CNN
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Donald Trump’s imperial plans for Greenland, Canada, and Panama often sound like the ramblings of a real estate shark who equates foreign and trade policy with finding new deals.
But there is a methodology to his expansionist thinking. President Trump uniquely addresses the national security challenges the United States must face in a new world shaped by the rise of China, the inequalities of globalization, melting polar ice, and great power instability. I’m here.
His attitude also embodies the “America First” principle of using American power to relentlessly pursue narrow national interests, even by coercing smaller allies.
President Trump’s musings about abandoning the Panama Canal Treaty demonstrate the new administration’s interest in foreign incursions, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. This is not a new concern. It has been a constant in American history, dating back to the Monroe Doctrine of the 1820s, when European colonialists were a threat. This problem persisted even during the communist terror of the Cold War. Today’s usurpers are China, Russia, and Iran.
Meanwhile, President Trump’s belief that the United States should reign supreme in its own sphere of influence has implications for how it manages the world’s major hotspots, including the Ukraine war and possibly even Taiwan. It’s also a great hint.
However, his 21st century neo-colonialism is a major risk and seems certain to be in direct conflict with international law. And President Trump could undermine America’s power by destroying alliances built over generations and alienating friends.
Asked by reporters on Tuesday whether he could rule out the use of force to retake the Panama Canal or occupy strategically important Greenland, President Trump added to the tense world as he anxiously awaits his second term. I poured it.
“I’m not going to commit to that, no,” President Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. “Maybe we should do something.”
Canadians were relieved to learn that the next president would not allow the 82nd Airborne to cross the 49th parallel. He said he would use his economic power solely to annex the proud sovereign democracy to the north and make it the 51st state.
As with President Trump, his threats were laced with malice and mischief. And there was a signature element of farce when the president-elect’s son, Donald Jr., flew the family Boeing to Greenland with his father’s bobblehead on the cockpit control panel. “Let’s make Greenland great again!” the president-elect posted on his Truth social network shortly before his son landed.
President Trump is unlikely to get what he wants on Canada, Panama, and Greenland. Therefore, his strategy may be aimed at obtaining a more favorable deal for the United States. Perhaps discounts for U.S. ships transiting the vital waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, expanded U.S. access to rare earth minerals in Greenland, or sea routes revealed by melting polar ice. So is a new trade deal with Canada that could favor U.S. manufacturers. President Trump paints each of these as major victories that only he could achieve, even if they end up being superficial, like the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement in his first term. Probably.
But President Trump’s threat is based on his foreign policy rationale that countries should aggressively pursue unilateral goals in ways that inevitably benefit strong and wealthy countries like the United States. It embodies one of the following.
“As president, I reject the failed approaches of the past and proudly put America first, just as you should put your country first. That’s okay,” he said. That’s what you should do,” President Trump said at the 2020 United Nations General Assembly.
This is a doctrine drawn from a life in which President Trump has always sought to be the most aggressive person in any room in pursuit of “victory” against weaker opponents. This explains his statement that Denmark should hand over Greenland, a municipality within the kingdom, because it is important to US security. If not, Trump said, “we will impose very high levels of tariffs on Denmark.”
The president-elect also characterized the U.S. decision to hand over the Panama Canal in 1999 under a treaty signed by Jimmy Carter as a foolish move that squandered America’s power advantage. He falsely claimed that U.S. ships were discriminated against in tolls and that China, not Panama, operated the waterway. (Beijing-backed companies operate several ports in Panama). “We gave the Panama Canal to Panama. We didn’t give it to China, and China took advantage of it,” Trump said shortly before Carter’s body arrived in Washington before Thursday’s state funeral. said.
Trump’s hardline approach also explains why he sees little distinction between America’s allies and adversaries. For example, he complained on Tuesday that Canada, America’s closest geographic friend, should be a nation rather than a nation because it is freeloading from the U.S. national defense umbrella. Such a view rejects the U.S.-led liberal order, which sees alliances as investments that increase U.S. power and protect democracy and freedom.
