The president-elect has declared that he wants Canada, Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Mexico under US control, suggesting that they could be acquired through force or extreme economic coercion.
He has made it clear he would apply his “America first” ideology to US foreign policy, come hell or high water.
It’s imperialism in its raw form in the 21st century. Forget the talk about sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last week, Trump sees these territories as vital to US interests, and he was not bluffing in his threats.
The quest reflects Trump’s fascination with a new version of an old notion that great powers should carve out “spheres of influence”, and defend their economic and security interests by imposing their will on smaller neighbours.
It harks back to the 202-year-old Monroe Doctrine proclaimed by President James Monroe in 1823.Its basic tenets were to separate the spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, prevent former colonial powers from dominating Latin America, and barring them from interfering in its politics.
Eighty years later, however, President Theodore Roosevelt’s interpretation of it led to the US itself colonising many of these countries, installing brutal dictators, and becoming involved in wars and rebellions.
Trump wants the new US sphere of Influence to extend from Panama to Greenland, the world’s largest island. The latter is 2,166,086 sq km in size but supports a population of only about 60,000.
Greenland’s main economic drivers are fishing and tourism, but it has vast natural resources, including coal, zinc, copper, iron ore, rare minerals and also oil and gas.
Trump said it was an “absolute necessity” for America to annex Greenland.
“People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it, but if they do, they should give it up because we need it for national security,” he was quoted as saying.
It is not the first time that Trump has floated the idea of grabbing Greenland. He tried to buy it in 2019 during his first term, but the bid was dismissed as a joke.
He was not the first to come up with the idea, however. President Harry Truman proposed buying Greenland from Denmark in 1946.
The secret bid was to buy the island for US$100mil in gold. Previous attempts by the US to buy the island date back to 1867.
Greenland’s Prime Minister Mute Egede, who has led the semi-autonomous Danish territory since 2021, urged all countries to respect its independence. But with the locals pushing for total freedom from Denmark and an election due within three months, Trump might get his wish.
As observed by UnHerd columnist and author Thomas Fazi, the US doesn’t actually need to seize physical control.
He noted that it already wields significant influence under a 1951 treaty with Denmark through which it bears responsibility for Greenland’s defence. The US also operates the Pituffik Space Base, a critical component of its missile defence system.
Fazi, who co-authored the book, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor – A Critique from the Left (2023), with Toby Green, noted that Trump’s remarks provide insight into how tensions between the US and Russia (and China) might evolve, even if they don’t subside.
“Of course, a world where weaker nations are treated as mere pawns to be ‘peacefully’ divided among imperial powers – assuming this is the direction we are heading – is hardly the kind of multipolar order most people envision. Nor is it the order that Russia and China ostensibly advocate for, leaving open the question of how they might respond to Trump’s overtures,” he wrote.
Fazi also highlighted that Europe was the only place that remained woefully unprepared – politically, intellectually and psychologically – to navigate these troubled waters.
In a world poised to be divided into spheres of influence dominated by the US, Russia and China, Europe faced the prospect of becoming even more geopolitically weakened and vulnerable, and yet it continued to cling desperately to the myth of the transatlantic relationship.
“Indeed, it is bitterly ironic that Europe, after vassalising itself to the United States in an effort to counter a largely imagined Russian threat, now finds one of its territories being threatened not by Russia – but by the US itself.”
Trump’s Greenland move could also result in breaking up the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato).
Newsweek quoted a defence research expert that the president-elect’s comments could send a message to Nato adversaries that changing borders by force was “potentially acceptable”. It also quoted another who said Trump was trying to undermine Nato’s cohesion.
Speaking to US media last week, Trump also revealed his other plans, including renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” and asking Nato members to spend 5% of their GDP on defence.
On the Panama Canal, Trump said the US should resume control of the waterway canal, adding that he would not rule out using military might to do so.
“It was built for the US military. We gave the canal to Panama, we didn’t give it to China. They have abused that gift.”
Saying that the canal was vital to the US, he described the fees for transiting the canal, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as “ridiculous”.
The waterway is managed by the state-owned Panama Canal Authority, but two of its ports have been run by Hutchison Ports PPC, a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings.
On Friday, Ricaurte Vásquez, administrator of the canal, rejected Trump’s claims that China was controlling it. He said the canal would be open to all countries, adding that making exceptions to current rules would lead to “chaos”.
Media consultant M. Veera Pandiyan likes this quote from American revolutionary Bill Ayers: “Imperialism or globalisation – I don’t have to care what it’s called to hate it.” The views expressed here are the writer’s own.
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