NATO dissolved, neighbors annexed to the cabinet, O.N.A.N. penned — Gentle its first Chair

pivotal · cabinet's second year through "the very last day of 'B.S.' solar time"

• When: the run-up spans the administration's early years (the honorary cabinet appointments come "in that cabinet's second year"); the treaty caps it, with Gentle's first State of the O.N.A.N. Address "delivered before a triple-size Congress on the very last day of 'B.S.' solar time"
• What: Gentle engineers continental Interdependence in stages. He appoints the Presidente of Mexico and P.M. of Canada honorary 'Secretaries' of Mexico and Canada — "as if the neighbors had already become sort of post-millennial American protectorates" (the film scores the appointment with an ominous D-minor) — and works the Canadian P.M. over pre-tasted cobbler toward "the gradual and subtle but inexorable disarmament and dissolution of NATO" and a refocus on "this crazy continent we call home." The news-montage carries the rest: NATO's dismantlement, editorial floating of a continental alliance, Mexico signing on, and Gentle's open coercion of Canada — unless the O.N.A.N. treaty is signed, NAFTA is null, the Manitoban therms stay put, and waste disposal becomes each nation's own problem. The pact is penned ("CANADA 'NUCK'LES UNDER"), Gentle becomes the first Chair of the Organization of North American Nations with the two neighbors as co-Vice Chairs, and his first State of the O.N.A.N. Address promises Interdependence's "not impossibly radically altered new look," continent-wide — the phrase that turns out to mean the map itself (event 4).