s lost all real meaning, but if we alter it slightly, I think it’s a useful way of thinking about Trump.

The white supremacy is always there, right out in the open. Trump made that clear in his Davos speech, when he spoke about his pure European bloodlines (ick). The Guardian’s Washington Bureau Chief David Smith wrote a great piece on how Trump’s speech outlined “his most dark, insidious and sinister project of all.”

Five Eyes goes Cross Eyed

I wrote above that the Trump administration has shattered all trust in alliances. What exactly does that mean for Australia? What does it mean that Trump said (about Greenland) “you need the ownership to defend it. You can’t defend it on a lease. Number one, legally, it’s not defensible that way totally. And number two, psychologically, who the hell wants to defend a license agreement or a lease…”

Not me having visions of Australian security types drawing up the contracts…

Anyway, Australia is also a member of the “Five Eyes” signals intelligence grouping, with the US, UK, Canada, and New Zealand. The UK has already suspended some intelligence sharing in the Caribbean over concerns it would become complicit in strikes that were likely illegal.

Just to add to the concern, this absolutely wild NYT Magazine piece on Kash Patel’s FBI – the same Patel who goes to the multilateral heads of intelligence agency meetings – should maybe raise some (more) concerns ???

Nah. Everything is fine.