Canada and Mexico play an often-overlooked role in facilitating the United States’ ability to project power overseas. Ottawa and Mexico City have their own pursuits that are now starting to clash more with Washington. While the US certainly dominates North America, both of these countries have distinct points of leverage to push back on the US.

Presenter: Allison Fedirka is the director of analysis and founding member of Geopolitical Futures. The company specializes in geopolitical analysis and forecasting derived from George Friedman’s methodology. In this role she guides the intellectual quality of analytic work and teaching the methodology to new employees. She has spent her career creating a geopolitical framework for understanding Latin America’s with the goal of explaining the logic behind seemingly erratic country behavior and elevating the geopolitical discourse surrounding the region. Prior to joining Geopolitical Futures, Ms. Fedirka worked for Stratfor as a Latin America specialist and subsequently as the Latin America regional director. She lived in South America – primarily Argentina and Brazil – for more than seven years and, in addition to English, fluently speaks Spanish and Portuguese. Ms. Fedirka has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish and international studies from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in international relations and affairs from the University of Belgrano, Argentina.