Sending troops to seize the Panama Canal or Greenland could contradict President Trump’s campaign warnings that the United States should avoid new foreign entanglements. But it embodies an “America First” ideology. Hal Bruns, a professor of world affairs at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, said Trump’s second-term withdrawal from the Old World would be replaced by “continentalism,” which could “replace globalism.” I argued that this is a possibility in Foreign Affairs magazine last May. .
This is an update of the principles announced by President James Monroe in 1823, which President Theodore Roosevelt later added with the corollary that the United States should protect life and property in Latin American countries. Ta.
President Trump surprised the world with new comments on the Panama Canal, but for the first time in his first term, he has set out a tougher policy right in America’s backyard. “Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from invasion by expansionist foreign powers,” President Trump said at the 2018 United Nations General Assembly. “It has been our official policy since President Monroe that we refuse to intervene” in the affairs of foreign countries and our own in this hemisphere. ”
His policies represent a break with the Obama administration and are consistent with President Trump’s oppositional politics. In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry told the Organization of American States that “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over.”
The 21st Century Monroe Reboot targets the business, military, and intelligence partnerships of China, Russia, Iran, and countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
Marco Rubio is a surprising choice for secretary of state given the traditionalist leanings of President Trump’s foreign policy, but he is on the same page as his new boss when it comes to hemispheric issues. Florida senators said in a 2022 Foreign Relations Committee hearing that China is exerting its economic influence in ways that negatively impact regional economies and strengthen cartels that export fentanyl and violence across the U.S. border. said. “They are doing this because the turmoil in Latin America and the Caribbean is seriously hurting and destabilizing what they see as their main and central rival,” Rubio said. Because I know that.” “We cannot allow the Chinese Communist Party to expand its influence and absorb Latin America and the Caribbean into its private political and economic sphere.”
President Trump’s expansionist vision reflects supreme confidence heading into his second term, and he intends to use it to leave an era-defining mark on America’s global role.
And his personification of the principle that the strong triumph over the weak may also influence his approach to other global issues, particularly the war in Ukraine. In a striking moment Tuesday, President Trump said he understood Russian President Vladimir Putin’s concerns that the country he invaded could join NATO. “Russia has someone in front of them, and I can understand how they feel about that,” the president-elect said.
There were already concerns that President Trump might accept Russia’s terms. Former national security adviser HR McMaster has recorded the moment when Putin drew an analogy between his illegal claims to Ukraine and America’s historic concerns about that hemisphere. “President Putin has used his time with President Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him,” McMaster wrote in his book “At War with Ourselves.” It added: “President Putin cited ‘Roosevelt’s corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine to suggest a moral equivalence between US intervention in Latin America and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Trump’s bombastic statements may please his supporters. However, many foreigners consider it arrogant. Any attempt to seize the Panama Canal would be considered an act of geopolitical piracy. Invading Greenland would be a mockery of international law.
And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whose already doomed career was hit by Trump’s tariff threats, on Tuesday ridiculed Trump’s vision for the Great White North. “There is no snowballing chance that Canada will become part of the United States,” he wrote to X.
This reaction illustrates the downside of President Trump’s approach. His bullying of America’s friends may alienate the entire nation. Some foreign policy experts worry that American threats and pressure in Latin America will actually push countries closer to China.
And the insult that Canada is better off as the 51st state could harden Canadian public opinion against the next U.S. president and make it harder for the next prime minister to strike a deal with him.
If President Trump ignores the patriotism of other peoples, the United States’ long-standing friendship could be undermined. Not to mention scaring the entire population. “The majority in Greenland finds it very horrifying and very distasteful that the United States has shown that it wants to take over Greenland and control Greenland in such a disrespectful way,” said a member of the Danish parliament. said Arja Chemnitz, a resident of Greenland. he told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
“Greenland is not MAGA. Greenland will never be MAGA.”
