An upcoming SpaceX crewed launch to the International Space Station ought to be a routine moment for American spaceflight. But in a commentary piece published by American Thinker, writer Noel S. Williams argues the mission’s multinational makeup tells a different story β one in which the United States is paying most of the bills while sharing the ride with countries he regards as adversaries rather than allies.
According to the piece, the crew will include two Americans alongside representatives from Russia and Canada β countries Williams explicitly labels “two of our enemies.” The framing sits at the center of his argument: that the roster of a mission largely underwritten by American taxpayers deserves far more scrutiny than it typically receives.
Who actually decides the crew?
Williams acknowledges the machinery behind those assignments. NASA, he notes, foots most of the bill for the ISS, even though partner nations make what he characterizes as modest contributions. Crew assignments themselves are made by a Multilateral Crew Operations Panel that includes representatives from five international partners.
That structure, in Williams’s telling, is precisely the problem. He concedes that multinational missions can produce collaboration, but he dismisses it as “very superficial, almost perfunctory” β and insists it has not delivered the broader nation-state cooperation or peace that such partnerships are often sold as producing.
The Russia half of his complaint rests on a long-running reality of the ISS program: Moscow’s participation has survived multiple periods of deep tension between Washington and the Kremlin. For Williams, that persistence is less a diplomatic success story than a standing contradiction β the United States continuing to cooperate in orbit with a government it treats as a hostile power on the ground.
The Canada question
The more provocative half of the argument is aimed north. Williams asks why Canada should continue to be treated as an ally at all when, in his description, Ottawa is “cozying up to China” and generally “acting stroppy, incommensurate with their influence.”
He directs particular criticism at Canadian Prime Minister Carney, describing him as “emasculated” and mocking him for “actively promoting their French-ness, for God’s sake,” while alleging that the prime minister is deepening ties with Beijing. The reference to French heritage is a glancing cultural jab tied to Canada’s bilingual identity.
From there, Williams draws an explicit comparison. NASA, he notes, has barred Chinese participation in its space programs β a prohibition he calls perfectly sensible. He then poses the question that drives the column: if that ban makes sense, would a ban on Canadians also make sense? He concedes it “sounds severe at first blush,” but argues it is worth weighing given his contention that Carney is “forging a new strategic partnership” with a Chinese government he describes in harsh terms as a “COVID scourge upon the Earth.”
He goes further, asking whether Canada might eventually align with China in the space race itself β including through the construction of outposts on the moon. It is a speculative question rather than a reported development, and the piece does not cite any Canadian or Chinese commitment to such a project.
‘Rightsizing’ the program
The commentary’s broader purpose is to push a policy argument: that as policymakers consider how to align American space programs with an “America First” agenda, the composition of crews and the terms of partnership should be on the table. Williams frames the launch as an occasion to ask whether the current arrangement β American money, shared seats, long-standing partners β still serves American interests.
That argument lands in a real and ongoing debate. The ISS has long been presented by its partners as a model of post-Cold War cooperation, and NASA has historically defended continued Russian participation as a matter of operational necessity as much as diplomacy, since the station’s architecture depends on both sides. Canada, meanwhile, has been a formal ISS partner since the program’s earliest days and has supplied robotics hardware and astronauts across multiple decades.
But the piece gives voice to a strain of thinking that has grown louder in some quarters of American politics: that the vocabulary of alliance is due for an audit, and that countries the United States has treated as friends may not deserve the benefit of the doubt β particularly where China is concerned.
A joke to close
Williams finishes with a bit of levity he credits to a Reddit post: a barroom anecdote in which a Russian, an American, and a Canadian trade boasts about their nations’ space achievements, only for the Canadian to declare that his country will be the first to land on the sun β at night, so nobody burns up. The joke is aimed squarely at Canada’s place among spacefaring powers, and Williams offers it as a chaser to his more serious complaint.
Whether readers share his premise or bristle at it, the column does what opinion writing is meant to do: take a routine item β a crew rotation on a launch schedule β and use it to press a case about who America’s partners should be, and who gets to decide. The launch may proceed on schedule. The argument about the guest list is a longer-running flight.
Source: www.americanthinker.com β https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/10/spacex-crew-has-representatives-from-two-of-our-enemies/