Trump’s belief, meanwhile, that the United States should rule supreme in its own sphere of influence is also an important hint about how he might manage key global hotspots, including the war in Ukraine and potentially even Taiwan.
But his 21st century neocolonialism is a huge risk and appears certain to run headlong into international law. And Trump could compromise America’s power by trashing alliances built up over generations and alienating its friends.
Trump poured fuel on a tense world waiting with trepidation for his second term on Tuesday when a reporter asked him if he could rule out force to seize back the Panama Canal or to take over strategically important Greenland.
“I’m not going to commit to that, no,” Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. “It might be that you’ll have to do something.”
Canadians were relieved to learn that the president-elect won’t be sending the 82nd Airborne across the 49th parallel. He said he’d only use economic force to annex the proud sovereign democracy to the north and make it the 51st state.
As often with Trump, his threats came with a mixture of malice and mischief. And there was a characteristic element of farce as the president-elect’s son, Donald Jr., flew the family’s Boeing to Greenland, with a bobblehead of his father perched on the cockpit control panel. “Make Greenland Great Again!” the president-elect posted on his Truth Social network shortly before his son landed.
It’s unlikely Trump will get what he wants with Canada, Panama or Greenland. So his strategy might be aimed at getting better deals for the US — perhaps a discount for American vessels transiting the key waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, greater American access to rare earth minerals in Greenland and sea routes revealed by melting polar ice, as well as a new trade deal with Canada that might advantage US manufacturers. Trump would be sure to portray any of these as a massive win only he could have achieved, even if they end up being rather cosmetic like his first-term US-Mexico-Canada pact.
But Trump’s threats flesh out one of his foreign policy rationales: that each country should aggressively pursue their goals unilaterally in a manner that will inevitably profit strong, rich nations like the United States.
“As president, I have rejected the failed approaches of the past, and I am proudly putting America first, just as you should be putting your countries first. That’s okay — that’s what you should be doing,” Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in 2020.
