Canada is reportedly preparing to protect itself from U.S. invasion - a scenario that would have seemed absurd even five years ago but now reflects the depth of the crisis in the American-led international order. The fact that Washington's closest neighbor and ally is gaming out military contingencies against the United States itself marks a watershed in global politics.

The detail appears in a sweeping analysis by Hal Brands, a professor at Johns Hopkins and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, published in Foreign Policy's Spring 2026 issue, as "Hvylya" reports.

Brands frames Canada's defensive preparations as one of several early indicators that a self-help world - in which every nation fends for itself - is already emerging. Other signs include intensifying nuclear debates in Sweden and Germany, new defense partnerships that generate fresh regional tensions, and proxy wars raging across Libya and the Horn of Africa as multiple powers chase resources and strategic positions.

Trump's territorial claims on Greenland and his rhetorical posture toward Canada have shattered assumptions about the inviolability of North American borders. Brands argues that Trump's approach reflects a broader pattern: a superpower reasserting hemispheric dominance through forced regime changes, resource appropriation, and even lethal force on the high seas. He compares this to the 19th-century doctrine that Washington was "practically sovereign on this continent."

The Canadian case illustrates what Brands calls the fundamental danger of the third scenario he outlines - a world where the United States itself turns rogue. In that future, Washington does not simply withdraw from global commitments but "weaponizes, not abandons, its global role," joining China and Russia as a predatory revisionist. Smaller powers, caught between three aggressive great powers, have no option but self-help.

Brands notes, however, that lack of U.S. domestic support for seizing Greenland may show that Trump's excesses will eventually discredit his wilder instincts - though he warns it would not be the first time a revolution was "captured by its most radical elements."

Also read: GOP congresswoman champions sovereignty - while hosting Kremlin advisors in Washington.