Last Wednesday’s bulletin continued our exploration from last Sunday of the resurgent North American Union conspiracy theory, sparked by President-elect Donald Trump’s comments over the past few months about expanding U.S. territory to include Canada, Greenland, and Panama.
Such comments connect interestingly to a great deal of evidence supporting the aforementioned conspiracy theories, in reverse chronological order: 2011’s The North American Idea: A Vision of a Continental Future, by Robert Pastor; the 2005 “Three Amigos” where then-President Bush, then-President Fox, and then-Prime Minister Martin of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada signed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America to lay the foundation for a “North American Community” like that which the aforementioned Pastor aimed to chart; the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) document titled Building a North American Community, released in the same year, which the aforementioned Pastor co-authored; the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994; the Canada-U.S. Bilateral Agreement in 1989; a 1980 meeting of the Bilderberg Group; the Club of Rome’s 1972 The Limits to Growth; and the prophesied “ten kingdoms” from the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, which seem to prefigure the Club of Rome’s proposal to divide the globe into ten regional blocs.
Critics of Trump’s rhetoric warn that such imperialist expansion could provoke Latin American resistance, potentially strengthening ties with China. But on the same day we published that bulletin, the pseudonymous 009 of The World Is Not Enough released his own examination of recent events pointing to an incoming North American Union, focusing on Mexico’s eager role within this plan. In 2023, former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) met with imminently outgoing U.S. President Biden and the recently resigned Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the 10th North American Leaders’ Summit to sign the “Declaration of North America” that committed its signatories to “1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 2) climate change and the environment; 3) competitiveness; 4) migration and development; 5) health; and 6) regional security.”
Former President AMLO spoke favorably of the idea some months before signing that declaration, describing a private conversation on the subject with outgoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken while comparing it to the European Union model: “I think that Mr. Blinken spoke about consolidating the region of North America […] in favor of a unity of the entire American continent, like the way the first European community emerged and converted into the European Union, that’s what we want.” That comment prompted an October 2022 letter to Blinken from former Congressman Matt Gaetz calling such an idea “nothing less than a war on American sovereignty.”
Citing the 2008 “North American Union Fact Sheet” from the American Policy Center, 009 identifies key initiatives including the establishment of a common currency—like that for which Canadian capitalist Kevin O’Leary recently advocated—which they called the “Amero,” and shared military defense largely provided by the U.S., and U.S.-funded benefits extended to citizens of Mexico and Canada. Another significant component is the construction of a “NAFTA Super Highway” spanning from Mexico to Canada, designed to streamline trade by eliminating tariffs and reducing border inspections. That, of course, echoes one proposal from the 2005 “Three Amigos” initiative mentioned above: North America’s SuperCorridor Coalition (NASCO), a transnational infrastructure project aimed at supporting supply chains, and which faced stiff resistance due to the significant land seizures it would have necessitated.
009 frames Mexico’s integration into a North American Union as part of the broader globalist strategy to consolidate nations into regional blocs controlled by technocratic elites—aligning it with United Nations frameworks like Agenda 2030, which incorporates policies on climate change, equity—and pandemic preparedness like those named above in 2023’s Declaration of North America. While he notes that critics like Tucker Carlson have expressed strong opposition to merging with Mexico, citing its ongoing cartel violence and systemic corruption, 009 challenges this perspective, calling it hypocritical given similar levels of corruption and criminality within U.S. governance, critiquing the American exceptionalism that leads commentators like Carlson to downplay domestic U.S. issues while magnifying Mexico’s challenges.
That said, we here at Radio Free Pizza feel some reason for apprehension about the possibility of the U.S. merging with Mexico in the North American Union: however, that’s not because of the disparities that Carlson notes between the two countries, but because of the observations that Dr. Edgar Avendaño Mejía shared with us in our November spectacle on Mexican humanism.
Here, Avendaño critiques some aspects of “Mexican humanism” for continuing neoliberal policies under a new guise: he highlights how AMLO, despite advocating for the poor, implemented market-driven policies as Mexico City’s regent, such as privatizing urban development. President Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo, AMLO’s successor, mirrors this duality by promoting sustainability while prioritizing car-centric infrastructure over broader public transit needs, evidenced by controversies like the 2021 subway collapse during her own tenure as regent.
Nonetheless, Avendaño acknowledges that AMLO’s social programs, such as scholarships and pensions, remain popular and effective, especially in rural areas, and emphasizes that these represent meaningful progress in reducing poverty. Though Sheinbaum’s environmental focus aligns closely with the trademark globalist focus on sustainability, both she and her predecessor engage in strongly nationalist, sovereignty-oriented discourse that may preserve Mexican independence more than those concerned about the North American Union may expect.
(Though we might have to admit that Sheinbaum’s response earlier this month to Trump’s proposal to rename the Gulf of Mexico as “the Gulf of America”—in which she dryly suggested calling much of the continental U.S. “América Mexicana”—might unintentionally feed into their concerns.)
But whatever one might think about Sheinbaum’s retort, or about her reaffirmed commitment to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, a modified NAFTA negotiated in Trump’s first term (though her commitment to it hasn’t earned her an invitation to the incoming U.S. president’s second inauguration), it seems difficult to cast her as a controlled opposition to the globalist agenda. Just one week ago Sheinbaum delivered a speech celebrating the achievements of her first 100 days in office that strongly repudiated “the neoliberal model”—in contrast to Avendaño’s assessment of her tenure as Mexico City regent—while also celebrating Mexico’s progress under her leadership and outlining her administration’s plans. She reaffirmed her commitment to Mexican humanism, prioritizing social welfare, reducing inequality, and continuing AMLO’s transformative agenda. Achievements include job growth, foreign investment, infrastructure projects like the Maya Train, and significant social reforms, including a minimum wage increase and improved healthcare access.
Sheinbaum emphasized upcoming initiatives such as judicial elections, enhanced support for Indigenous and marginalized communities, expanded education, and housing projects. While expressing optimism about relations with the U.S. during Trump’s second term, she defended Mexican immigrants’ contributions in the U.S. and vowed to protect their rights amid deportation threats. She concluded by reiterating Mexico’s sovereignty and her dedication to the nation’s prosperity.
This, in turn, might align more closely with another point of 009’s: his critique of “the American-dominated ALTCOM (alternative community)” that opposes globalist plans like the proposed North American Union, suggesting that their reactionary stance stems from fear of change rather than a nuanced analysis of long-term consequences. Instead, he argues that political and societal evolution is natural and has shaped human history, from agricultural communities to modern nation-states, driven by science and technology. While acknowledging the risks of globalist control, such as a potential techno-feudal surveillance state, 009 stresses the need to shape a multipolar world that preserves democracy and freedoms rather than rejecting change outright. Though ALTCOM has a crucial role in resisting excessive globalist dominance (what 009 calls elsewhere “the Great Deceleration” under which resistance will dismantle the unsustainable globalist vision embodied in the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset”), it must nonetheless do more to guide humanity toward a freer, more democratic future.
In the interest of offering some idea of just what such a future might look like, let’s turn to a piece from astrophysicist Adam Frank published in Big Think last month. Here, Frank explores the viability of the nation-state in addressing planetary-scale challenges, which is driving humanity to reimagine political, economic, and social structures. In his view, this shift stems from the recognition of global interconnectedness of human projects must take into account their own context of being embedded within Earth’s coupled systems—the biosphere and the underlying geospheres—now entering the Anthropocene epoch after the stable Holocene.
The nation-state, born just a few centuries ago, remains the dominant form of governance, yet it struggles to address transboundary issues that affect the entire planet. While a centralized world government might seem a logical solution, widespread resistance to top-down mandates, particularly in democracies, suggests that a better approach might involve what Frank calls multi-scale governance. This model would see decisions made locally, at levels like cities or counties—something, I suppose, like the system proposed by Peter Kropotkin, from whom I drew a certain inspiration last year while articulating a Libertarian Communism—with broader frameworks for action operating above the nation-state level.
(Of course, that last part makes it sound like a model for one of the “ten kingdoms” with extra steps, but as usual, we’ll take what works and leave the rest.)
In keeping with this approach, Frank tells us how the Planetary Summit of California’s Berggruen Institute and its associated book, 2024’s Children of a Modest Star, emphasize the need for innovation in governance while staging decentralization and bottom-up decision-making as crucial for managing planetary-scale crises. While no one expects the nation-state to vanish immediately, the summit suggests that it may no longer serve as humanity’s primary organizing principle in the long term as humanity grapples with how to organize itself in alignment with the realities of a finite, interconnected Earth.
It’s interesting to note, of course, that Frank stages climate change as a challenge that might drive humanity toward more localized political structures, given how many of us see concerns about climate change as part-and-parcel with globalism—as Frank himself must acknowledge, since he takes the time to warn us that, in responding to planetary-scale challenges, “going up a level to a world government is unlikely to be the answer […] while there may need to be governing organizations that work at a level above the nation-state, the power to decide how action is implemented should always be carried out at the smallest scale possible.”
That in mind, it seems as though a more appropriate method through which Sheinbaum might exercise her environmentalism wouldn’t come through any North American Union like that which her predecessor apparently supported, but instead for the Mexican state to surrender sovereignty downward to smaller-scale communities throughout the country: something perhaps modeled on the ejido, a system of communal land tenure established after the Mexican Revolution and formalized in the 1917 Constitution to promote equitable land distribution and support rural farmers who collectively own the land but have individual use rights.
While the advent of a North American Union seems to reflect a global trends toward consolidating nations into regional blocs to create a multipolar world order—as BRICS+ seems to prefigure, though without its regional trappings—this restructuring poses significant risks of diminished freedoms and authoritarian controls alongside the potential benefits of increased cooperation and efficiency. Preserving individual liberties may require us to pursue instead a model of local sovereignty that champions democratic values amid political transformations, and which resists the technocratic ideal of (supposedly) “scientific” governance. As discussions of a North American Union and other globalist initiatives continue to evolve, we may find that prioritizing bottom-up governance and empowering smaller communities better ensures the preservation of local autonomy and democratic values against technocratic overreach.
We’ll see if Trump starts talking about any of that. (But we won’t hold our breath.)